Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Current Fullerton City Council members are Don Bankhead, Pam Keller, Sharon Quirk, Dick Jones and Shawn Nelson.
There is a conga line of eccentric bloviators who keep showing up at Fullerton City Council meetings to berate the so-called “council majority.” Some of them are quite abusive and accusatory. Some then try, or pretend to try, to get the objects of their disapprobation to do something for them. Any attaching tissue to reality seems to be non-existent.
Who is your favorite?
That Ahmad Zahra sure puts on a show for his cult followers. During Tuesday’s “council communications” he went on a pathetic 11 minute emotional roller coaster ride, a real self-pity party that was full of his special brand of histrionics – gestures, knowing nods, glances at who knows who, dramatic pauses, pained looks, and near-tears expressions.
Good Lord, what a valediction! Departing hero, victim, saint, champion of the downtrodden and upholder of truth and justice.
Of course it was a damn waste of everybody’s time. But when you’re a self-aggrandizing narcissist that’s the last thing to worry about. In fact, your speech is just the capper to a long conga line of oddball public commenters you have stirred up to attack your political enemies. And he still has a whole year to keep repeating the performance.
Meantime, the Kennedy Sisters who run the pretend news outlet Fullerton Observer still haven’t mentioned Zahra’s decision not to run for re-election. You would think Sanka and Sharon Kennedy would fall all over themselves to shower sickly sweet encomiums upon the object of their infatuation. But no. The proverbial deafening silence.
Zahra put out his statement over two weeks ago and there has been no mention on the Observer site of Zahra’s departure at the end of 2026. We know that the Observer operation is incompetent and completely biased, but this neglect has got to be deliberate. Why?
It’s been speculated, and with some justification, that the Sisters are waiting until the Democrat Machine can find and endorse a replacement for Zahra; and that once all the endorsements are locked up and any District 5 Dem rivals swept aside, all will be revealed and the anointed one revealed to hallelujahs and hosannas.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. What difference does it make to let Fullerton Boohoo know Zahra’s story – even the implications? That might even look like sort of real journalism.
But hey, these are the same dummies who aided and abetted Scott Markowitz in 2024. Maybe they really believe they need to keep the cat in the bag while they find another Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo to roll out.
The conversation at tonight’s Fullerton City Council meeting will turn to public property leases in Downtown Fullerton. A few years ago the Council raised rates. The jump was high – around 90% – but the City hadn’t increased rents for 10 years so the real increase over time was about 9% a year. Add the three succeeding years and it’s 7.7% per annum. That’s still high, but that’s what the Council approved, most notably the self-styled “pro business” Councilman, Ahmad Zahra.
The matter is now controversial because one restaurant occupying City space, Les Amis, run by the Montecristo clan, is using the 2022 rent hike as justification for their refusal to pay rent for years – dating back to 2011. They don’t bother explaining to their dupes all the years they stiffed their landlord (us) rent; and they never mention all the times they encroached on City property without permit or agreement. The City government bent way over backwards to accommodate Les Amis, who have shown very little gratitude for the latitude they were given for a decade and a half. Quite the contrary.
Apropos of the rent issue, one of the other complaints from the grand bruit Les Amis claque is that that one patio in particular pays no rent – the Santa Fe Café, run by Salma Bushala-Hamud.
First it should be mentioned that the patio in question is included in the Bushala Brothers, Inc.’s lease at the depot. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the area designated as 9 in the site plan is included in BBIs master lease with the City and is thus included in the entire lease. Here’s the leasehold plan:
Even if this weren’t the case, BBI has obviously decided to let the public occupy shade covered tables and chairs even if they don’t patronize the café. All you have to do is look at the people sitting in the area. Almost none of them are café patrons.
This policy is indicated by an actual sign that lets the public know they can sit there, gratis, a decent and civilized gesture.
But back to the meeting. I hope the item starts out with a reminder from Mayor Jung and the City Attorney to the predictably frothed up Les Amis amigos who show up all the facts of the situation; to relate the years of skipped rent, the tens of thousands in overdue amounts, and the illegal encroachments; to let them know they’re being played by the Noaccounts of Montecristo and the rank-and-file of Ahmad Zahra’s Fullerton Boohoo stooges who demand a victim-of-the-week to weep for.
Back in March 2025 the Fullerton City Council decided to fire the City’s ambulance contractor and take the responsibility in-house. Why? Well, naturally there’s the official story, which is that there will be some sort of saving, which is nonsense, since it means adding 20 new public employees on the payroll, and was all based on wishful thinking. So instead of shopping out the paramedic business like Placentia did, Fullerton did the opposite, requiring acquisition of ambulance rolling stock and the various other appurtenances like gurneys, etc.
On this Tuesday’s Council meeting Agenda Item #10 proposes a payment plan for this nonsense. Guess what? It looks desperate. City staff is still proposing to finance the acquisition of all the ambulance stuff through acquiring debt, via a master agreement with Bank of America to buy City bonds at a coupon rate of 3.5%, and then use the proceeds to lease ambulances.
Yes, you read that right. We’re paying for Fire Department empire creation with $2,000,000 credit. The capital repayment and interest on the bonds would amount to $2,175,000 by the time the last bond matures in November 2031. And let’s not forget the dough paid to bond counsel and financial consultants (UFI) who are selling this deal. And oh, yeah, let’s consider there’s now insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc., of vehicles owned by the lessor (BofA), which was all glossed over last April 1st, as was the cost of financing which is over $200,000.
The single Agenda Item #10 staff report sentence justifying the financing is laconic, and notable for what it doesn’t say; that the City still plans to finance the purchase orders for this equipment supposedly issued in April. Here’s all we are told:
“Urban Futures, Inc. (UFI), the City financial advisor, and staff determined private placement financing offers the most beneficial and cost-effective solution for the City.
But there is no explanation why. None at all. Zip. Is the City borrowing $2,000,000 at a lower interest rate that it is making in an investment pool? Who knows? The City Council and the public aren’t informed, just as they weren’t informed when financing was proposed back in April.
The fun aspect of this is that the lease of these ambulances would be rent-to-own, a little con – making the credit-risk-uninformed think they are getting something great. I mean, who doesn’t want to own stuff, right? What good is a owning a six year old old ambulance? I don’t know, but my guess is they depreciate really fast. Maybe even faster than rent-to-own toasters.
I really don’t know what to say about this completely unnecessary move. If the Council had just voted no on the unsolicited plan from the FFD we wouldn’t be looking at having to cover any loan vig at all. Neither the Councilmembers who voted for this – Zahra, Charles, Jung and Valencia had much if anything to say about this bond/lease back in April.
Of course Zahra and Charles don’t give a rat’s ass about wasting money, especially when they script some sort of feel-good performance. Hopefully, Jung and Valencia will change their minds about this resistible offer, but I’m not optimistic. Maybe Dunlap can talk some sense into them.
With Fullerton tottering on the edge of financial meltdown the Council’s behavior towards the fire department (and its union employees) has been highly irresponsible. In October they accepted a one-time FEMA grant to hire a platoon of new “fire fighters” that we will become completely responsible for in 3 three short years, pensions and all.
No, I’m not optimistic at all. The financial leveraging is bound to be used as a pretext to pass a sales tax increase next year. And what if that fails?
Is it true. When his lips are moving he’s generally lying, as the saying goes.
It was all about “serving,” mostly serving himself, of course. Never forget: his second big decision was to get himself appointed to the lucrative OCWD board in exchange for appointing Jan Flory to the City Council in 2019; his first big decision had been to call for a replacement election.
“Community-driven representation” means stirring up a handful of uninformed people to harangue honest council members and bully them into submission on a useless $2,300,000 trail through a blighted industrial area.
Is this a true statement or only a feint? Is it a mechanism to win sympathy for a mayoral appointment on December 16th? The latter certainly isn’t going to happen any way you slice it. Or is this a realization that his self-serving ego leap is over and that he landed in the sand some time ago?
Right after the City Council votes to ban nitrous oxide in Fullerton, they will discuss the creation of an ad hoc (that’s Latin, darlin’) committee of two councilmembers to work with staff to develop sales tax ballot measure language. It’s item #20 on your scorecard.
The tax idea was floated by an earlier ad hoc committee, the so-called Sustainable Budget Committee, or something suchlike. That committee ultimately decided to recommend to limit the parameters of the tax to two different special half-cent sales taxes, one for infrastructure and one for our old friend “public safety.” It was probably reasoned that they would get more support than a general sales tax, but they need a two-thirds vote of approval for a special tax – a tough nut to crack.
Of course, a General Tax increase only needs a 50%+1 threshold to pass. But you need a council super- majority – 4 votes – for that to get on a ballot, and that seems highly unlikely.
It’s been painful to watch this drawn out Kabuki and it seems as it if will go on at least until the deadline for getting on next year’s ballot. Fortunately there is little chance that Mayor Fred Jung will let the obnoxious and incompetent spendthrift “doctors” Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles anywhere near this language-developing process.
We have all seen the way that these government-written ballot measures twist language and logic to try to fool the public to approve them. The examples are so plentiful they hardly need enumerating. Remember the ill-fated Measure S in Fullerton? Hoo Boy was that some seriously misleading bullshit. Hopefully, Jung can require a simple and honest text without the usual treacle.
My cynical side wonders how much of the infrastructure tax language will actually include funding for the cops and financial bailout for the idiotic firefighter-union-members-as-ambulance-drivers decision, or FEMA FFD expansion grant nonsense. Anyway you cut it you want those well-funded unions on board for the inevitable campaign PR campaign.
Fullerton Boohoo and the Kennedy Sisters will be crying out loudly that the fix is in by their new bogeyman – the evil Bushala Bloc – and that any ballot measure language will be crafted to fail without the steady guidance of our in-house council “intellectuals.” Tender young sprout Elijah will demand TRANSPARENCY. They may even still squawk about the need for a General Sales Tax increase, after all. But I think that Good Ship Lollipop has sailed.
Has that ship sailed? I wonder.
On Tuesday’s Fullerton City Council meeting staff is proposing to spend $1,400,000 million dollars on four vehicles. The items are all on the “consent calendar” meaning they’ll probably be approved unanimously and no questions asked. And that’s a shame.
The Item #9 is to spend $116,000 to fix a fire engine that was allegedly struck by a careless motorist as it left a station. The front end was damaged. While the staff report is very quick to absolve the FFD of any fault, there is also no mention of an insurance payout from the motorist. Was he or she insured? If there is a payout where will that money go?
One of the key things to understand about these firefighting machines is that they are effectively proprietary. The custom vehicle came turnkey to Fullerton from the Oshkosh Corporation of Appleton WI, who owns the builder – Pierce Manufacturing. But when you need a repair, where ya gonna go? To a Pierce approved repair shop, that’s where. In this case ReNewell Fleet Services, out Ontario way.
Item #10 is purchase of a new Compressed Natural Gas Crew truck from CTEC of Downey. Price tag? $425,000. It seems that poor old CNG Crew Truck Unit No. 551C is at the end of its service life. This truck is used for water system fixit and has a backhoe on the back – which seems like the place you would want to put it. The staff report is pretty odd, requesting the council to forgo a competitive bid process since CTEC was the only “informal” responder with a truck that fit the bill. No mention of a sole source documentation. Zip. The sales tax we pay on this item alone is a rather shocking $30,000. We may console ourselves that $5000 of that tax will go into our own General Fund.
One wonders if this acquisition isn’t akin to buying a custom fire engine in Wisconsin.
Why the Water Fund doesn’t pay for this directly points to an ongoing problem of the City comingling City expenses with those of the Water Fund, a fund that should be independent and transparent and hasn’t been for over 50 years I’m told.
Item #12 is a whopper – $831,000 to buy a couple of 15′ dump trucks at $415,000 apiece, from the good folks at PB Loader Company in Fresno, via a middleman, Sourcewell, who gets government agencies a discount through a cooperative purchasing contract.
Alas, the two aged dump trucks proposed for replacement, Unit Number 562B and 565C, have also “reached the end of their reliable service life.” Of course these rigs are basically design-build vehicles which is why they are so damned expensive, and one wonders aloud if Fullerton couldn’t get 4 or 5 dump trucks ready-made for less.
Anyway, we are informed that “These trucks are critical to maintaining the City’s infrastructure and supporting rapid response during storm events, road failures, and water or sewer emergencies.” Hmm. And by the way, worry not. The money has already been budgeted in the Equipment Replacement Fund. There is no mention of what happens to the existing vehicles after they are replaced which is always a good question to ask.
Sales tax for our new super dumps? $60,000. So we get to keep about ten grand of that.
Sweet flower Elijah Manassero has just lost his temper. Did he miss his midday nap? Does he have a full diaper? Who can say? What I do know is that he has scribbled another of his diatribes for the Fullerton Observer Sisters, piling on their desperate narrative that the owners of Les Amis are victims of some sort of conspiracy in City Hall.
The City finally removed Les Amis stuff from City property a few weeks ago after the aforesaid business spent a decade and a half dodging rent, stalling, trying to weasel out of signed agreements and of course, encroaching onto public space without permit or agreement on several occasions.
The defenders of the indefensible are trying to ignore all the facts of the Les Amis history of scofflawry, and pretend that the substantial 2022 rent increases by the City were insufferable, and hence non-payment justified. And anything that happened before this gossamer pretext is wished into Fullerton Boohoo’s collective cornfield.
Tender fleur Elijah calls his article a “history,” but conveniently omits most of Les Amis‘ real histoire, and like a typical Observer reporter shares unsubstantiated conversations related to him by Ms. Jinan Montecristo – the alleged victim in all this – as gospel. Young pup Elijah mentions nothing before 2022, of course, and even Les Amis recent spotty history of non-payment goes unmentioned.
Fragile and fresh Elijah has tried to speak with nobody inside of City Hall to get the true litany of Les Amis bad behavior. That would be uncomfortable. He accepts as true what he has been told by the noaccounts of Montecristo without reservation. Did he get any facts from Mayor Fred Jung about the removal of the Les Amis detritus? Nope. Might he have been told that the upcoming discussion of lease rates in the future has nothing to do with lease obligations in the past and due now? Of course. Did he he inquire about the fact that maybe the removal of the stuff happened at 6:30 am so as not to block the adjacent alleyway during business hours? No. That would interfere with the conspiracy narrative.
Since the young fleur Manassero visits and cites this blog all the time, he knows very well that his mentor and manipulator, Ahmad Zahra, voted to implement the 2022 rates; and he knows that the Montecristo clan said nothing about it at the June 21, 2022 public hearing. He has obviously decided that these facts aren’t necessary to convey his nonsensical narrative. Why clutter up your prosaic propaganda with embarrassing information?
And why should Fullerton expect anything resembling honesty, integrity, or basic journalistic ethics from The Fullerton Observers and its proprietors – the Kennedy Sister, Sharon and Sitka.
On Tuesday the Fullerton City Council killed a plan by Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles to dole out $200,000 to the victims of Immigration and Custom Enforcement depredations.
The item was “tabled,” meaning it isn’t coming back. Fullerton does this because two councilmembers can keep bringing something back ad infinitum unless a majority makes a positive vote that it not come back. Fred Jung, Jamie Valencia and Nick Dunlap voted in the affirmative.
The idea itself, as with most squishy-feely liberal brainstorms, was based on the supposition that the people of Fullerton should pay for legal help and “basic necessities” i.e. food, rent, etc., for people harassed by ICE – even and especially undocumented immigrants, i.e. Illegal aliens.
The idea was to toss the money into the caring hands of non-profit entities who would then distribute the largesse, somehow, somewhere, to somebody. Deduct administrative overhead all around. The opportunity for waste, even if the cause were just and appropriate, should be obvious to anybody with sense.
Sense. Therein lay a problem.
As usual with this sort of thing, the council chamber was packed with pro-government giveaway types, many from outside Fullerton – people who believe it is the taxpayers job to subsidize their charitable impulses. This attendance will be misrepresented by the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters and other boohoos, of course, as “the People” want this or that; or “the People have spoken;” or “listen to the People;” or to be more precise “Fred Jung failed to listen to the People.”
What the majority of people in Fullerton really think about this Berkeleyesque scheme isn’t known, but I bet eight or nine in ten would be against jumping this issue up to first in line.
The discussion did give opportunity for a budget discussion that proved more cloudy that clear. Shana Charles seemed to think she had discovered a vein of gold somewhere in the give-and-take, but of course didn’t have a clue about what she had heard. To her and her playmate, Zahra, $200,000 is just a drop in the proverbial bucket and of no real concern.
The funnest part of the evening came when the serial liar Zahra told his own immigration tale of hardship getting a green card.
This is fabulously disingenuous because we all know now that he got his green card through marriage fraud with one Michele Salmon, an Arkansas woman whom he married, then quickly abandoned in Little Rock as he went to pursue his Hollywood Dream. FFFF will be sharing a video clip of this newest chapter in Zahra’s chameleon-like origin story, when the City puts it on online.
The whole scenario was another one of those Zahra/Charles performative, made-for-effect gatherings to promote themselves, and no doubt to try to make the council majority look bad. That’s a poor political strategy. It’s going to backfire badly on Zahra, if he decides he still needs a councilman’s income after 2026; and just as disastrous for Shana Charles who has already announced her continuing “journey.”
“Charles Voted to give $200,000 to Illegal Aliens.” And so on.
At last night’s City Council meeting, “Doctor” Ahmad Zahra, the Dissimulator of Damascus, informed the packed audience the he had written an opinion piece in the Fullerton Observer. The thrust of the article he said, was to point out the disparity in park spending in south Fullerton when compared to the north.
I was curious to see what Zahra had written, knowing as I do his penchant for plagiarism in the Observer, and his special brand of hand-wringing. I wondered if it might be AI written as has appeared to be the case before. So I found the online copy of the print edition.
Naturally the first thing Zahra does to establish his position is to tell a bald-faced lie. People in the neighborhood have been waiting 20 years, he bemoaned, for the Union Pacific Park to “finally” be opened! One poor mom could become a grandmother waiting for the park to open! The shame! Zahra was peddling the same false history bullshit as his pal Skiaka Kennedy.
Of course Zahra’s implication is that the closed park symbolizes profound unfairness, proving bias against south Fullerton, presumably by white City Councils from north Fullerton (not so subtle racism and hideous classism would be the obvious cause, Zahra hoped, to the Latino-packed audience). That’s the official Fullerton Boohoo narrative.
The problem is that this weeping about Union Pacific Park is completely untrue, and the history of the park, while demonstrating gross incompetence by City staff and councils, in no way shows an anti-south Fullerton bias. Actually, just the opposite.
Here’s the truth: the park had been opened back in the early 2000s at a cost of several million bucks to the public – all of Fullerton’s public. In a year or two part of the park was fenced off due to soil contamination – but a small part of the western end. The balance of the park remained wide open to the public and stayed open for ten years or so. Then the park was closed by Fullerton’s City Manager, and former Parks and Rec Director, Joe Felz.
Why?
Because the Union Pacific Park had become a haven for borrachos, gang members and drug addicts. The City finally put up a fence around the whole damn thing. The small toilet building was a magnet for illicit activity; it was closed, then demolished. Homeless started to haunt the walkways and build wickiups against the fence. No City Council ever voted on this closure, by the way. A public explanation would be too damn damning. It has been painfully obvious that there never should have been a park there in the first place, and there wouldn’t have been except for the ego of the then Parks Director and lots of Redevelopment play money.
The sad truth is that nothing has changed to make the new version of the Union Pacific Park successful. All of the same socio-economic, criminal, and drug abuse issues still exist. Zahra will not be in office after next November’s election, but the legacy of his foolish, patronizing make-work projects – the Trail to Nowhere and the Union Pacific Park – will be notorious to anybody willing to look at the topic honestly.
Alas, honesty is not a commodity in high demand in the world of uber-liberal politics, made manifest locally in the precincts of Fullerton BooHoo. Here, governance, if you want to call it that, is based on seeking out, and appearing sensitive to the plight of some victim or other, some “underserved” person or class, whether they want that solicitude or not. The more you spend, the more you appear to care, even if the money is utterly wasted, as were the millions spent acquiring and building the first Union Pacific Park.