Don Bankhead Archives - Page 38 of 45 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

October 16, 2009May 6, 2011Dick Jones

Why Isn’t There a Mr. Fullerton Contest?

Courtesy of Doug Hikawa — They're comin'

Our old friend Barbara Giasone penned one of her edgy, hard-hitting news pieces the other day about the upcoming Miss Fullerton Competition.

Since we ran a piece awhile back about the geezers in the Chamber of Commerce laying hands all over complete strangers – women young enough to be their grand daughters, this news flash caught our attention.

Smile your way to college! — Cuddle up a little closer...

The propriety of having these young women present themselves at Chamber events to be touched, and touched often, smiling all the while, seems to be a strange way to have to earn an educational scholarship. Just think about it: okay honey you gotta go to this cocktail party full of friendly guys. Just think of them as your dad, or grand dad. What? You’re not 21? Hmm. Well, it’s really not like it’s a bar, exactly. Anyway there’ll be police there too, so that’s okay.

Why can’t these young women write essays, or feed homeless people, or do something equally uplifting? Why do they have to attend Chamber of Commerce cocktail parties for photo ops? Seriously. Why?

Well, that’s what pageant winners do, for gosh sakes, some will argue. It’s all harmless, and maybe they like it! Well, maybe they do. And maybe they don’t – and just can’t say anything. In any case it’s pretty hard to escape the conclusion that these contests are are just weird hold-overs from the early part of the last century.

Here’s some help: visualize these women without tiara and sash in the same photos, same poses. Damn friendly girls, wouldn’t you say?

We have no idea what the Miss Fullerton competition entails, but it seems pretty clear that the winner’s attendance at mixer events held by the Chamber is inappropriate for several reasons.

And if the idea is so damn hot, and not at all sexist, then why isn’t there a Mr. Fullerton constest? We’d love to see Dick Jones with his arms around the waists of a couple strapping, scholarship-hungry young guys!

October 12, 2009Dick Jones

You Want Blight? We Got Blight! Part 2

by admin3 Comments

Dear Friends, a few weeks back we wrote a post about the issue of blight relative to the proposed Redevelopment expansion. So we have decided to collect some more images of blight to help you get the picture. Again, to be fair, and consistent, we have tried to stick to the City’s own standard (or worse) as we collected pictures not in the proposed area, but in the existing Redevelopment Project Area – to let you also see what a bang-up job the city is doing to eradicate blight already!

October 9, 2009February 7, 2012Behind Closed Doors

The Status of the “Amerige Court” Monstrosity; On Life Support – Pull The Plug!

by The Fullerton Shadow9 Comments

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the good folks at City Hall to provide a public update on the drawn-out Amerige Court saga. They would just as soon you don’t know while they work out a deal behind the scenes.

Well, if they won’t we will. To that end we sent out our crack team of investigative reporters and found out a few things.

As many of the friends doubtless know, the original partnership – Pelican/Laing – that was getting all of the Redevelopment gravy: free land, super-high density, etc. etc., is no more. John Laing Homes went into receivership. But we have been informed by our sources that before they declared under Chapter 11 they managed to offload their interest in the Amerige Court project to their erstwhile partners, Pelican. We suspect that they sold out for pennies on the dollar to salvage something before a bankruptcy court judge could lock things up.

The possibility of a kickback to former Laing employees is hard to ignore, and we hope that this thought will occur to the bankruptcy judge, too. The City granted entitlements were and are, worth millions to somebody who can actually seal the deal.

The Redevelopment Agency staff is aware of all this, and rather than start over will no doubt push hard for the Agency to accept this new arrangement, if they haven’t already. It’s hard to see the Pelican boys getting financing to build a birdhouse these days, but many options are open including selling off the whole mess to somebody else. They may also try to repackage the deal in a “softer” format to makes sure they can get the green light.

So the time is ripe to call City Council members who voted for this huge subsidized eyesore. Keller, Quirk-Silva, and Shawn Nelson have an opportunity to correct their previous mistake and do the right thing by the people of Fullerton. Bankhead and Jones are, of course, far beyond hope, but you can try them, too, if you care to.

September 18, 2009December 30, 2009Dick Jones

Our Thanks to Nelson & Quirk-Silva

by The Fullerton Harpoon10 Comments

Quirk2 shawn-nelson

The other day we posted about the shameful payoff deal Fullerton’s Redevelopment lawyer Jeff Oderman cooked up with the County in order to get the latter to call off the legal dogs in regard to the City’s proposed Redevelopment expansion plan here . You may recall that the triumvirate of Usual Suspects – Bankhead, Jones, and Keller went for bribe/hush money scheme even though it required an up front payout of $4,000,000 from the City’s General Fund and involved bogus lease back deals in the out years.

Well, we want to thank council members Shawn Nelson and Sharon Quirk-Silva for sticking to their guns in the face of all sorts of institutional and statist pressure to go along with the scam that required the Council to make findings of blight where none exists. This fragile lie was the foundation of the whole rotten expansion superstructure.

It’s good to know we have two representatives who appreciate a concept much-abused by governments in their mania to raise revenue to pay themselves more and more: the truth.

September 17, 2009December 28, 2009Dick Jones

Who Should Be Fullerton’s Next Mayor? Pam Keller?

by The Fullerton Shadow16 Comments

it's really just a little wood hammer...

The recent edition of the Fullerton Observer did some boohooing and hand wringing about whether or not Pam Keller will get to be Fullerton’s next mayor here . The little article points out some of the nefarious goings on in Fullerton Past and the current council’s refusal to adopt some sort of mechanism to ensure that everybody gets a chance to be mayor.

We believe the person who should be Mayor of Fullerton is the person who can get two other colleagues to vote for him/her. That’s pretty simple. If they can count to three it’s their turn.

Fullerton’s lefties know that come reorganization time (1st meeting in December) local Repuglican bigwigs like Ed Royce make it a point to lean on fellow Repugs (In Name Only) like Bankhead and Jones to keep the gavel away from the Dems. But that’s the way it goes. It’s called politics. Fullerton’s “progressives” like to play politics too, but they just won’t admit it. We wonder if they would be so energetic in the defense of Shawn Nelson’s turn to be mayor.

Is Pam Keller qualified to be mayor? Well, let’s face it – if Jones and Bankhead can do it, so could an orangutan.

But we’re still waiting to get some straight answers from Pam and her Collaborative about who foots their bills, and why the money is drip-dried through the FSD; and we were chagrined, although not surprised, to hear her inane defense of the indefensible blight scam behind the recent Redevelopment expansion vote. So maybe she isn’t the best person to be the face of Fullerton.

September 16, 2009December 30, 2009Behind Closed Doors

City and County Collaborate on $25 Million Bribery Plan

by admin8 Comments

Last night the Fullerton City Council voted to give the County of Orange $4,000,000 of your money. Right now. Right out of your pocket.

well, there she goes — Well, there she goes. Say good bye.

So what’s the reason for this unusual generosity? It was because the County was threatening to sue the City over the diversion of property tax increment from the County through the bogus establishment of an expanded Redevelopment project area where no blight exists as required under State law.

The City lawyers, Rutan & Tucker,sure must have felt they had a lousy case – because they cooked up a deal behind the scenes to buy off the County with a ton of up-front cash plus some hinky lease back deals on down the road. Ultimately the total payout will be $25,000,000. We shared news of the the payoff meetings here . The County knows the Redevelopment expansion is fraudulent, because it has already made that argument publicly; but apparently there are at least three votes on the Board of Supervisors to take the deal and help out a fellow government agency. The County will formally go for the gold next week.

The City Council vote was utterly predictable with Pam Keller, Don Bankhead, and Dick Jones cheer leading the payoff. Dick Jones in particular excelled himself in ignorant idiocy. We’ll soon be showing the Friends clips of Fullerton’s City Council in action.

To their credit, both Shawn Nelson and Sharon Quirk-Silva voted against an action that both robs the taxpayers of Fullerton and violates a basic ethical standard. The other three broke the law, and they know it. But they’re not out of the woods, yet. A court will decide the matter.

September 7, 2009May 6, 2011Dick Jones

Beauty and The Beasts

by The Fullerton Shadow22 Comments

Fullerton School District Trustee Minard Duncan (or someone doing a marvelous impersonation) visited our site a while back and left this observation about City Councilman Shawn Nelson’s wife, Sharon:

Nelson’s wife is a very pretty women as well as pleasant and cordial! It is hard not to drool around her.

Apart from the sharp needle-jump into the red on our FFFF creep-o-meter, it set us to thinking about mature male politicos and attractive, significantly younger females.

Minard lookin' good! — Pretty and cordial, too!

Some politicos avoid having their pictures taken with beauty contest winners for fear that the young woman will get all the attention, and the politician will look rather like an ugly duckling alongside. Others either haven’t learned that lesson, or are so starved for attention that they do it anyway.

Say cheese! — No personal space in this biz. Smile 'til it hurts

And of course some just can’t seem to resist laying hands on the pretty young things.

jones_firehouse2_2008 — Yeehaw! A coupla young fillies in the corral...

August 20, 2009December 30, 2009Dick Jones

Bankhead & Keller Go A Callin’ For Bogus Redevelopment Expansion

by admin13 Comments

According to our well-placed sources, Fullerton Mayor Don Bankhead and council member Pam Keller (hereafter referred to as Pam’nDon) made the rounds of the County Supervisors’ offices last week to try to strike a deal with the County not to sue the city on its illegal redevelopment expansion.

PamnDon

We can’t think of two less informed advocates of an issue, but they would never have been sent out if they hadn’t memorized their talking points as presented by Redevelopment legal promoter Jeff Oderman of the notorious Rutan & Tucker. Or maybe Jeff just wrote a figure on a piece of paper and sent them off with it.

Since the County and its attorneys have already gone on record opposing the expansion, we reckon than Pam’nDon went with checkbook in hand. The County objects to the loss of property tax revenue, especially when the whole scam is based on non-existent blight and the phony findings thereof. And so the County pot needs to be sweetened. A lot. Enter Pam’nDon. Of course it’s supposed to be all hush hush, but you know, these things have way of getting out, especially when the old slushola is being divvied up. Transparency is such a bitch.

We have an indication that the County will take the bait, and that, Friends is a story for another day.

August 19, 2009January 4, 2010Arts & Architecture

The City is Violating Its Own Law in Hillcrest Park

by Fred L. Olmsted7 Comments

If you’ve driven along Brea Boulevard lately you will have noticed that the north hill side of Hillcrest Park has been completely scraped as part of the so-called Lions Field improvements. Well, the hillside was suffering from total (and I mean complete) negligence on the part of the City for decades. What is being built, are large retaining structures to “stabilize” the slope. The only problem is that what the slope needed to stabilize it was appropriate landscaping – a solution that the parks Department ignored for years.

The addition of retaining structures in the park is inappropriate. More than that, it’s illegal. Hillcrest Park is a designated Fullerton Landmark (#6) and as such the types of alteration being proposed should have been reviewed in a public hearing by the Landmarks Commission. This never happened. It’s true that Hillcrest Park doesn’t fit into any of the categories included in the watered-down version of the Landmarks Ordinance passed by the City about 12 years ago. But adherence to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards is one key. Another issue is that of demolition and replacement of historic elements. Even the watered down code has a spirit that has not been observed.

Once again the City has ignored its own laws, laws that you or I would be expected to follow. It has specifically ignored the Landmark Ordinance once again, a part of the Zoning Code that the City has habitually and serially abused over the years (if you want I’ll make a list).

For years the City has turned over the park to pervs and low-lifes while ignoring the historic built environment. And now it seems they are embarked on another form of abuse of an historic resource.

August 4, 2009August 4, 2009Dick Jones

Euclid Commons: What Is It?

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

Yesterday we ran a post on the duplicitous way the City started the ball rolling behind closed doors on a big housing project that promises CEQA impacts on its neighbors. In fact decisions are already being taken that should have been done under the illumination of a public hearing.

The project even has a name, “Euclid Commons” that makes us wish to make a quick pit stop at the West Harbor Alley Improvement Project vomitorium. A couple of comments provided descriptions of what was being proposed that seemed to differ considerably and so we provide la tabula rasa for our Friends to chime in and see if any clarifications are forthcoming.

The issue of starting negotiations is being addressed tonight (Aug 4th) behind closed doors since the public can’t be trusted to even know that a project is now officially (if secretly) sanctioned by the City Council. There will be “reporting out” but no public comment. Really, what have they got to hide?