City and County Collaborate on $25 Million Bribery Plan

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.

Dying to Move Out of Fullerton

We received this letter from a resident who is ready to leave Fullerton after years of struggling with the city over disparate code enforcement, including yet another example of the city turning a blind eye towards an ongoing public nuisance caused by amplified outdoor music.

Fullerton is actually my hometown, and it was pretty decent back when I lived here. Eight years ago, my parents and I decided to move back to the City of Fullerton, from Buena Park. It was the beginning of the real estate boom and we got our house on the west side of Fullerton for a decent price. It was a nice neighborhood then, and still is at times. But, We’ve grown out of love for the City of Fullerton. It is no longer a place where my parents can retire in their modest lifestyle. We didn’t know that this little corner of Fullerton was just a throw away section back then. To us, it seemed like a place that had some potential for people who wanted to add the the community by renovating their homes, (as some have), and live quietly.

I have watched the neighborhood drastically change over the years, and it doesn’t look like it is getting a whole lot better. It seems like the city could care less about what is happening here as long as we pay our property taxes to fuel their idiotic projects.

We were going to put a lot of money into this home. But there is no way now, we do not have the heart to improve this little enclave one-bit when the city has failed us.

Late July, we received a letter stating that Community Preservation was inspecting this little corner of Fullerton for illegal modifications to the homes.  Shortly thereafter, we received a letter warning us to water our lawn. Which was asinine because we were obeying the water conservation request that they’ve sent.

Even more appalling, was how my neighbors, who homes are “blighted” with illegal modifications, miraculously walked away without any condemnation from the “preservationists.”

One of our neighbors painted his house and left the last quarter of his wall, under the eaves unpainted.

While another, illegally converted his patio into an additional room, added a laundry hook up, possibly a bathroom, and covered the roof with a tarp to keep the rain from seeping into the roof and walls from last winter! In addition to that, he installed another bathroom in his garage, that was left unfinished for a year, to complement his home theater/dance floor.

It just appalls me that our community preservationists can spot out the dry lawn, that I did not water per their conservation request, while something as tacky leaving a house barely painted, and blatant modifications are left undocumented.

And unfortunately, that is just one of the many issues and gripes I have about the City of Fullerton.

When I moved to his neighborhood, I envisioned a place where I can renovate the home and give my parents a modest home to retire in, while I try to purchase another home on the street for me and my wife. They are humble people with no need for anything fancy. Just peace and quiet.

There has been an ongoing situation with my neighbor with the home theater/sound system/dance floor in his garage. I would love to talk to him, but my mother says he is an aggressive guy. One day he was parked in our driveway and my mother could barely get in. Well she went looking for him to politely ask him to move the car, but he barked at her instead. From then on, she told me to stay away from him; even though I have a cool head, I tend to fly off the handle when it involves someone threatening my mother (everyone can relate to that).

Well, the loud music and parties started once he built up the garage. They usually happen on weeknights and goes into the wee hours of the night; 3 AM-ish. Knowing that a face to face wasn’t going to work. I wrote a polite letter, apologizing that I couldn’t talk to him face to face, because I could not find him (he has a super high fence that goes all the way around his yard), and requested that he turned his music down and refrain from partying too loud in the evening (because my dad wakes up for work early and goes to sleep early) and late at night, for we all work on weekdays.

Unfortunately, that letter didn’t help (knew that would happen). So, I called the police instead, hoping that they would put some sense into his hard head. But, that didn’t work. All they said was that they couldn’t do anything about the music, and can only request that the guy turn down his music. Which is total BS! IMHO! So, the cops came over once and requested him to turn his music down; that worked only once. Each consecutive call I made thereafter resulted in no shows. I know Fullerton Police has better and more important things to do, but they could have given him a ticket for disturbing the peace, or being a nuisance to really ring his bell. Calls to community preservation were no help either. I was going in a loop by then, as they referred me back to the police, saying that it was under their jurisdiction. In retaliation of this offense neighbors, instead of banding together to squash the evildoer, other neighbors have selfishly play their own music on their own accord, creating an even dicier situation; it seems like no one can get a long, or is willing to try (I am. Unfortunately they aren’t). And this is where I am at; where the whole family is at: frustrated and sleep deprived.

The City of Fullerton has made it clear that noise isn’t an issue for them. It seems like they have an alternative motive when it comes to enforcing their own noise laws. *hint hint* *jab jab*

And ignore established building codes to suit their own distorted visions of grandeur.

Whatever they are doing, they are driving away people who have the ability and dream to make Fullerton a more positive place to live in, particularly in the west side of Fullerton, where it is becoming a bigger s**t hole, without decent enforcement of the ordinances, and decent families to abide by them.

Berto Gomez

Retirement Already A Bonanza Waterfall For MWD Employees

victoria

Teri Sforza has produced another fine Watchdog post over at the Register about the gravy train that already awaits MWD employees in retirement, including a list of over 40 of these watercrats who pull down over $100K a year in pension payements click here . The former top dog who retired in 1993 gets almost $225K per year and has received over $3.5 million since he stopped clocking in. Sweet. For him.

grrrrrr
grrrrrr

If that weren’t bad enough, now MWD wants to raise their pension formula even more. A few days ago we threw down the gauntlet to our City Council to be accountable for the upcoming vote by their chosen MWD representative, Jim Blake. Well, now we do it again. The vote is next week and we will be reporting back to the friends.

And remember. MWD cost increases are passed directly on to us. On top of that, in Fullerton 10% of gross water revenue (from your water bill) goes directly into the General Fund. And that’s a hidden tax increase, folks.

Here’s the MWD $100,000 club. If you know anyone on the list make sure he/she thanks the water rate payer for their largess:

CARL BORONKAY $224,812.80
NORMAN TAYLOR $191,512.08
RODERICK WALSTON $187,782.84
DAVID PORTER $170,075.76
DOUGLAS MARSHALL $149,733.12
LAUREN BRAINARD $148,945.68
NORMAN FLETTE $148,258.92
JARLATH OLEY $137,811.60
JAMES GALLANES $132,217.08
ALBERT CHENG $129,202.20
MYRON HOLBURT $120,516.84
FREDERICK HORNE $120,203.88
GEORGE BUCHANAN $119,561.76
VICTOR GLEASON $119,445.48
MICHAEL YOUNG $118,419.24
STEPHANIE VENDIG $118,418.76
BARBARA KENNEDY $115,249.92
JAY MALINOWSKI $114,198.00
ROBERT LYONS $114,192.36
ALAN SMITH $112,779.24
GARY HAZEL $112,212.36
CAROL BALCERZAK $111,909.60
WILLIAM WATSON $111,849.60
EDWARD THORNHILL $111,653.52
AHMAD HASSANI
$111,339.60
RONALD GASTELUM $111,130.44
JOSEPH SANTOS $111,113.88
EZELL CULVER $109,106.04
IZETTA BIRCH $108,637.56
ROBERT MOEHLE $108,349.44
TERRY HARMAN $107,494.56
LARRY DEFORGE $107,363.88
ALLIEN WHITSETT $104,608.20
JESSE CORRAL $104,095.44
MARSHALL DAVIS $102,596.28
EVAN GRIFFITH $101,766.60
NELSON LEE $101,334.12
LARRY HINES $101,244.60
PAUL SINGER $100,597.08
DAVID FURUKAWA $100,353.48

MWD RAISES RATES; NOW WANTS TO JACK UP PENSIONS

A River of Greed Runs Through It...
A River of Greed Runs Through It...

UPDATE: The MWD Board will take up this matter at its meeting on Sept 15.

The Metropolitan Water District, one of the shadowiest and least transparent agencies in California is contemplating raising its employees pension benefits. The Register opines about it here and makes reference to an original story by Teri Sforza here .

With bad news about how its own pension plan has been rocked by huge CalPERS investment losses, and with financially teetering state and municipal governments it seems like a poor time for the MWD to be grabbing for more tax-payer backed gravy to benefit a giant gaggle of water bureaucrats. Plus, the MWD just passed along a water commodity rate to its members that we are all paying for.

Fullerton is original member of the MWD and has been represented for a long time, some say way too long, by a fellow named Jim Blake – as we wrote about here .

I'm from the MWD and I'm here to help. The MWD.
Jim Blake from the MWD is here, and he's here to help. But whom? The ratepayers or the MWD bureaucrats?

UPDATE: The MWD is scheduled to take up this matter at its meeting on September 15.

Jim has been on the MWD Board for so long that almost nobody can remember when he went on back in the 80s (1980s, that is). The people who originally appointed him are all long gone. But Jim has well-managed his continual reappointment without anybody else getting a shot at the job. Well, now he’s got an issue that may just spell trouble for his lengthy tenure.

Blake has always been a big pro-staff drum-beater, and its hard to imagine that if, left to his own devises, he wouldn’t go for the pension jack. If he goes for it now, the people who appointed him may discover that it is they who are ultimately responsible for the actions of their appointees. Under ordinary circumstances this might not bother Fullerton’s own pension spiking gang too much. But 2010 is an election year, and we feel certain that this the pension increase will become an issue if it goes through. The city council needs to know that this continued fiscal recklessness will not be tolerated.

One Man’s Trash is Which Man’s Treasure?

gold-n-trash2DSC00128

Fullerton trash in green bins is gold to hundreds if not thousands of recyclers throughout North OC. People who are in the marginal business of recycling are now flocking to neighborhoods throughout Fullerton Monday- Friday. Depending on the day of the week that your trash is picked up you may notice people competing to score the goods from the green bin. It’s no coincidence that it’s green is it?

So who does the recyclable stuff belong to? Good question. Someone “inadvertently”  forgot to label the bin Property of MG Disposal or Property of the City of Fullerton, and the recyclers believe that they are doing business as usual.

Most people understood that if everyone helped (recycled) by sorting our trash, then the hauling rates would be lowered (or at least not raised) and would save us  a little money on our trash bill. But now that we are all sorting the “goods” for the recyclers on trash day it has become an added bonus for those in the shopping cart recycling business.

Is a crime being committed? Is anybody cited for it? Who makes up the loss for MG Disposal?

Did the city and MG Disposal leave out an important clause in the contract? Or is it just easier for everybody to look the other way?

Who’s Who In The Zoo

There's a lot more to me than meets the eye...
There's a lot more to me than meets the eye...and a lot less, too.

It’s always nice to know who is who. And when somebody gets up in public to opine on a subject, it’s particularly useful to know what relationship exists between the speaker and somebody – like a staff member, or a city council member- who is promoting a specific item on a public agency agenda.

While we are always promoting the importance of what is said rather than who said it, there’s no denying the fact that having people get up and speak, no matter how stupid or uniformed they are, helps sway councilmanic opinion; and when the council persons aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree to begin with, it’s just that much more effective.

Here’s a story: somebody named Lee Chalker showed up at the hearing for the Redevelopment expansion hearing and spoke in favor of the expansion. She even got her name in a Barbara Giasone article on the subject here . Now, none of us had ever heard of Lee Chalker before despite her having lived in Fullerton for 35 years. We wonder if she really knew what she was talking about since her stated concerns about bad roads and drainage suggest current deficiencies in the Engineering Department rather than Redevelopment issues.

A little research on Lee Chalker reveals a member of a church called “University Praise” that is affiliated with an organization called OCCCO. What is that? The “Orange County Congregational Community Organization” – a group with a fairly nebulous remit, but that seems to organize its efforts around helping poor folks organize to get things from the government.

What’s really interesting about OCCCO is that in 2007 it was a major beneficiary of Pam Keller’s “Fullerton Collaborative.” In fact, the Collaborative forked over $25,600 to OCCCO for something called “community organizing.” Well, that makes sense, we suppose, since a “Community Organization” should have something to do with community organizing. What they did for the $26K is less important than the connection with Pam Keller herself, who was able to vote on the Redevelopment expansion only after City staff redrew the boundaries around a piece of property that Keller has some sort of interest in. And of course she voted in the affirmative.

We also note that in the Collaborative’s facebook page here we find that Chalker was being installed as a new board member in the Collaborative at just about the same time.

So did Collaborative Executive Director Pam Keller mobilize a gaggle of her pals in the Collaborative and/or the OCCCO to attend the meeting  and shill for the illegal Redevelopment expansion? Who knows? Sure looks like it.

The larger point here is to understand the interrelated nature of all sorts of groups in Fullerton who actually have a very small number of aggregate members, but who can be relied upon to show up periodically at hearings to promote some cause or other near and dear to the heart of some bureaucrat or councilmember. Their numbers give moral support to councilmembers who either lack conviction or are afraid of standing alone.

Is there anything wrong with this sort of mobilization of support? No. But when some of the members of these claques have financial interests at stake (which happens all the time, too) it gets a little dicey. People who want to understand what’s going on are well advised to figure out who these people are and why they are there. In the end it is the content of what they say that counts. But it’s fun to know who the players are. And if you happen to see a procession of people march to the podium to sing the praises of this or that project, you can bet that they were asked to be there. And you have to wonder: if applauders are dragooned into service to help promote some scheme or other, just how good or necessary is it really?

Need a program to tell the players? We’re working on it.

Jones and Mayer Lose Another One for Fullerton

jones-and-mayer

Our city attorney just lost what is hopefully the final round in Fullerton’s red light camera case. A superior court judge denied the city’s request to re-hear the appeal of People vs. Franco, which was originally lost when the city attorney failed to show up at court last.

If you’ve been following along, you know that the red light cameras were a disaster from the very beginning. Fullerton’s contracted city attorney at Jones and Mayer allowed our city council to sign an obviously illegal contract for red light cameras to be installed throughout Fullerton. Thousands upon thousands of illegal tickets were given out until one recipient finally stood up and challenged the contract in court.  Last year a judge found that Fullerton’s deal with the bankrupt Nestor Traffic Systems illegally gave the operator an incentive to boost ticket issuance by the cameras.

The most painful part of this story is that we kept getting those expensive legal bills throughout the entire red light camera circus, all the while being encouraged to continue fighting for this lost cause.

Someone close to this case wrote in to suggest that the city should sue Jones & Mayer for malpractice. If that’s an option, we certainly won’t hear about it from Richard D. Jones himself. How much longer will Fullerton pay for this bad advice? Will anyone be held accountable for this series of screw-ups? When was the last time that our contract with J&M was reviewed? It’s time for the council to admit that they were led astray and publicly address these issues with our city attorney.

County Deploys Certified Helmet Fitters

helmet-fitting
Clearly this is a job for professionals

There’s an item on tonight’s council agenda that highlights the ridiculous overhead that government do-gooders can add to otherwise trivial tasks. In this case, the Orange County Health Care Agency wants to give out 300 helmets to poor kids in Fullerton. Sounds like a simple task, right? Buy 300 helmets and give them out, hoping that kids will smash their melons a bit less frequently.

But that’s not how government operates – in this case, the county hires Helmet Fitting trainers to train Helmet Fitters to fit helmets on juvenile fittee’s. Before that can happen, Helmet Fitter trainee’s must be Helmet Fitter certified, presumably by some kind of Helmet Fitting certification authority.

But we can’t have certified Helmet Fitters running around without releasing the city from Helmet Fitting risk. And we can’t have Helmet Fitters fitting helmets without filling out a Helmet Consent Form. In case you think I’m making this up, here is the text from the grant request:

This grant provides 300 helmets for distribution to low income children under age 18 living in Fullerton. Parks and Recreation staff and volunteers will be trained and certified as Helmet Fitters by the County of Orange Health Care Agency. Prior to receiving a helmet, each recipient and/or parent of recipient will receive helmet safety education by the certified Helmet Fitter, complete the Voluntary Release Assumption of Risk and Indemnity Agreement form and the Helmet Consent Form

This obvious make-work project would be comical if it wasn’t a complete waste of city and county resources. If this task must be done, please give the helmets to some non-profit who can tackle it without all of the overhead.

Ironic Twist to “Euclid Commons”; City Wants To Make A Deal With Disabled Housing Foe

2. CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATOR

Property: 626 & 700 S. Euclid Street
Agency Negotiator: Rob Zur Schmiede
Negotiating Parties: Paul Kott, Pierre J. Nicolas Trust
Under Negotiations: Price and terms

Affordable housing, like politics apparently makes for strange bedfellows. Take the case of Euclid Commons, a proposed affordable housing site that the City wants to buy. The agent for the owner is none other than Paul Kott, an Anaheim realtor and apparently a giant NIMBY, to boot.

About three years ago the City of Anaheim proposed a housing development for disabled folks near Kott’s offices on Lincoln Avenue, a pretty worthy goal you would think. But guess who marshaled neighborhood opposition that caused the city council back down? That’s right, Paul Kott.

Money does funny things to people...
Money does funny things to people...

Lest anyone think we make this stuff up, we thoughtfully provide a link to the LA Times article from 2006, here.

And speaking of money, here’s the money quote:

“Residents of the neighborhood, called Westmont, said a letter from real estate agent Paul Kott alerted them to the city’s plans for the vacant lot at Wilshire Avenue and Pearl Street. Kott, whose office is a few hundred yards from the site, wrote in his letter that “parolees, child molesters and mentally ill” could soon live nearby.”

Hey, Fullerton CC, nice guys you want to do business with!

Euclid Commons: What Is It?

What'll it be? Fish or fowl?
What'll it be? Fish or fowl?

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?