Fullerton BooHoo Archives - Friends For Fullerton's Future

A few weeks ago the Daily Titan published an article about how, in a few years, Fullerton is going to be running in the red. Deep red. City projections point to being upside down $19 million between 2024 and 2028. Now that’s not very good, is it?

Here’s the grim forecast:

Naturally, the article quickly devolved into a vehicle for advocating the hiring of more people and paying them more, replete with completely fraudulent comparative pay statistics. On hand were Ahmad Zahra and his helper Shana Charles to bleat about unfilled positions and service deficits, always the first opening salvo in a new tax proposal – like the one Zahra pushed hard in 2020.

The head and the hat were a perfect fit.

Doug Chaffee, the senile Fourth District Supervisor of Orange County and a former Fullerton mayor contributed this gem to the conversation: “I think I would have been a little heavier on keeping our staff because they are the lifeblood of the city. They do the work.” Uh, huh. He failed to mention his own inept culpability in mismanaging Fullerton’s budget for years.

Hilariously, Zahra seems to think the phrase “economic development” has some sort of talismanic quality, as if there were anything City Hall could do to produce it. It never worked during the heyday of Redevelopment and it won’t do anything now. It’s just a shiny distraction that can’t even pay for the bumblers who are paid, and paid very well, to pursue it.

What economic development really means is a focus on increasing tax revenue to pay for the salaries and benefits of public employees and their bloated, guaranteed pensions. It would be refreshing if just once elected folks thought about less about raising revenue and more about living within budgetary constraints.

Mayor Fred Jung calmly opined that Fullerton has adequate reserves to handle the tsunami of red ink coming his way, but this is not reassuring. Fullerton went through the same crimson bath during the Fitzgerald/Chaffee/Quirk-Silva/Flory/Zahra regime, and anybody who thinks Fullerton is better off for the deficit spending it is a damn fool.

May 10, 2023May 10, 2023About Us

Track the Tracks. They Said What?

by Mr. Peabody4 Comments

I’ve been relating the newest bit of Fullerton nonsense lately, to wit: the unfolding, bureaucrat driven, unfolding the disaster now know by the funny name The Tracks at Fullerton Station.

So far, we’ve found out that the 141 unit density of the apartment half of this hermaphroditic monster was based on the entire site size, despite the fact that that the “boutique” hotel, all 118 units, sits majestically on the other half. In essence, the Transportation Center Specific Plan limit of 60 units an acre – which is already ungodly dense – has been multiplied by two-and-a-half times, and the environmental documents that have already been approved by the City Council neglect to address this incompatibility with existing governmental strictures.

But it gets even worse.

It’s axiomatic that government minions will invariably cough up “solutions” to non-existent problems. It’s called job security, and the results, as these pages have amply demonstrated over the years, are never subjected to the embarrassment of scrutiny and accountability. This concept is not different.

At the recent Planning Commission hearing we learned that the project in question involves the complete remodel of the existing parking area just north of the Santa Fe Depot, south of Santa Fe Avenue. This further elimination of parking is being proposed to accommodate a brand new bust lane and stop. Why? No intelligent reason was forthcoming. Here’s the site plan:

Because the current bus stop is so far away…

The existing OCTA bus stops and canopies are only a couple hundred feet away. Is this deemed too far for the scant few travelers who use both bus and train? Of course not. Obviously some “transit” dreamers are hard at work, making work – for themselves.

And now notice at the right of the site plan the proposed hotel juts into the existing Pomona Avenue right-of-way. This will require an abandonment of part of a public street which would require an official abandonment. This is being done to provide outdoor eating for the proposed ground floor café. In order to provide an alternative, our thoughtful staff floated the idea of non-permanent elements in the same area, only requiring the issuance of an encroachment permit. Here’s the architect’s vision looking south along Pomona Avenue:

This wet, hot mess was all approved by the five gourds sitting on the Planning Commission dais. Soon it will make its way to the City Council. Will it pass, as the sale of the property did in December? Will the three who voted to virtually give away this useful public land – Whitaker, Charles and Zahra – vote to double down on their foolishness and approve the monstrosity, the unnecessary bus stop and the abandonment?

My educated guess is they will do it cheerfully.

April 15, 2023April 15, 2023Ahmad Zahra

The Shana Charles Experience

by Mr. Peabody27 Comments

An alert Friend recently advised me to visit the web pages of the Fullerton Observer. There, according to this person, I could find an “open letter” written by our new councilwoman Shana Charles and addressed to Mayor Fred Jung.

Apparently Ms. Charles stood up and hauled herself out of the State of the City speech given by Jung and subsequently felt the need to share her reasons with the public. Maybe she thought nobody saw her leave, or cared.

Now going to the Fullerton Observer is not a task I undertake very willingly, but I was interested to see what sort of silly drama was taking place. Here’s a link to the aforementioned open letter.

The missive explains that she walked out of the lunch in protest of some sort of verbal mistreatment of Councilman Ahmad Zahra and follows with a recitation of all the wonderful things Zahra has done for District 5’s “underserved” folk, yadda, yadda, yadda, and reminds her readers that his brand is the only LGBTQ Muslim, and he deserves respect!

I get the vibe that that the whole stunt was pre-planned and that the dress rehearsal was probably staged in Zahra’s living room.

In any case, the preachy petulance shown by this woman is telling. She admonishes Jung to rise above his personal “vendetta,” obviously uninterested in publicly exploring her assertion and “urges” Jung to apologize to the poor, injured Zahra. “If you wish to continue as Mayor” she sternly intones, Jung must put aside his own interest, an ironic admonition given the ceaseless self-promotion performed by Zahra.

I don’t why or how Ms. Charles got her schnoz all bent out of shape, or if she was even really offended at all; and it really doesn’t matter. The fact is that those who have followed the self-serving “public service” of the serial prevaricator Zahra know what sort of creature he is and will find it hard to imagine that he is even capable of being offended.

October 13, 2022October 13, 2022Ahmad Zahra

Zahra in The Mail

by Joe Sipowicz12 Comments

Someone once said there is no such thing as bad publicity. I’m not sure about that.

Sometimes the truth hurts. But the Good Book says the truth will set us free.

There’s no denying it. Until Zahra shows some proof that he was exonerated as he claims, his criminal record is now history.

September 26, 2022September 26, 2022Ahmad Zahra

COVID ZAHRA

by The Fullerton Harpoon10 Comments

When things get tough, real leaders make difficult choices. And then there are those like Ahmad Zahra.

When Covid 19 rolled around in the spring of 2020 Fullerton was already looking at financial disaster. Years of unbalanced budgets were backfilled by reserve funds by the partnership Fitzgerald, Flory, Silva and Zahra. With the Covid lockdown things looked bleak.

What to do?

“I know” said Ahmad Zahra, “lets have a sales tax.”

And so the ill-fated Measure S was placed on the ballot by the same herd: Fitzgerald, Flory, Silva and Zahra. The proponents didn’t seem to care that sales taxes are inherently regressive, and Zahra seemed uninterested in the fact that his D5 constituents would be disproportionately hurt. Ironically, at the time, Zahra was hauling in $4,000 a month for a few hours time as an appointed member of the Orange County Water District Board.

Later, in 2021, when federal relief money rolled in to Fullerton, Zahra tried to direct funds away from infrastructure and into salaries and pension obligations.

Well, those chickens have come to roost. This mail piece landed in D5 mailboxes today:

And the back side:

September 7, 2022September 7, 2022Ahmad Zahra

Is the OC Democrat Party Deliberately Trying to Split Latino Votes? Looks Like It.

by Mr. Peabody12 Comments

When council districts were finally created in Fullerton – in response to a lawsuit, one district was designed to support Fullerton’s large Latino community – District 5. In 2018 D5 elected a non-Latino which of course was surprising but perfectly legal. But what would Latinos think about a concerted effort by the OC Democratic party to make sure the Latino vote was divided to protect Ahmad Zahra, the non-Latino incumbent?

Enter Tony Castro, the dead-beat nobody who popped up out of nowhere and pulled election papers the day after Oscar Valadez, who has lived in D5 for over 20 years.

Recently FFFF has been bombarded with spam comments all of which came from Tony Castro himself. I took out the trash, but not before salvaging this little gobbet of that is quite revealing: a statement that Castro was approached by one Ajay Mohan:

This snippet has the ring of truth. There is an Ajay Mohan and he is the director of the OC Democrat Party. Here he is:

Now why would Mr. Mohan recruit an unknown, broke, Tony Castro to run against the incumbent who has the endorsement of Party Central? The answer is, unfortunately, crystal clear: to take votes away from Oscar Valadez. This dirty little trick is as old as elections themselves, of course, but to see the Dems do it to working class Latinos betrays a special sort of cynical mindset.

Which brings us to the OC Dem Party Chairperson, Ada Briceno, a Latina unionista who apparently has decided to bamboozle La Raza in support of the egregious Zahra – who has supported dope stores near schools, who battered a Latina woman, and who voted to give away a public park in the barrio to a private events center/caterer.

August 23, 2022August 23, 2022Ahmad Zahra

Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?

by Mr. Peabody14 Comments

Here’s some Tuesday photo fun.

Apparently, Ahmad Zahra held some sort of meet and greet (I’ll talk to anyone, but I won’t tell them the truth) Sunday morn, behind a donut store.

There to greet him were some protesters who seem to be angry that he voted several times to allow marijuana dispensaries within 100 feet of homes and schools – at the behest of emissaries from the Long Beach weed store cartel.

Now, that’s not very good, is it.

August 3, 2022August 3, 2022Ahmad Zahra

Did Zahra Spy on His Victim?

by Mr. Peabody5 Comments

Word from a well-placed source suggests that back in 2020 after being arrested and charged with battery and vandalism perpetrated against a woman named Monica F., Fullerton City Councilman Ahmad Zahra, through his Irvine attorney, hired a P.I. to investigate his “alleged” victim.

Now why would anybody do that?

I leave it to readers to draw their own inferences from this.

The issue of whether Zahra was “exonerated” as he exclaimed publicly, and that he and mom were the real victims; or whether he pled guilty to get his dirty slate wiped clean remains in doubt. He has never provided any evidence from the District Attorney Todd Spitzer that charges against him were dropped.

Whatever the case, the broader story is not going to go away, and in fact is likely going to become a focus of opponents in this fall’s City Council election.

May 8, 2022May 9, 2022Boohooism

MEET DIRTY DOUG

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy32 Comments

FFFF has squirted some cyber-ink on the missus, so I thought we ought to start spending a bit of time with Pilferin’ Paulette’s hubby, the egregious Doug “Bud” Chaffee.”

This piece was recently sent out by Chaffee’s OC Board of Supervisor challenger, Sunny Park of Buena Park.

The swine were offended by the comparison…

The reference here is to an early foray of the Chaffee Crime Family into “affordable” housing, the subsidized sort that always costs so much more than the regular kind. Of course this was thirty years ago and Chaffee has a much longer list of grifts large and small, including selling out the advocates of preserving the West Coyote Hills, creating phony districts in Fullerton, supporting overbuilt prison, I mean apartment blocks with inadequate parking, and of course spending all his time failing to reform the Fullerton Police Department.

On the Board of Supervisors Chaffee has distinguished himself by hiding COVID information from the public, overseeing the public humiliation and politicization of the Health Care Agency, and being a lackey for the misfeasance of his fellow board member, Andrew Do. And the funniest thing of all is that he, as Chairman of the Commission to End Homelessness, had to confess to reporters that he didn’t know what the Commission does.

Putting politician’s faces on animals has always struck me as desperate and sort of silly, persuasion-wise. But Sunny is running against an incumbent (and recumbent) Democrat and needs to syphon enough votes to 1) at least come in second; and, 2) keep Bud from reaching the magic 50%+1 number thereby forcing a runoff in November. Will this help?

May 4, 2022May 4, 2022Carpetbaggery

Paulette Marshall Lands in Box

by Joe Sipowicz10 Comments

Although the thought of discovering Paulette Marshall in your mailbox might seem a little unsettling, worry not. For it is only her campaign propaganda. A vigilant Friend forwarded the piece in question.

This is so funny because everybody in Fullerton knows that Ms. Paulette has never “led” anything. She is the consummate joiner, padding her service resume with memberships in this or that group started and carried on by others. She tried to be a leader in Fullerton by faking an address in a district that she didn’t live in. She insinuated herself into all sorts of photo-ops where she didn’t belong, courtesy of her equally creepy spouse Doug “Bud” Chaffee.

Paulette attacks the guy who beat her like a drum the last time around, Tim Shaw, who was made to resign from the OC Board of Education to avoid a costly lawsuit brought by a Chaffee surrogate and undoubtedly paid for by the Chaffee Crime family. Shaw didn’t resign in shame and no doubt feels none. Sort of like how Paulette doesn’t feel any shame as a caught and convicted criminal.

Oh, no. The purple Joker pantsuit again!

We see that Paulette is “endorsed by OC teachers” although she doesn’t care to inform us which ones those might be. Another posed picture shows Paulette engaging exited youngsters, but I really have to wonder if this picture wasn’t staged during her mandatory community service following her guilty plea bargain.

And finally, Paulette shares more staged images that only a fool would mistake for genuine support or personal experience.

Paulette uses a freakin’ adding machine? How 20th Century.

As my uncle Cas always said, no matter how you slice it it’s still baloney. So here’s the image by which we will always remember Paulette – caught in the act of committing a crime.

Paulette Stolen Sign — Crime doesn’t always pay in Fullerton…

Category: Fullerton BooHoo

Fullerton’s Fiscal Ship About to Take on Water. Nobody Has a Clue What to Do