A couple months ago FFFF revealed the District 5 candidacy of one Jozef Maldonado. I didn’t know anything about the guy except that he had stood up at a council meeting to attack Mayor Fred Jung. That was telling and now the evidence is in.
Maldonado has a campaign website wherein he touts his vast, two-year experience on the Parks commission and shares how he championed the Trail to Nowhere and the useless UP Park projects – an aggregate waste of three million dollars of public money. He includes this unintentionally hilarious brag about his alleged contribution to the UP Park:
“And when conflict arose over a proposed pickleball court conversion, he brought both sides to the table and turned tension into trust.”
Wow! What an accomplishment. Tension to trust. Well, the pickleball courts are there so somebody lost.
Anyway, what’s really revealing is Jozef’s slate of endorsers, a veritable Who’s Who of Fullerton Boohoo and Fullerton Angry.
Ahmad Zahra (unemployed immigrant fraud)
Shana Charles (and her unemployed husband, Andre)
Ruthi Handcheck
Aaruni Thakur (friend of Scott Andre Charles and Scott Markowitz, some say)
Angry Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo
Angry Eye Doctor Anjali Tapadila
Steven Sherry (who starts every sentence with “Member of the Transportation Commission.”)
Soon we will probably see Jan Flory, Karen Lloreda and Diane Vena added to the list and hosannas from the Kennedy Sisters and the Fullerton Observer endorsement committee.
I once speculated that this guy could be another Democrat Party plant – like Tony Castro meant to drain votes from Oscar Valadez; and Scott Markowitz, there to take gringo votes from Linda Whitaker; in both cases to benefit the favored Dem Central candidate. This is obviously not the case. But Maldonado’s position in the community seems very thin; and Valadez has both a long-time business and a family with deep roots in D5.
We do learn that Jozef will be marrying his fiancé Ryan at the Hunt Library in November, after the rigors of the campaign, I guess. The point of sharing that information escapes me, other than to reveal he is gay without branding himself by it, like his endorser Ahmad Zahra.
When a misleading City of Fullerton agenda proclaims: “Introduction of Special Fiscal Audit – Grant Thornton Risk Advisory Services.”
I assumed, wrongly, that somebody had already been hired to look into the misdirection of funds into the General Fund Reserves that should have gone some place else, a fact that has caused considerable embarrassment to our severely and habitually underinformed City Council. I also figured this firm was going to talk about what they found.
But no.
In fact, the firm of Grant Thornton Risk Advisory Services were brought before the council by the City Manager, Eddie Manfro, simply to make a sales pitch for their services. And what services.
Step one is to be some sort of forensic accounting exercise, a fishing expedition to explore the world of Fullerton’s accounting regime to see what, if anything, is amiss. Nobody said anything, but there must have surely been some internal squirming when the company rep kept using the word “fraud.” And that included our Finance Director and recently anointed City Treasure, Steven Avalos who was sitting in the pit.
The second phase of GTRAS’s endeavor was to explore how the City might improve efficiencies, save money, and help address Fullerton’s grim fiscal situation. Why this all-purpose company was suggested for this task seems odd, the two tasks having nothing to do with one another.
I’ll address the first project first. Why is it necessary at all to delve into Fullerton’s accounting with an audit? We have been told that there were seemingly honest bookkeeping errors – embarrassing, sure and it did alter the already dire projection of General Fund reserve draw downs, but fear not, all was well. The councilmembers kept talking about transparency and public trust, but what does that really mean? Is this serious or just a political pantomime?
Consider the following facts. GTRAS was picked by the City Manager under his own authority and just brought to the council to give them a chance to ratify the decision. That’s a sole source contract, and the public has no idea how much they will be paid, and won’t without a PRA request. Will added scope to the $100,000 contract be reviewed by anybody except the City Manager and Steven Avalos? If some sort malfeasance were actually discovered – purely by accident, of course – would offender(s) names be published? Is any of this going to discussed in Closed Session because it touches on employee issues? Who knows? The Council approved the deal, without knowing whatever it is or might be.
As for the second part of GTRAS offer, the City Manager announced that would be returned to the Council for approval of a $130,000 deal. At least someone might get the chance to ask some pertinent questions, such as why is this “economic development” effort needed, given that Fullerton has highly paid staff who enjoy employment as economic developers. What have these people been doing and why do they need outside help. These people have been on the payroll for years. What have they accomplished?
Sunaya Thomas, in charge of economic development, was in attendance. Her presence at the meeting was an almost begging of the question about her own success in this endeavor, the effort of bureaucrats that never even pays for itself.
I wonder if GTRAS will actually suggest something that might help, outside of taxes. Personally, I doubt if their suggestions would even pay for their own service. That we will probably never know because no one will talk about it. This will be an agreement with no metrics for success or failure, just more electronic billboards and hotel occupancy taxes. Staff reductions? Getting rid of all our brand new “firefighters” and ambulance drivers? Don’t be ridiculous.
Anyhow our brave Council voted unanimously to proceed down this dark corridor, protesting their sincere desire to pursue those most elusive prey: transparency and public trust. No one said much about accountability. They never do.
Here’s a video of a couple derelicts stealing or vandalizing Fred Jung campaign signs.
Fullerton has a long history of anti-democratic sign thefts, including Roland Chi’s proud papa in 2010.
The most famous instance was Pilferin’ Paulette Chaffee, in 2018, who was actually charged by the then DA, Tony Rackaukas. The nauseating Pilferin’ Paulette is now on her third campaign for office since she had to quit the City Council election in disgrace.
Sometimes it has almost been funny. In 2022 such was the unearthing of Raccoon Boy, a local low-life employed by Ahmad Zahra to swipe opposition signs in 2022. Is Raccoon Boy back? I doubt if he could afford a beat up 20 year old Crown Vic or even a gallon of gas to make it run. He couldn’t afford a dog leash, either, so for now he gets a pass.
This sort of thing will keep happening, of course, so let’s see if we can identify some of these miscreants and hand them over to the long arm of the law.
At Tuesday’s Fullerton City Council meeting our honorable elected representatives found out that our fiscal reserve funds were overpopulated with bucks that belonged someplace else. I haven’t been able to view the video – the City Clerk’s link doesn’t work – so I’m relying on a Voice of OC article.
It seems monies that should have gone to Fullerton’s Redevelopment Successor Agency and other sequestered funds were being counted in the general fund reserve pool – $10,000,000 worth. How and why this occurred wasn’t spelled out in the article except as some sort of accounting error:
“These funds remain part of the city’s overall fund balance, but are now set aside in a way that better reflects their intended purpose,” said Steven Avalos, the city’s finance director, at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Wow, that’s an application of bureaucratic soft soap, massaging what amounts to an egregious accounting error, or worse.
What it means is that all previous budget discussions led by Mr. Avalos and his predecessor have been nonsense for the past 5 years. And decisions in just the past year obliviously come into sharper focus for their foolishness – like going in-house with ambulance drivers and hiring a bunch of new, permanent “firefighters” based on a one-time FEMA grant. Parenthetically, I note that Mr. Avalos was appointed City Treasurer earlier in the Tuesday meeting. That’s a bit funny, really.
The Voice reports heated and loud interlocutions between Ahmad Zahra, the perpetual grandstander, liar, and victim, in exchanges with Mayor Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap. The exchanges as reported generated a lot more heat than light, but so it is when Zahra begins his sanctimonious routine. Ironically Zahra says a new sales tax increase won’t help.
We are informed by the article that City Manager Eddie Manfro is going to meet with the ad hoc Budget Sustainability Committee on March 30th which seems like just a stall of 12 days.
One interesting statement was uttered by Jung in a Voice interview:
“I think we were set up to fail.”
We don’t know what this means because apparently the reporter didn’t follow up. Does the Mayor believe this misallocation of funds was deliberate to create a budget crisis at some point? Who knows?
Things are grim in City Hall, and a cactus garden in front isn’t going to cheer anybody up.
Friends may remember the name: Sukhee Kang. Sukhee is one of those common cases where political ambition to hold office leaps far ahead of ability or commonsense.
Way back in 2016 Sukhee quit Irvine where he had been a Larry Agran flunky on the city council and bought himself a mini-McMansion on a Fullerton golf course, behind a security gate. Remember? Mr. Kang’s lust for higher office caused him to carpetbag in order to run for the State Senate. I seem to remember one of his lackeys in Irvine defended this foolishness as a sensible “empty nester” move and downsizing on the part of Sukhee and Mrs. Sukhee.
As usual, Sukhee had a phony ballot designation as an educated (he taught some made-up footling class at Chapman) and he was an author, too, producing a self-published biography. Sukhee promoted the fact that he was a veteran, although it turned out it wasn’t of our army.
Sukhee had all the usual endorsements – loads of Dem politicians, the sort of thing we now know is almost worthless. But Kang didn’t reckon with FFFF or Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform. He came in third and it was sayonara, Sukhee.
Anyhow, we learned shortly thereafter that the empty nesters had flown the coop – back to Irvine, demonstrating the bullshit of the rationalization.
Now Kang has kangaroo’d back into politics. He’s running for the Irvine City Council, a sad attempt of a 75 year old man to be relevant. It’s even sadder than an old dude trying to be important. The Irvine Council now has seven seats instead of five, and poor sad sack Sukhee has to run for a paltry district seat now.
Irvine District 1 residents may not even remembers this creep’s ditching Irvine just to run for an available office in a whole other town. Hopefully an opponent will remind them of Sukhee’s stay in Fullerton.
The FFFF inbox had an interesting communication in it this morning – a copy of an anonymous posting on a Facebook page called “Fullerton Buzz” warning that a Fullerton City Councilmember might be their landlord.
The portentous lead-in:
“It has been found that Montclaire Apartments is owned by Mayor Pro Tem Nicolas (sic) Dunlap.”
Shocking!!!!
Little tidbits of information about companies City Councilman Nick Dunlap is affiliated with are included in the communication to lend verisimilitude.
But verisimilitude to what? Someone thinks that owning real estate is a crime? Someone thinks having an income is bad? Seriously?
My supposition is that someone wants somebody to think Dunlap is some sort of evil plutocrat, associating rental income with ill intent. This anti-rentier Marxist philosophy underlies so much of the thinking of Fullerton Boohoo that the author could be any number of people, but obviously someone at least active enough to know to use Dunlap’s title “Mayor Pro Tem,” probably someone still pissed off that Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles were passed over for the mayorship in December, thanks to Dunlap’s votes.
More than than that, this seems to be an invitation for denizens of the aforementioned Montclaire Apartments to engage their landlord in his capacity of a Fullerton Councilman, a troublemaking tactic so common to the Kennedy Observer Sisters and their ilk.
Additionally, it should be noted that the aforementioned Spadra Property Company is a property manager, as indicated here, and not a property owner. So that’s sinks the whole point of the attack.
Could it be our friend, the flowering young sapling Elijah Manassero who is behind this lame effort? Quite possibly. But then Ahmad Zahra has a whole stable of eager young sycophants trying to ascend in the cold, cruel political world.
Here’s an interesting bit from the “print edition” of the Fullerton Observer, proving that once again the Fullerton Klown Kar has no rearview mirror.
The subject is the reopening of the abandoned UP Park, and all you have to do is look at the photo op result to guess that a history re-write is in the works.
While we were basking in the Spring-like day, most of the USA was under an unrelenting, repressive assault by ice, snow, and freezing rain. All of the speakers took notice of who was in the audience, mainly the Fullerton residents who did not give up on the idea of a local park, rallying support for an incredible 20-plus years. Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk Silva recalled how she was on the City Council in 2004 when the idea of revitalizing Union Pacific Park was discussed. Persistence from Fullerton residents kept the idea alive, so keep that in mind.
There’s a who’s who of Fullerton libs who can’t seem to have their pictures taken often enough, especially over there on the far left – the tarnished antique Pilferin’ Paulette Chaffee, who did less than nothing to have the park reopened. But then again, neither did Vanessa Estrella, or Sharon Quirk, or Jesus Quirk-Silva.
And on the subject of Quirk and Quirk Silva, the reimagining of history is appalling. Quirk got on the City Council at the end of 2004 all right. But at that point the first Union Pacific Park was just completed – brand effing new. Her statement is obviously meant to ignore the long history of bureaucratic failure that led to toxic soil removal and closure of a third of the park, to finally fencing off the whole damn thing because of the hypes, borrachos and homeless campers.
But just as important as hiding ugly truth is promoting your own accomplishment – finally doing what was thought impossible – after a 20-year fight! And let’s not forget the other myth – the popular struggle from la communidad, all of it ginned up, when it existed at all, by patronizing gringos at the Center for Healthy Neighborhoods, etc.
The Big Q probably doesn’t want you to remember that she was on the Council for another 8 years after her mythical park revitalization “discussions” allegedly took place, and so if the park wasn’t “revitalized” under her careful stewardship, why not?
Then there’s her dopey, hare-brained husband, Jesus, who was on the council from 2016 through 2022. What was he doing to revitalize the park after it really was fenced off? Nada. That’s right fish farm fans. He and Ahmad Zahra, also mugging in the picture, were trying to illegally convert the parkland to an intrusive fenced off private event center. So much for “the community.” You couldn’t make this stuff up.
The Fullerton Observer sisters and these political types want us to forget the real history of the UP Park – a poisoned public nuisance created by and for City bureaucrats as a Redevelopment money plaything who’s history would be a civic shame, if anybody in City Hall had any shame.
Now maybe you think that this is all trivial, this whitewash of the past. Not so. The conditions which caused UP Park #1’s failure are still there, even as more millions are thrown at UP Park #2. No one is paying attention because nobody cares.
A Friend just sent over this snippet from a Fullerton Observer “article” about tomorrow’s Fullerton City Council meeting.
“Despite the limited agenda, the meeting is expected to draw public comments regarding the recent selection of the Mayor, the treatment of public commentary, issues surrounding ICE, and the City’s response to violations related to CalPERS.”
Once again Skitka Kennedy and her sister Sharon seem intent on generating news rather than just reporting it. Of course this totally unethical stab at troublemaking is nothing new for these people. They love certain intangible abstractions, and if some proposal seems to scratch that itch, then so be it, no matter how fucking stupid it is.
First, let’s examine the first sentence. The meeting is “expected to draw public comments…” Says who? Says somebody hoping that somebody will read this and maybe go; either that or remind the usual disagreeable claque that their presence is needed to disrupt the business of the city.
And then there’s the script
First, selection of Mayor, an issue decided a month ago and that has no relevance to anything anymore. The treatment of public commentary is really funny.
Treatment of public commentary? For some reason these fools seem to believe that they actually deserve respect as they berate members of the City Council. Look me in the eye, the Canadian green card holder demands! Sure these nincompoops have a right to speak; but there’s no requirement on the part of the City Council to give them a nickel’s worth of attention, or to adjourn meetings in honor of them.
And the ICE issue: giving $200,000 to undocumented persons for legal and living expenses, money taken from everybody to salve the moral sensibilities of a few. The decision not to fund this irresponsible idea was taken in November and isn’t going to change. Still, hope springs eternal in the cross-wired world of Fullerton Boohoo.
Finally the CalPERS “response” issue, yeah, an issue nobody has even talked about except for one opinion screed written by the the sweet young Elijah Manassero, soi-disant “investigative reporter” for the Kennedy Sisters.
FFFF, however, did publish a post about a possible Closed Session leak by “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra to the tender Elijah, and how the potentially illegal matter had been referred to the District Attorney. Will anybody from the balcony step up to the podium chatter about this, besides the delicate fleur Manassero? I doubt it.
The Fullerton Observer and its proprietors will never change. When you are on a messianic mission of goodness and light, you are unable to draw a distinction between objectivity and fantasy so long as the fantasy rings your bell. It’s an all too common trait in the less educated, and is a complete disqualifier for someone calling himself a journalist.
The other day I described the history of the idiotic Boutique Hotel – a notion to build a high-end hotel on the site of the East Santa Fe parking lot at the Depot. The idea was, and is so stupid that it astounds any commonsensical thinker. And even worse, as the “unsolicited,” exclusive deal became less and less likely, the concept became bigger and dumber. The approved plan more than doubled the density allowed by the Transportation Center Specific Plan.
City projects are virtually immortal if they look like work for eager “economic development” bureaucrats or look like they can be sold as accomplishment by people like Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles, who think (or pretend to think) that their gullible followers can be fooled into believing something good is happening.
Except that nothing good is happening. Our City officials increased the value of the property ten-fold through entitlements, but sold it for its original value – a staggering subsidy of at least ten million bucks. And that subsidy was handed to TA Partners, a flimflam operation fronted by a couple of con men, Johnny Lu and Larry Liu, at the end of 2022.
In the three intervening years nothing has happened so far as the public knows, even as TA Partners’ legal and financial woes have become public; woes that certainly should have been known by our economic development experts in City Hall prior to signing a contract, but weren’t. Why not? And why is the project at least two years behind schedule? Don’t ask. Fullerton being Fullerton.
The land was deeded over to Johnny and Larry without even an approved set of conceptual plans. But the deed was encumbered after a fashion with development and construction milestones.
And here’s the Schedule of Performance mentioned above:
I don’t know what sort of plans have been submitted, if any, but I know that grading should have started at least 20 months ago and hasn’t. And look at that project completion deadline – a Certificate of Occupancy by 10/21/26. That’s only nine months from now. As this fiasco looks worse and worse, not a peep from our friends at Fullerton Angry and Fullerton Transparency about the initial giveaway or the state of the schedule. They have more important if less expensive “scandals” to rant about.
Of course the paragraph tacked on to the Grant Deed, above, describes the covenants attached to the land, but that’s it. Other language talks about the City’s right to legal recourse if the conditions of the covenants are not met. That’s pretty toothless since lawsuits are always possible; there is no mention of Johnny and Larry surrendering their new asset, an asset whose entitlements could still make it worth a fortune. Why the City hasn’t already initiated legal action is a mystery worth speculating upon.
We all know that when it comes to Fullerton redevelopment boondoggles, nobody ever takes responsibility for failures. It’s just not good form to hold the masterminds accountable. Often it’s not enough to just keep quiet; sometimes staff actively tries to keep the boondoggle gasping for air so it can be reassigned to some new front man. That’s what I think must be happening now.
By the way, a majority of the current City Council has not voted for this hot mess. It’s a legacy mess.
It’s way past time to learn what’s going on, to find out what the status of the Boutique Hotel and Apartment monster and to find out why the City hasn’t pursued legal remedy to protect our interests.