What is it about the Florentine Family and public right-of-way. We are all familiar with the theft of a public sidewalk back in 2003. Now the clan seems to think they are entitled to remove public parking in order to accommodate the people unlucky enough to order take-out.
First the sidewalk, now the parking. What’s next?
Sure, it’s more convenient to expropriate the on-street parking, but there’s plenty of room in the back parking lot for the comings and goings of their customers. Oh well. We can chalk it up to more self-entitled behavior from the folks who refuse to adhere to the City Code, and who forged a City document to try to push through an illegal CUP.
An even better question is who at City hall is responsible for this nonsense?
It was like getting hit with a broomstick all over again…
There is an old axiom among you humans that birds of similar plumage tend to congregate. It seems to have a strong element of truth.
Here is a disturbing image of former Fullerton councilwoman Pame Keller, beneficiary of the scam called “Fullerton Collaborative,” posing with Paulette Marshall – confessed thief, perjurer, and shameless campaign laws violator.
Please provide a caption.
P.S. My inebriated former mistress used to walk me by the Chaffee place everyday and encouraged me to relieve my bowels in their driveway. Was that so very wrong?
This week FFFF and local hero Joshua Ferguson do battle in a courtroom with the defenders of incompetence and opacity – the City of Fullerton, represented by in incomparably stupid and corrupt law firm Jones and Mayer. The Voice of OC outlines the details here, so I’ll let it go at that, other than to remark on the sad state of affairs when a citizen is sued by his own government in retribution for what they did.
It was like getting hit with a broomstick all over again…
I don’t know about you humans, but I always find it amusing when a politician tries to look good on campaign material, but ends up really looking funny.
My former neighbor, Paulette Marshall is pretending to be a school teacher to run for County School Board. Actually she was just a typical bad local lawyer for years. In 2018 she created a phony address to run for your city council and then got busted, prosecuted, and eventually pleaded guilty to trespassing and theft charges. You would think that would be an instant disqualifier for future elective office, but in a county where her senile and crime abetting husband Doug “Bud” Chaffee can get elected County Supervisor, anything is possible if you blow enough of your kid’s inheritance. Of course spending dough doesn’t equate to success.
Here’s a piece Mrs. Chaffee sent out. Humans with opposable thumbs cropped it to get rid of the stupid, misleading verbiage.
See! That’s me with the sign! That’s how I ended up being here today for this community service photo opp. Crime does pay, boys, especially for rich old, white people…
I couldn’t think of what this reminded me of at first. Then I did”
Last Wednesday the City of Fullerton Planning Department and its Director – a guy named Matt Foulkes – set an item before the Planning Commission. It was a CUP amendment that would help The Florentine Mob bring their shaky agglomeration of scofflaws businesses into compliance with an ever-weakening system of controls for out-of-control bar owners in Downtown Fullerton.
Poor Joe. Read. Weep.
But Lo and Behold, Florentine had no okie-dokie from the property owner, Mario Marovic, to pursue said amendment as is required by Fullerton’s own code. Not much of a quandry, right? Cut and dried, right? Crystal clear?: Come back when you gt Marovic’s signature on our form.
And yet for some reason our esteemed and well-compensated staff decided that the issue wasn’t clear at all; that the very notion of property ownership was open to interpretation, and that a completely irrelevant legal case dredged up by Floretine’s personal consigliere was applicable and definitive; and, that an application form obviously doctored by Florentine was just fine and dandy.
Hmm. The plot thickens with a fraudulent document!
Now, how do you get from Point A to Point B? Well this is Fullerton, more especially Downtown Fullerton, where lawless saloon owners have been ignoring the law for years with the obvious connivance of staff and city councilpersons and city attorney.
The very history of the Florentine’s operation is a testament to the way some people in this town not only get special treatment, they get a free pass to ignore the law. Building in a public right-of-way without an encroachment permit? Check. Illegal night club? Check. Operating in in violation of conditional use permit conditions? Check.
What I have heard from pretty reliable sources is that the lowest-level planner, Christine Hernandez, the poor sap whose name appears on the staff report to the Commission, was directed to process the application by her boss, Matt Foulkes; and that Foulkes in turn, was directed by his boss, City Manager Ken Domer to make sure this was approved. At this point it doesn’t take a rocket engineer to figure out that there is only one force in Fullerton irresistible enough to try to push through an illegal land use application and to make allegedly professional staff turn a blind eye to a forged document that violated their own law. Do I have to spell it out? Okay: Jennifer Fitzgerald, our lobbyist-mayor, that’s who.
Yes, that is the answer!
Nobody has been propping up reckless bar owners more than Fitzgerald, ranging from massive taxpayer subsidies for cops and clean-ups, ignoring nuisance violations, and even going so far as to pimp an utterly ridiculous district map concocted by the gin joints to dilute council control over their week-end war zone. Whenever a bar owner steps on his weenie or needs a favor, Fitzgerald throws herself into breech to help a pal out.
Play it again, Ken…
If I’m wrong Fitzgerald will get an apology. But I’m very confident I’m not wrong. And this time the truth may come out, even though this is Fullerton. Mr. Marovic’s lawyer is bound to demand all communications on this matter between staff and councilmembers, and godspeed, to that, say I.
Let’s find out whose fingerprints are on the latest Fullerton municipal humiliation.
Our esteemed City Council appointed lobbyist-councilcreature Jennifer Fitzgerald to be the new mayor a couple weeks ago. Supposedly it’s her turn again. How and why Jan Flory was appointed Mayor Pro Tem is anybody’s guess, especially since Bruce Whitaker and Ahmad Zahra have been on the council longer without appointment – supposedly the criterion for getting the job.
Zahra and Jesus Silva Quirk are no doubt angling to grab the mayor titlee when they run for re-election in 2022. They aren’t too bright, but they’re smart enough to count in four-year increments.
But the nasty machinations of our talent-free council are not the point of this post, merely a rolling introduction. What I really want to share is the completely self-serving and fraudulent mayoral bio Ms. Fitzgerald has placed on the City’s website, the first two paragraphs of which I reproduce here:
Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald was elected to the Fullerton City Council in November 2012 and served as Mayor Pro Tem in 2014/2015 and Mayor in 2015/2016. In her first three years in office, Mayor Fitzgerald played a key role in several significant accomplishments, including a $3.5 million retroactive refund of water rate overcharges, public safety reform, a substantive increase in funding to repair the city’s aging roads and water infrastructure, and adoption of new transparency measures for public employee labor negotiations.
Mayor Fitzgerald represents the City of Fullerton on the Board of Directors for the Association of California Cities-Orange County Chapter and she is a Member of the Board of Directors for the Orange County Taxpayers Association. She is a former Metropolitan Water District Director, Past President of the North Orange County Chamber (formerly Fullerton Chamber of Commerce) and past Member of the Board of Directors for the Fullerton Historic Theater Foundation. Previously, she served the City of Fullerton on its Planning Commission and General Plan Advisory Committee.
It’s pretty bad that Fitzgerald is trying to take credit for the water refund she fought tooth and nail to minimize. It’s worse that she is trying to get gullible folks to think she has done anything about police reform , when in reality she has been an ardent defender of cover-ups for eight years – including hush-up settlements and even being implicated in hiding the drunk hit-and-run perpetrated by her buddy Joe “Wild Ride” Felz. The unkindest cut of all may be her bragging about “increased funding” for street and water infrastructure that she and her comrades let sink into a deplorable mess – the worst in Orange County.
At least this go ’round she omits her oft-repeated lie that she has balanced budgets, but her re-election campaign material will no doubt rectify the omission. I’ll be checking into that.
And finally I direct your attention to paragraph two, wherein the tone deaf Fitzgerald blithely recaps all the public money laundering agencies she has consorted with, peddling her wares as a lobbyist for one of the greasiest operators in OC – Curt Pringle.
Some poor dopes think that history repeats itself, and yet there are times when it’s hard to argue the point, as when the City Deciders of Fullerton wade out into the same quicksand again and again and again.
I’m referring to the tedious habit of entering into lame exclusive agreements for stupid projects involving public property – which are then renewed and extended year after dismal year. We’ve seen this sorry practice with the massively moronic massive Amerige Court/Commons/Whatever mess; and again with the Transportation Center Master development fiasco, both of which were kept on life support for years and years by a city staff and city council who just couldn’t admit a bad idea had somehow festered forth from City Hall.
Enhanced with genuine brick veneer!
The latest in the string is the unsolicited proposal for a “boutique” hotel in the train station parking lot, an idea so stupid that only our city council could embrace it. FFFF has posted about it twice.
The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…
First we noted that some sort of pressure or promise was made to Weakest Link Jesus Quirk Silva to get him to change his vote and approve an exclusive negotiating agreement with some guy calling himself Park West Contractors and Westpark Investors. That was a year ago.
Davis, meet Bacon…
And then a few weeks ago FFFF shared the story of local union goons popping up at some dog and pony show to promote the project.
I know who I work for, and it isn’t you!
Anyway, the year term of exclusivity given to Mr. Parkwest Westpark has come and gone and so naturally the City has decided to give him another year, rather than to actually put the property on the market for alternative ideas. The November 19 vote was 4-1 with Bruce Whitaker opposing. We also learned that Ms. Jan Flory, true to form, strongly backs this concept, which is pretty ironic, given her past support of time extensions to the “developer” given the exclusive right to negotiate on the Transportation Center cock-up, a plan whose key component is the site of the proposed boutique hotel.
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.
Where there’s smoke…
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.
Let slip the dogs of law…
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.
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.
Play it again, Ken…
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.
Maybe the less said, the better…
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.
Redevelopment Redux…
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.
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.
Play it again, Ken…
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.
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.
