As you Friends can imagine the FFFF industrial complex has been engaged, mano a mano, with the yapping legal beagles employed by the City.
But now I take a break from the marblemouthed drone of Dick Jones’s lies to catch up our Dear Readers with other events of the past few months. If you supposed that the spotlight of media attention on its legal mischief has caused Fullerton politicians and bureaucrats to call a pause to its idiotic endeavors, boy, would you be wrong.
Be sure to visit the roof garden…the view of the auto repair shop next door will be amazing!
In October, the proposed dee-veloper of a “boutique” hotel on a parking lot next to the Santa Fe Depot gave a show for us rubes.
You may recall this dubious project – Doug “Bud” Chaffee’s parting gift to us: approval of an exclusive negotiating agreement based on the developer’s unsolicited proposal for a hotel on what is now a parking lot. Nobody had ever heard of this bold impresario before, but no matter. Jennifer Fitzgerald has always wanted one of these “boutique” hotels, even though it was never in the Transportation Center Specific Plan she kept foisting on us all those years.
One of these people is a tax and spender. So is the other…
In case you don’t remember, I bring your attention to the record of our dimwitted and unintelligible mayor, Jesus Quirk Silva, who changed his vote from the previous meeting to make this absurdity move along. He even made up fake “experts” who supposedly changed his mind.
Anyhow, it seems this newly minted “hotelier” thinks downtown Fullerton is “dilapidated” and needs his special kind of remedy – a boutique hotel for all those fancy swells who haunt DTF’s exclusive nightclubs and other highfalutin venues. The pictures, however, suggest a six story stucco box with some brick veneer stuck on the front to satisfy the locals sensibilities.
Carpenter ants are a nuisance if not properly controlled…
And at this meeting a strange apparition appeared: a bunch of carpenter union goons in jobsite safety vests. Presumably their presence was meant to impress upon the assembled citizenry how necessary such city-supported boondoggles are to their well-being. It’s become common for this in Anaheim, but this is ridiculous. It wasn’t even a public hearing where such theatrics might persuade the more feeble-minded decision maker.
Apparently, word has not yet got out from City hall about whether this harebrained scheme is going to be subsidized with free or discounted land, but I’d be willing to bet on that. After all, this City is not for sale. If you’re connected with the city council you just step up and take what you want.
Friends for Fullerton’s Future just received a disturbing story accompanied by a photograph that seems to encapsulate the Downtown Fullerton experience:
Hey, FFFF, I wanted to send along a story about what happened to me a few weeks ago. About 2 am a friend and I were walking along the north side of Commonwealth. Across the street we could see some kind of free-for-all going on. Then the crowd ran off leaving two people lying on the ground. By the time we crossed over to see what the damage was, the Fullerton police had arrived. The two people, a guy and a woman, were bloodied and obviously beaten. One of the cops saw me observing the scene and asked if I wanted to be arrested.
Rather than provide information about what we had seen, we decided to move on. But before we left I turned around and took this picture showing the woman pleading with four cops who appeared indifferent to whatever physical abuse she had suffered.
Sad.
Yes, Friend, it is sad. Our “leaders” have created, nurtured, and encouraged a culture of mayhem where sometimes it’s hard to tell the victim from the perpetrator and where the cops are seemingly anesthetized to the weekly blood bath.
A couple of weeks ago Jeremy Popoff’s Slidebar employees and clientele provided more examples of the sort of high class behavior favored by our city council and particularly our lobbyist/councilcreature Jennifer Fitzgerald who has been running cover for Popoff for years and years. You may recall that Slidebar has never gotten the required CUP even as city officials like Fitzgerald, Bruce Whitaker and Party Planner Ted White have schmoozed and petted its miscreant owner.
Hiding the tats won’t help…
Everybody seems to be ignoring Slidebar’s violation of planning and nuisance laws until the laws can be watered down so much even a professional douchebag can slime by without comment.
At the outset you can see a bouncer on theft serially pound some hapless dude already on the ground and then go for a head stomp for good measure.
In the open-air saloon known as Downtown Fullerton it’s often virtually impossible to distinguish between the bad behavior of the bar-hopping patrons and the low-lifes hired to control them.
While it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody paying attention that the government, at all levels, only works for those who are well connected and make the correct donations. Usually proving this truism is often difficult but we came across an example here in Fullerton that seemed noteworthy.
It appears that Mayor Pro-Tem, and Curt Pringle & Associates VP, Jennifer Fitzgerald decided to weaponize our city government to go after the business “D/Vine” for “word on the street” indicating that they had a promoter in violation of the municipal code.
That seems innocuous and even reasonable from a law and order and agency perspective. After all, what’s the problem with a council member & Mayor Pro-Tem being worried about a business running afoul of local law?
Nothing if the local laws were applied equally and in a just manner. But we know that to not be the case.
While Fitzgerald is super worried about public safety over who promotes what music at D’Vine she gleefully ignores other violators of our municipal code when it benefits her. As an example of such would be when she holds events and parties at The Slidebar.
The Slidebar which for years has violated local amplified sound ordinances while operating without so much as a Condition Use Permit or even an Administrative Restaurant Use Permit (ARUP).
For those new to these issues – in this city you cannot operate a restaurant without an ARUP and you can’t sell alcohol and have live entertainment with a CUP and a Live Entertainment Permit. The following screenshot is from the City Staff’s own presentation to City Council on April 16th, 2019:
The Slidebar only has the Live Entertainment Permit despite not legally qualified to have one thanks to their just ignoring the law regarding the ARUP/CUP. Nearly every other business is required to have these permits and for 7 years Fitzgerald has said bupkss about it.
Fitzgerald, like so many others on the dais before and still, has no problem holding fundraisers and heaping praise on some businesses in clear violation of the most basic of rules required to run a bar in downtown but when the wrong promoter plans the wrong type of music – now there’s a need for a call to action. Rally the troops! Tally-Ho! The scourge of banda music must be stopped… because Banda music is… bad?
Let’s look at that. Banda music is what exactly? From Wikipedia:
“Banda is a term to designate a style of Mexican music and the musical ensemble in which wind instruments, mostly of brass and percussion, are performed.”
This is something Fullertonians have complained about before it seems but I didn’t realize it was such a problem. I sort of expect to hear this music at places like Revolucion Cantina and in fact they have a “Banda Wednesday”. This negates the idea that the music itself is a problem.
The shooting is a cause for concern if you’re worried about what CAUSED the shooting… but if it isn’t the music causing people to be shot (because the shooting happened during a “Purge” themed Halloween party playing Hip-Hop) then Fitzgerald must blame the promoter?
Can a promoter rationally be blamed for the wrong people showing up to a show? Fullerton doens’t seem to blame the local bars for bringing in undesirables who urinate, vomit, fight and graffiti all over downtown. Hell, Fitzgerald herself recently blamed “Pre-Gaming” in the parking lots for much of the mayhem and DUIs around town.
Thus using Fitzgerald’s own local logic let us dispense with the idea that the promoter caused the shooting in Riverside. After all, it might have been “pre-gaming” in a parking structure that led to the shooting. To do otherwise would be an especially comical problem when we have a fire & life safety issue in downtown related to a business owner whose family is alleged to have burned one of their own previous businesses to the ground.
Because city staff works at the behest of the City Manager and the City Manager works at the whim of the City Council, when the council says “Jump!” or “Look Away!” that’s exactly what happens. No need to apply the law evenly or justly – just do what the bought and paid for council demands.
It’s sickening that the city can look into D’Vine for their banda/promoter problem while simultaneously Community Development Director Ted White was exchanging text messages with Joe Florentine and emails with Jeremy Popoff, local bar owners, in the build up to municipal code changes of how Florentine’s & Popoff’s businesses, and all bars, would be regulated despite their own flaunting of the laws.
While Ted White was looking into the ARUP/CUP status of D’Vine he was ignoring the very real problems regarding Florentine being, for over a decade, in violation of life safety requirements. To recap – Florentine has refused to follow his own Conditional Use Permit (CUP) requiring fire sprinklers and the city has refused to enforce that CUP up to and including the Chief of Police rubber stamping Florentine’s Live Entertainment Permits year in and year out despite those permits also requiring adherence to the CUP.
“The C.U.P. (if applicable) shall be strictly enforced.”
It’s nice to have a clear cut example of the city picking and choosing winners and losers. This email from Fitzgerald about D’Vine shows us clearly that our city responds to issues immediately when the council says jump all the while turning a blind eye to worse problems from similar businesses in the same neighborhood. I guess it really does pay to own the right council members.
Fullerton’s City Council last Tuesday, as expected, voted to change the rules governing how bars operate in the city in order to facilitate having more bars and making them more profitable.
The crux of the change is that it was too hard for staff to do their jobs, and for the Police Chief to stop rubber stamping permits, so the city needed to change the rules. This time they mean to enforce them unlike the last decade+ they promise… kind of… well not really.
Not one council member got an answer of who was in violation of what rules they were changing and why it was so hard for community development, code enforcement and the police to use a checklist to sort it out and in fact Ted White’s answers on how Conditional Use Permits work negated his own arguments of the Title 15 change. But again, council was too inept and/or lazy to follow the logic of the change or to ask any real questions per the norm.
The council ALSO voted to launch a pilot program, which we all know will be permanent, for paid parking in downtown. This is a data driven program tracking who comes and goes how often and how long they stay based on license plate data. As we heard at the meeting the whole point was data, data, data and more data. You will be tracked and your data will likely be sold. It’s so data driven that the vendor, staff and council want you to punch in where you park even when you don’t have to pay for parking – just because you WANT to be tracked.
When council asked who owned the servers the vendor claimed it was a “cloud based server” and that’s where the questions stopped. We don’t know what data is kept, where it is kept, which servers are used or who our travel data is being sold to – all because council couldn’t be bothered to ask.
It was a pathetic meeting full of incompetence, malfeasance and laughable gaffs. The Other Dick Jones™ got torn into by both Fitzgerald and Zahra for how they can/can’t handle an agenda item and when the city clerk offered helpful info the council just blanker her. It was probably the worst example of governing I’ve seen in years.
Individually the council members didn’t do themselves any favors in the integrity or intelligence departments. (more…)
The Fullerton City Council is about to hand the Downtown Restaurateurs Bar Owners two big wins and they’re going to continue to slap down the privacy of those in Fullerton in the process.
The first big win for the bars is in changing the rules around operating a bar in the Downtown area. This is partially because city staff thinks it’s too hard to do their jobs regarding enforcement. It’s just so hard to tell the couple of bars without Conditional Use Permits that they’re operating illegally.
The truth here is that it’s so hard to enforce anything downtown because council won’t let staff or the police department do their jobs so they all have to turn a blind eye to illegal operators and this change to Title 15 allows the downtown scofflaws to now operate *mostly* legally.
Except those without CUPs which the city will continue to ignore because favors and cronyism.
This is being sold as a way to make enforcement easier but let’s be real here – every year for a decade+ the Chief of Police (each of them) has signed off on Live Entertainment Permits which themselves say CUPs will be enforced. Our Chiefs of Police rubber stamp LE Permits for businesses that operate without required fire / life safety requirements.
So if the Police Chief is going to turn a blind eye to life safety in order to rubber stamp a permit for a favored business owner why should we believe that these new relaxed rules will be enforced? Because we’re supposed to “trust” these corrupt kleptocrats.
This Title 15 Change is being pushed to allow “legal non-conforming businesses” to now operate quasi-legally but staff won’t even tell use who that applies to in Downtown. We’re offering a form of amnesty without talking about who gets it and for what and if that’s even a good thing.
Ted White will likely prattle on about lumens and the percentage of tint on a window as cover but there are real concerns being omitted here. Why? Because saying “no, we allowed a business to illegally board up their windows with flammable material without fire sprinklers in clear violation of their CUP” doesn’t sound as easy to wash away in a rhetorical flourish such as “how do we know what 15% tint looks like”? (more…)
Today Jennifer Fitzgerald announced her resignation from the Fullerton Council, effective immediately.
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it…
“I can no longer even pretend to fulfill all the oaths I swore when I became a councilperson,” said Fitzgerald. “All the developer shakedowns, all the lies, all the influence peddling – I just can’t keep track of it all anymore. Balanced budgets, commitment to roads, honest cops – people want so much and I am so tired. I’m going to spend time with my family,” she stuttered weepily. “The evil has been backing up so much I feel I may burst.”
Mayor Jesus Silva responded to the announcement by saying ” I guess I’ll miss her helping me out at meetings when I started babbling like a boracho pendejo, but it will sure will be nice to have only one woman telling me what to do.”
Quick, get clear of the impending collapse…
Recently appointed Councilwoman Jan Flory had kind words for her colleague. “I’m going to miss Jen’ on council. To my lights she was the heart of the city and represents the very best commitment to service. We accomplished all sorts of things together – good roads, a successful downtown bar scene, an accountable police department, an unmatched string of balanced budges, effective and successful public works projects – you name it. She’s the reason Fullerton is where it is today.
Recently elected councilperson Ahmad Zahra was quick to praise Fitzgerald. “I thought at first she might be, you know, difficult to work with after she called out my long-winded moral posturing on the council appointment deal. But, later, when the chips were down, and she was willing to screw Whitaker just for the fun of it, I was so happy to make the deal to be on the water board. It was a very successful transaction.”
The council will now have to decide whether to replace Fitzgerald by appointment or by special election. According to the City Attorney a special election in November could cost eighty trillion dollars, which might come close to unbalancing the City’s budget according to City Manager Ken Domer.
We’ve received, via a Public Records Request, some of Community Development Director Ted White’s text messages with downtown bar owner Joe Florentine. It looks like Mr. White is working for Florentine which explains a lot:
To clear this up, those “issues” that Mr. Florentine is talking about include all of his violations of the municipal code and his Conditional Use Permit – specifically his illegal refusal to install fire sprinklers.
Florentine is in gross violation and Ted White is pushing a big change to the municipal code through council in order to facilitate Florentine’s bad behavior.
While Mr. White likes to talk about how hard his job is, how impossible enforcement is and how outdated it is to look at “lumens” regarding lighting – he doesn’t admit that fire safety isn’t on his list of priorities – nor is actually doing his job.
Florentine’s properties on the corner of Harbor and Commonwealth, the largest bar / nightclub in all of Downtown Fullerton, as far as we can tell, is the ONLY business given a pass on fire and life safety issues.
We also have it on good authority that Mr. White tried to illegally INCREASE the occupancy at Florentine’s properties, in violation of the law, while ignoring the fire sprinkler issue that has been ignored by staff for 10+ years. Why? Why potentially put more people at risk?
And Mr. White isn’t alone in his belief that one man is above the rules and laws in Fullerton.
Every single year the Fullerton Police Chief, currently Robert Dunn, issues Florentine a Live Entertainment Permit threatening to enforce the applicable laws/permits. And every year the Chief does nothing but wield his rubber stamp for downtown law breakers. This is worse than the old joke of the UN saying “Stop! Or we’ll yell ‘Stop!’ again!” because our Chief can’t even be bothered to use the “S” word. (more…)
We here at FFFF over the years have pointed out the Florentine sidewalk theft and more recently the sham of city oversight in Florentine’s decade+ refusal to install fire sprinklers.
Those stories led a reader to send us a video that may make that fire sprinkler issue way worse in context. It’s a story about what allegedly happened at Florentine’s Melody Inn back in 1989 in Downtown Fullerton.
Those of us in the cheap seats out in Podunk have noticed something odd and can’t quite figure it out and we’re hoping that some of you friends have some answers.
The problem is that Joe Florentine operates a night club in clear violation of the Fullerton Municipal Code and possibly CA Law if not just CA building codes. How so? His nightclubs located at 100-104 N Harbor Blvd, and which have a combined occupancy of over 300 people, are lacking fire sprinklers. Feel free to check for the permits yourself to verify.
Fire sprinklers, mind you, which were a condition of his Conditional Use Permit back in 2008.
The CUP from 2008 on this issue fully states (our emphasis):
“12. The 2008 Building Code requires that restaurants and drinking establishments with a fire occupancy of 100 persons or more are required to install fire sprinklers. As a result, the business owner is required to add fire sprinklers as a matter of approval. Because this is a Building Code requirement, the Planning Commission does not have discretion to waive this requirement. Staff has recommended a condition to assure that the work be performed within a specified timeframe of the use approval, or else the CUP will be brought back to the Planning Commission for revocation.”
Here’s the California Building Code for those who are curious, keep in mind that Florentine’s is said to be about 8,000 sqf:
His business qualifies as requiring fire sprinklers. His conditional use permit requires him to have fire sprinklers. Yet he has no fire sprinklers.
Why are there no fire sprinklers?
Why hasn’t his Conditional Use Permit been revoked as required by law?
For 10+ years Florentine has been operating the largest restaurant / night club against the law and for 10+ years our staff has done nothing about it. Even though Fire and Life Safety are the issues at hand.
OK, that’s not fair to staff. They have done something. They’ve willfully ignored fire codes, building codes and public safety. We’ve got to give credit where credit is due and nothing in this case certainly is something.
Despite that 2008 Conditional Use Permit threatening a mandatory revocation, the city has never once enforced the issue of fire sprinklers let alone considered bringing his CUP back for possible revocation. Not Once. In all that time our useless Planning Commission has been too inept to ask tough questions of staff or for a list of gross violators to even notice this glaring slap against their preening authority.
But wait for it, it gets better.
Each year like clockwork the ever rotating Fullerton Police Chief signs off on Florentine’s Live Entertainment Permit making FPD complicit in this glaring life safety fail. Here’s an example from 2016/17:
Check #7.
“7. The C.U.P (if applicable) shall be strictly enforced.”
The Chief of Police is signing off on Live Entertainment Permits and claiming that conditions of use, such as fire sprinklers, will be enforced while NEVER ONCE ENFORCING THEM in well over a decade.
While Community Development Director Ted White likes to talk about needed changes to the municipal code, specifically Title 15 which passed our clueless Planning Commission, he mentions lights and lumens and outdated technology. It sure is curious that he never bothered to mention Fire Safety and how he, his staff, nor any staff across Fullerton, can be bothered to enforce those issues and laws either. Nevermind flagrant violations of state law, HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THOSE LUMENS! We just can’t measure those time to change the codes!
While he’s baffling our clueless leaders and representatives on the dais with bullshit, he’s letting guys like Florentine violate safety concerns because… why exactly?
No seriously, why? Why are we tolerating staff, our Planning Commission, and our City Council blatantly ignoring the law while they spoon feed us nonsense about lumen measurement?
This is an endemic problem. That Live Entertainment Permit as seen on the Fullerton website actually needs to be signed off on by multiple departments:
How is that nobody in the Building, Code Enforcement or the Fire Department has a problem with such a large venue with such a large civilian capacity each weekend being in clear violation of fire codes?
Joe Florentine actually made the case in front of the Planning Commission recently that the Live Entertainment Permit process was too arduous. Let that sink in. The dude who’s breaking the law and putting people’s lives at risk has the sadz because the process, that is letting him slip by with his lawlessness, wants the process to be easier!
An artist representation of Joe Florentine after speaking to Planning Commission.
Maybe you can figure out why right now, this weekend of St. Paddy’s Day which is one of the heaviest drinking days of the year, the city is going to continue to put hundreds of people at risk in Florentine’s night clubs.
The city knows Joe Florentine operates his bars outside the law. He is legally required to protect the public he allows in his doors, but refuses to do so. We know it, we tolerate it, and we even sign off on it at least once a year.
Why is this important? Why should you care that your city staff ignores the law and signs off on Florentine’s shenanigans?
Because this means YOU, the taxpayers of Fullerton, are on the hook for an accident in Florentine’s bars.
You, through the Police Chief & Fire Department, signed off on his entertainment permits to pack his bars.
You, through your Council, Staff and City Manager, told him he was safe, every year. You told him he’s a good operator despite obvious evidence to the contrary.
So what happens when, God forbid, there’s a fire like the Ghost Ship in Oakland where fire sprinklers were also lacking?
Who pays restitution? Little ol’ Joe with his big house and big pool up on the hill?
NO! You do! You pay! Just like you always pay when staff and council refuse to do their jobs. You signed the dotted line that blessed all his illegal bullshit and then you did nothing about it.
You get what you vote for, Fullerton. This weekend your vote will be used again to tolerate putting hundreds of people at risk. You voted for people to not enforce life safety laws, you voted to not enforce alcohol service laws, and you voted to not enforce zoning laws.
