Fullerton City Council Archives - Page 29 of 78 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

November 29, 2019December 1, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Can We Finally Say Good Riddance to Dick Jones?

Word has seeped out from the once hermetically sealed walls of City Hall that we may not have Richard “Dick” Jones, Esq. to kick around much longer. It would seem, if the rumors are true, that Good Ol’ Dick has had enough of screwing the taxpayers of Fullerton with his pettifogging, self-serving legal advice and is “retiring” with all of his ill-gotten spoils.

Well, possibly not all his spoils, because he must believe his “I Can’t Believe Its A Law Firm” will have some residual value after Mudslide oozes off.

Now I don’t know about you, Friends, but a collection of lawyers that includes Kimberly Barlow and Gregory Roosevelt Palmer doesn’t seem like it could be worth very much to me; but Jones is supposedly pitching the continued services of his collection of miscreants, so he must plan on keeping his name on the letterhead and probably receiving revenue thereby.

Will our city councilcreatures keep this gang on retainer? After the abysmal performance of Jones in the pas it’s hard to imagine anybody wanting them around, at all. Of course this is the same gaggle that has kept Jones, et al., on the clock for over twenty years – and that’s a lot of bungling and cover-ups.

November 26, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Meanwhile, Back @ The Ranch – Part 3

by Mr. Peabody14 Comments

dick-jones — Mudslide and Mayer. Staying awake long enough to sign the invoice…

Fighting your own incompetent and belligerent government can be distracting. And so rather than be distracted, I’ve been playing catch-up with some more of the doings of our idiocracy since the City’s legal lizards tried to stomp on our 1st Amendment rights.

Back on October 1, our esteemed council took on the business of people camping out in their cars. Naturally, the problem needed to be institutionalized, and institutionalized it was – by giving the Illumination Foundation a contract up to $100,000 to run a site-specific car and RV park. FFFF correspondent T-REX covered the story, here.

With their usual political courage, the council directed that their City Manager, Ken Domer, could decide the location and thereby let a bureaucrat insulate them from the repercussions of their own decision.

Now that location is known – the alley and public parking between the historic Western marketing Building and the Elephant Packing House, a building on the National Register of Historic Places.

Well, fine, say I. This site is directly adjacent to the crown jewel of Fullerton’s Failures, the so-called Union Pacific Park, or, as it is charmingly referred to by neighbors, The Poison Park. it seems right and proper that the City deposit one failure next to another, which is already situated across Harbor Boulevard from one of Fullerton’s first Redevelopment boondoggles, the Allen Hotel eyesore.

And stay tuned for episode 4, in which the Poison Park returns to the agenda, and the Fullerton City Council steps on its own weenie again.

November 22, 2019November 22, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Meanwhile, Back @ the Ranch – Part 2

by Mr. Peabody39 Comments

You pay the mortgage, we live in the palace…

When a government sues its own citizens you have the spectacle of a taxpayer having to pay for for his defense and pay for the legal attack upon him. And what a sad, Kafkaesque sight it is.

Another disgusting passion play is when governments use your money to try to propagandize you for their scheme to take more of your money.

And so very recently the Fullerton City Manager Ken Domer paid to survey the local gentry about the state of the city.

Dear Resident:

The City of Fullerton has hired an independent public opinion research company to conduct a public opinion survey to obtain feedback on key issues facing the City and identify residents’ priorities.

Thank you for participating in this important research. Please click here to take the survey or copy and paste the link below into your web browser.

https://opinions-survey.com/index.php/survey/index/sid/242328/newtest/Y/lang/en/token/3065BT818751

Your participation and responses to this survey will be completely confidential. The identity of individual respondents and their individual answers to survey questions will not be shared with City staff or officials.

Please do not forward the survey link to others or share it to social media as it is personalized for each recipient of this invitation to ensure that the survey link will only work once.

Sincerely,

Kenneth A. Domer
City Manager
City of Fullerton

It’s a good thing the City has so much money to play with.

Lo and Behold! The survey is nothing other than:

An attempt to get you to prioritize the various messes the politician and bureaucrats have created, and,
Ignore the biggest problem – a vastly expensive, often criminal, and completely irredeemable police department; and,
Subtly offer a 1% sales tax as a way to fix the problems; and,
Failing that, howdja feel about a .75% sales tax? And,
Gather that prioritization information you gave them to fashion their propaganda campaign for the inevitable tax.

The heart of the City celebrates another impending victory…

My advice is to ignore the survey except for amusement purposes and remember that we will have school district bond proposals on the ballot in 2020 as the insatiable maws of local government takes ever more and returns ever less.

November 22, 2019November 22, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Fullerton v. FFFF – New Judge, New Court Dates

by Joshua14 Comments

OC Superior Court in Santa Ana

Things just keep on moving in the legal battles between us and Fullerton.

Yesterday the Hon. Judge Lee ruled that our two cases, Joshua Ferguson v. Fullerton and Fullerton v. FFFF, Joshua Ferguson, et al are related in response to our request for such a ruling.

As such we will no longer be gracing Judge Lee’s courtroom in Department C31 on 27 February 2019.

Currently we have a Status Conference regarding the City suing us on 12 Dec & a Case Management Conference on my Writ of Mandate case on 16 Dec in front of the Hon. Judge James Crandall in Department C33.

OC Superior Court Related Cases Dec2019

For context we argued, and the city opposed, the point that these two cases are related owing to them involving the same parties and general facts:

“[T]he two actions are based on similar claims, arise from the same transactions and events, and require the determination of substantially identical questions of law and fact. The CPRA lawsuit alleges that the City has improperly withheld records it claims are confidential or exempt from disclosure. The City’s lawsuit claims that in the process of responding to Defendants’ CPRA requests, it placed confidential or exempt information on its website, www.cityoffullerton.com/outbox. In both cases, the City has the burden to show that the documents are confidential.”

We’re of the opinion that the city’s case against myself and this blog is retaliatory owing to the fact that the city waited months to file their case and only did so AFTER I filed my Public Records lawsuit.

The city claims they waited to “secure their network” which is utter nonsense considering their own experts, in their own declaration, stated that the city needed approximately 30 days for the company Glass Box to fix their network (not Dropbox) vulnerability. Yet the city sent their original Cease & Desist email on 14 June, their letter to our attorney Kelly Aviles on 17 July and then they waited an additional 99 days to file their lawsuit against us on 24 Oct.

That’s a lot more than the 30 days recommended by Glass Box and sure is convenient timing. It’s even more convenient that the City had to vote “again” on 19 November “in an effort to clarify any Brown Act violations” when they refused to report out about their alleged vote back in September that Whitaker denies even took place.

I will be very surprised it the city does not attempt to appeal this decision to link the cases.

November 22, 2019November 22, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Meanwhile, Back @ the Ranch – Part 1

by Mr. Peabody10 Comments

Don’t let the size fool you. This one’s mean…

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.

November 19, 2019November 19, 2019Behind Closed Doors

Who’s Full of it? Whitaker or the City Attorney?

by Joshua11 Comments

Bruce Whitaker Voice of OC

We’ve made it onto the Voice of OC again. The newest story [HERE] revolves around a fundamental problem with government secrecy – you never know who’s telling the truth after something nefarious happens.

According to City Attorney The Other Dick Jones™, the City Council voted in closed session back on 17 September to sue us for allegedly clicking links.

Council Member Bruce Whitaker, mind you, claims that no such vote happened back in September.

Only one of them can be telling the truth and with history as our guide we know where to place our bets.

To bolster their claims of a vote in September the City “cured” their illegal Brown Act violation two weeks ago on 05 November by allegedly re-voting to sue us 4-1 (Whitaker dissenting). But did they ever actually vote back in September or is that just a ruse being cooked up to make their case against us look less retaliatory?

November 19, 2019November 19, 2019Chronic Failure

Fullerton Stopped Us From Publishing Public Records

by Joshua7 Comments

OCR- Top of the Fold

Fullerton is headed back to court tomorrow to try and fix what it claims is a “clerical error” in their Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against us here at FFFF. The TRO that’s already in front of the Court of Appeals and has mostly been stayed. The meat here is that the City Attorney did not incorporate into the TRO the list of files we’re alleged to have “hacked” by clicking links the city gave out to the world.

To try and fix their mistake, the City’s attorneys are running back to court to get the TRO fixed. This is all a part of their quest to search our digital lives to see if we have files they themselves admit they put on the internet.

For those just catching up, the core of the city’s illegal SLAPP case is that the public can only access information on the City’s website that the City has sent you a link and express permission to access/download.

This is preposterous and amounts to me calling you, dear reader, a “thief” and “hacker” if you click the “Contact” link on this page without me giving you express permission to click it despite me inviting you onto this page. This idiocy, if allowed to stand in court, will break the internet as we know it.

But in true Fullerton fashion it gets better.

You see, when the city was rushing to stomp on our First Amendment rights (despite Jan Flory expecting that to get struck down and Bruce Whitaker claiming there was no vote to do so at all), they couldn’t even be bothered to check their work. This is the list of files in question according to the City and the files we were restrained (gagged) from publishing or sharing:

TROed Public Records

Those red arrows are files that the City claims are public records disclosed as part of records requests according to the declaration of Mea Klein. You can likely spot other obvious public records on your own.

In other words – the city got a court to stop us from publishing and sharing records they themselves claim are public. Files the clerk’s office released to members of the public.

Let us contrast that with the City’s argument where they claim we should have known which files/folders on the city’s Dropbox account were public versus private before allegedly accessing anything. The City Attorney, as evidenced by this exhibit of their own creation, can’t discern public from allegedly private files. They not only admit to co-mingling files they have a legal duty to keep confidential with documents they have a legal duty to share with the public but they did it again in their TRO against us.

Allow me to repeat this very important point:

At the behest of our City Council, the City Attorney actually convinced a court to restrain us from publishing and sharing things they themselves admit are public records.

One might expect a little more due diligence when working to step on the First Amendment. We’ll see what the judge says tomorrow regarding this TRO update and we’ll keep you posted as this case continues.

November 17, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Jan Flory Knowingly Voted Against the 1st Amendment

by Joshua21 Comments

JanFlory-Official

It’s not often that a sitting politician admits to violating the rights of the people but we’re seeing a lot of firsts here in Fullerton lately and the issue of ethics is no different.

Let us start by reminding the class that councilwoman Jan Flory is only currently on council because Ahmad Zahra sold out in record time and put her there. Despite Zahra’s peacocking and preening as a man of ethics and great concern for the Constitution and voting rights – he showed us early on that he’s an empty suit.

Now in an amusing twist of events it turns out that not only did Zahra and the council vote to kick our 1st Amendment rights in the teeth – his appointee Flory knew that what they were doing wasn’t going to hold up in the courts.

In a recent article [HERE] in the Voice of OC, Councilwoman Jan Flory said the following (emphasis added):

Councilwoman Jan Flory said while she respects the First Amendment, the privacy of city employees is also at stake. Like Whitaker, she said she couldn’t speak about the legal advice given to the Council during closed session.

“I think that First Amendment rights trump everything else, but I believe that Kim Barlow has done a good job in that the city also wants to protect Mr. Ferguson’s First Amendment rights,” said Flory in a Nov. 8 phone interview.

She said the First Amendment isn’t the core issue.

“That’s not what’s at issue here. What’s at issue is he (Ferguson) obtained records that are private,” Flory said. “Or have some implications concerning the confidentiality of our city employees as well as members of the public.”

Flory also expected the publication gag order to get blocked, at least temporarily, she said.

“Was I shocked by it? No, not at all,” Flory said.

So Jan Flory, as a lawyer, expected the gag order to get blocked?

On what grounds could it possibly be blocked? On 1st Amendment grounds, perhaps?

Why? Because the gag order against publishing was and is an illegal prior restraint against the 1st Amendment and as a lawyer Jan Flory might be familiar with this particular point.

Now according to The Other Dick Jones™ at the last council meeting the entire council, Flory included, voted for this 1st Amendment violating gag order back in September despite Flory expecting it to be shot down.

There you have it folks.

Jan Flory “thinks that First Amendment rights trump everything else” but that didn’t stop her from voting to put the boot of government on the throat of OUR 1st Amendment rights when it suited the CYA needs of the city.

While fully expecting the courts to slap the city’s illegal SLAPP lawsuit/TRO – she voted against the 1st Amendment on 17 September 2019 and then did it again on 05 November 2019. I’m sorry Jan, but your postulating about the importance of the 1st Amendment is meaningless when you yourself voted against Freedom of the Press not once but twice.

You care about the 1st Amendment?

SureJan

November 12, 2019September 9, 2020Chronic Failure

Fullerton Resident Calls Out City’s Mammoth Cockup

by Lonnie Machin12 Comments

This women took the Fullerton City Council to task for their “mammoth cockup” at the last council meeting.

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019Behind Closed Doors

John Oliver on Standing Up to Bullies with Lawyers

by The Fish13 Comments

We invite you to review HBO’s Last Week Tonight’s overview of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP Suits). We all have a responsibility to stand up to bullies who write checks to lawyers to keep critics silent. We do it for our Republic, we do it for our neighbors, and we do it for our families. Mr. Oliver outlines what happens when we don’t.

We’re currently over halfway through our $10,000 goal to support the Ferguson Family. If you have the means, please support this blog’s efforts to support a family that’s doing more than their fair share to stand up to the government boot squashing your right to know, your right to criticize, and your right to a free and independent press.

While we lack the means for a musical production, we invite anyone who’d like to volunteer to join the “Eat Shit, Dick” dance troupe to contact us immediately. We have good work to do.