A guy named Jesse La Tour has a website that includes lots of news pictorial history of Fullerton. You may remember Mr. La Tour from his days as editor of the Fullerton Observer when he actually brought a sense of fairness to the rag but left, or was pushed out when Skasia Kennedy took over the family red ink business. Before that La Tour was a bookstore/gallery operator downtown and was a council candidate in 2010.
It’s interesting to see the origins of small, agricultural Fullerton include racist, anti-Chinese, anti-Japanese, and and anti-Mexican hysteria.
Observer Hyperventilation, a permanent condition, apparently…
Mr. La Tours photo collection goes all the way into the 90s with examples of Fullerton Observer “progressivism” under Ralph Kennedy, pater familias of the dismal clan.
Anyway, there’s a lot of distilled information here, although the site strikes me as a bit more of a chronicle than an historical analysis. Still, Mr. La Tour must have arrived at some definite conclusions about why our town is the way it is, and seemingly always has been.
Last fall a silly committee was created by the City Council to pretend to explore ways to raise Fullerton’s public revenue. It’s gone by the hopeful name “Fiscal Sustainability Committee.”
No one really believed this “ad hoc” committee was meant to do anything but to propose some sort of sales tax increase, and that’s exactly what they did this week at what looked to be their final meeting. Of course there were only 4 members present and they split on whether to propose a general sales tax increase or special sales taxes aimed at “public safety” and infrastructure.
But this predictable and inconclusive conclusion is not what my post is about.
This post is about a guy named Derek Smith, one of the appointees to this committee, lifted out of obscurity by none other than Councilman “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra.
Guess what a very quick search reveals? Smith was not a random appointment based on apparent fiscal experience. Derek Smith is the political operative for the UFCW 324, the grocery store worker’s local union. Does that ring a bell? It should. Derek was clearly the mastermind of the national HQ’s $60,000 contribution to an “independent” political action committee dedicated to electing Vivian Kitty Jaramillo last fall. The origin of that money suggests a much darker source: the local SoCal MJ dispensary cartel.
That’s a lot of green from the produce section. How come? Because the OCFW 324 represents workers in the local marijuana dispensary business, part of a wider cartel that has been trying, with the help of Ahmad Zahra, to crack into Fullerton for several years. Jaramillo was going to be their Golden Ticket for a revived marijuana ordinance.
So Smith’s real fiscal experience consists of blowing $60K of somebody else’s cabbage on the S.S. Jaramillo.
Backscratching is fun – with other people’s money…
Back to Fullerton, Cannabis Jaramillo’s loss to Jamie Valencia was disastrous to Zahra in so many ways, not the least of which could his apparent utility to the MJ cartel.
Anyhow, at the end of the meeting Smith voted to recommend a general sales tax increase for Fullerton to deal with our fiscal crisis, although in the front of his mind must surely have been the idea revenue from the sale of cannabis products – good for the budget, good for his union.
And last year we were number 29, among Orange County’s 34 cities based on per capita unrestricted net positions (UNP).
FFFF’s Bureau of Data & Statistics (FFFFBDS) was presented the following chart produced by the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank who tracks such things.
Keep going to toward the bottom…
Ouch. Fullerton is way down there at the bottom – each citizen being in the red for $1050 – based on 2023 numbers from the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. We are better off than Orange, Costa Mesa, Anaheim and Santa Ana.
Pretty soon Fullerton is going to have to pay the piper and we will be presented, once again, with a Measure S-type sales tax increase in the 13% range. The question is whether such a tax can pass at an election. A General Tax only needs 50%+1 but may be a tough sell; a special tax – for infrastructure, say – requires 67% a harder nut, but one where people can see what they’re getting.
Accountability? It was never on the agenda.
An infrastructures tax does noting to alleviate Fullerton’s chronic financial mismanagement under Fitzgerald, Flory, Zahra, Quirk-Silva and Charles. It’s very clear that the liberals on the Council want the tax that eluded them in 2020.
Ideas, anyone? Anyone else?
But what about Jung and Dunlap? They are no longer able to distance themselves from Fullerton’s fiscal cliff having now been around for over four years. What have they done to ameliorate the chronic shortfall? The answer is nothing. For years the sleepy Bruce Whitaker voted no on annual budgets and he never bothered to put much thought into solving the problem.
Then there’s newcomer Jamie Valencia who’s not responsible for any part of the problem – yet. Will she go for a tax on the ballot? Her public safety union supporters will push her. Does she even understand the magnitude of Fullerton’s mismanagement? I wonder.
In defeat, malice…
Of course we may be grateful that Valencia’s opponent didn’t win. Then a sales tax would have been inevitable.
Last Tuesday the Council voted 4-1 to deny access to any non government publications on City property.
This seems to be the result of our humble request to allow FFFF a presence thereon, however one never knows since our attorney, Kelly Aviles, never got a response over the past couple of months to our request for access. Oh, well.
No news is good news…
The new policy will remove other publications that already have access, namely the Daily Titan, the school paper at CSUF and the yellowing Fullerton Observer, a dreadful compendium of political bias, untruths, innuendo, rumors and libel.
Naturally the Observer crowd began bleating about censorship although nobody is censoring any of their drivel. They are still free to disseminate their trash at George’s Burger and at Ralph’s and any other place that will have them.
The lone no vote came from that champion of free press, Ahmad Zahra, who (we now know) “ran away” from persecution in his homeland and now can revel in yet another layer of heroic victimhood – political refugee! He actually sent a out a press release reiterating his loyalty to our country – the one he snuck into.
I’m not even going to bother reproducing that noble-sounding riff. Just remember this: When this story started Zahra absolutely did not want FFFF in City Hall in any form. A few years back he also voted to legally harass FFFF and to keep suing FFFF over the shared files affair – even after the jig was up. How’s that for First Amendment championship? Paper thin.
A couple months ago FFFFs attorney, Kelly Aviles sent a letter to the Fullerton City Manager announcing our intention to begin a paper edition of our humble blog, and requesting that the City permit distribution of that publication on City property – places like the lobby of City Hall and the Community Center.
You’ve got mail!
Dear Mr. Levitt:
I hope this finds you well. I am writing to you on behalf of my client, Fullerton’s Future, who’s in the process of launching a new newspaper publication to serve the residents of Fullerton. As part of the marketing and distribution efforts, my client seeks to place a newspaper rack in the lobby of City Hall, similar to the arrangements that have been made with other local newspapers.
We respectfully request the City Council grant approval for my Client to install a newspaper rack in the lobby of City Hall. My Client has secured a financial commitment from a local businessman for a significant amount of private financing to launch this new business endeavor committed to contributing to the local community by providing important local news, restaurant reviews, business advertisements, and information that reflects the diverse interests of our city’s residents and their needs for alternative news sources. In addition, an application to form a new 501-c4 will soon be filed with the IRS for this venture.
Please let me know if there are any specific procedures or requirements that need to be followed to facilitate this request or if the Council has any preferences regarding the placement of such a news rack at City Hall. We are eager to comply with any guidelines you may have.
Thank you for your time and consideration and we look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Kelly Aviles
FFFF hasn’t been particularly forgiving of all the murder, mayhem, misbehaving, and costly mistakes our highly paid employees have made over the years with the blessings of boobish city council members; the City has even gone so far as to sue FFFF contributors for mistakes made by employees and our City Attorney; therefore we figured our chance of getting our voice heard in City Hall was nil.
If you check out next Tuesday’s council agenda you’ll notice Item #14. It’s a Resolution establishing a policy that keeps FFFF off City property and limits the presence of non-governmental communications to the Main Library “community corkboard” – at the discretion of the Librarian.
Wow, there’s steaming pile of bureaucratic jargon – enough to satisfy anybody who admires that sort of gobbledygook. My favorite sentence is “The policy emphasizes that all City facilities remain non-public forums.” Wouldn’t want a public forum in City Hall, now would we? That space is reserved for government propaganda.
Stick it where it will do the most god…
I don’t believe this would be on the agenda at all without previous agreement in closed session, hidden away from prying eyes under the deceitful cloak of “potential litigation.” I wonder if they can legally enforce this policy.
We may have to start printing selected copy from our greatest hits and push pin them onto that community corkboard!
Last August supporters of Fullerton 4th District Council candidate, Democrat Vivian Jaramillo, created a fake “conservative” candidate to draw votes away from the person presumed to be Jaramillo’s principal opponent – Linda Whitaker. The candidate, Scott Markowitz, committed, and plead guilty to perjury.
It’s abundantly clear that at least one person helped phony candidate Scott Markowitz commit the perjury when he falsely swore that he collected his nominating signatures. How is it clear? Because at least one of his nominators told the District Attorney Todd Spitzer that it wasn’t Markowitz who got them to sign, it was someone else; either that or Markowitz himself volunteered the information, which isn’t likely since he was arrested and booked into the Santa Ana Jail.
Speculation is increasing and questions are still being asked, such as: what’s the name of the person or persons who suborned Marko’s perjury, and why hasn’t Spitzer prosecuted him/her/them? In fact, a Public Records Act request was recently made to Spitzer’s office to reveal the name of the person or persons involved in the Markowitz case.
I’m not talking…
Back in the fall, suspicion fell immediately on a guy named Ajay Mohan, a former Democrat operative who held Markowitz’s hand at the City Clerk’s office while picking up nominating materials. But could Mohan have known any of the nominators well enough to get them to sign the papers of a MAGA-sounding candidate?
The Usual Suspects are smiling. For now.
Some folks behind the scenes put early money on creepy and desperate Councilman Ahmad Zahra, the immigrant marriage fraudster and serial prevaricator. Then attention turned to the equally seedy Aruni Thakur, the guy who tried to get elected to the Fullerton City Council in 2020 in a district he didn’t live in. Both are well-known local Democrat office holders who would have been familiar to the Democrat nominators like our old friend Diane Vena. Hey, what about Jesus Quirk-Silva, the dim-witted ex-councilman and husband of wannabe king/queenmaker, Assemblycreature Sharon Quirk?
Recently a new front runner has emerged, a chap named Andre Charles. Charles revels in the lofty title of President of the North Orange County Democrats club. His wife, the self-important, wordy, and ingratiating gasbag, Shana Charles, is on the City Council. Charles had both the motive and the means to sucker local Dems to nominate Markowitz in absentia. Indeed, several nominators of the faux Trumpy Markowitz are members of Charles’ Democrat club. Hmm.
Spitzer gets choked up…
So what was the result of the PRA request? Predictably, the DA’s office isn’t answering, saying they don’t have to – the records are confidential even in closed cases. But if no other crimes were committed, then who cares, right? Yet the response from some guy named Wayne Philips in the DA’s office does include this tidbit:
Is this merely a boiler plate brush-off, or is some investigation really still underway? Personally, I doubt any investigation is going on, but if I were one of the perps involved I’d still be a little nervous. There are probably lots of weak links in the chain of this scandal, and even Spitzer may be induced to do his job if evidence he is now suppressing is published.
Starting out as a boutique hotel, a dumb idea took on a bloated, lumbering life of its own and has been kept alive through bureaucratic inertia and predictable metastasis.
Hostert
Now there’s a new twist. Word on the street is that the family of the guy with the original brainstorm, Craig Hostert of Westpark Development, is suing the current “developers” TA Partners. You may recall that Hostert is dead. His relatives seem to think that his money men, Johnny Lu and Larry Liu of TA Partners, pushed Craig out of his interest in the project. Johnny and Larry are said to be counter suing.
That can’t be good…
Parenthetically, I might add that Johnny and Larry are no strangers to the legal system, having left a trail of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and fraud in their wake. Fullerton being Fullerton.
Enhanced with genuine brick veneer!
I don’t know what the lawsuits might entail, legally, but due to the incompetent actions of Councilmembers Bruce Whitaker, Shana Charles, and Ahmad Zahra in upzoning the property, there could be a lot at stake. Remember, the City sold Westpark/TA almost two acres of land for $1.4 million (less demolition costs) while making it worth ten times that amount by abusing the allowable density in the Transportation Center Specific Plan.
Right now the City Hall silence remains deafening. We do know the council met in closed session about this awhile back, and still the public remains in the dark. Why hasn’t the City kicked Johnny Lu and Larry Liu to the curb long ago? They were supposed to have performed all sorts of stuff by now. Here are Johnny and Larry’s milestone obligations per the Development and Disposition Agreement, approved at the end of December, 2022.
Read. Weep.
Westpark/TA Partners are clearly in default. Plans submission was supposed to take place in December 2023 – fifteen months ago. Permits were required to be obtained fourteen months ago. Grading was supposed to start eleven months ago. Above ground construction was supposed to start by the end of last October – five months ago. See a pattern?
For some reason TA Partners was given some wiggle room in the actual verbiage of the contract for plans submittal – 240 days which would have been February of 2024, still thirteen months ago, and still a massive default.
Was there an “Unavoidable Delay?” Who gets to know? Why would the City fail to exercise its right retake the property? If you see a councilperson, please be sure to ask. Of course you won’t get an answer as the whole thing is shrouded in Closed Session secrecy. Without any action on the part of Fullerton, the two fly-by-nighters are still in possession of entitlements worth a pile ‘o cash – enough to excite the pecuniary envy of Mr. Hostert’s heirs and assigns.
I get the strange feeling that this latest legal entanglement might have repercussions for any case Fullerton might have in getting rid of Johnny and Larry. It shouldn’t, but it might be cause for staff to continue to string this thing out since it has been such a lucrative toy for Fullerton’s crack “economic development” employees.
Just when you think they couldn’t be more biased, vindictive and stupid, the Kennedy Sisters, Skaska and Sharon prove you were wrong. They not only lace their “stories” with prejudicial editorializing, now they have now taken to publish letters to their “newspaper” that give every appearance to be cooked up to cause mischief.
M. Chapman, maybe?
In the mid-March version of the Observer there is a very strange “letter” by someone calling themselves “M. Chapman.” It’s a weird missive alright, so odd and so badly written that you get the idea it was written by one of the sisters herself. I’ve seen walls at FJC covered in globs of pre-class gum that made more sense.
Our correspondent informs us of a house on Wilshire Avenue that nobody wants to talk about. It’s a Big Mystery to M. Chapman because no one wants to “save” it either. A conspiracy is afoot, make no mistake!
The house is an abandoned, dinky 400 square foot box that somebody tacked siding and a porch onto in the 1960s. It’s decrepit and looks like a fire hazard; but not to Chapman who sees a treasure.
For some reason Chapman thinks the “unsafe” City notices are “poorly written,” a claim I’ve never heard before, but obviously inserted here to suggest something untoward is going on.
Then the letter gets interesting. You see, the property next door is a “land grab” by “Bushala” and the insinuation is that he wants this derelict property for some reason.
Beauty and The Beast
The first statement is just defamatory. Bushala Brothers, Inc. bought the vacant lot next door from the North Orange County Community College District with the condition that they relocate a NOCCD bungalow from Chapman Ave., which has been accomplished – a fine upgrade to the neighborhood. (picture above). BBI was the highest bidder, responding to an open and fair public bid. The house is now owned and occupied by a family member who bought it at market rate from BBI. Naturally, Chapman provides zero evidence to support his insinuation that maybe “Bushala” (by now we have to ask “which one?”) wants to own the dilapidated property next door. That’s classic Observer Sister stuff, right there.
At this point, it seems pretty obvious that somebody is cooking up information and “M. Chapman” is regurgitating it. Now who could that be?
Chapman is real interested in his/her architectural discovery, it seems, so he/she turned to Fullerton Heritage for help, but they wouldn’t “touch it with a ten foot pole.” More sinister evidence of something, Chapman concludes. Chapman says he/she was referred to the Observer(!) for some inexplicable reason – the Kennedy Sisters know very little about anything.
Then Chapman reveals the stupidity of his/her own narrative by sharing that Fullerton Heritage did indeed touch the issue with a ten foot pole. In fact, somebody at FH went way out of their way to do Chapman’s homework for him and provide a bunch of information, alas, none of it evidentiary to suggest the derelict shack was historical.
In parentheses at the end of the quote, someone thinks the run down mess would make a great “juice and java shack” which, of course the lot is not zoned for. Was it Cheri? Was it Chapman? Was is Skania Kennedy? Whoever said it, they got the shack part right.
(I now have it on excellent authority that the last paragraph in quotation marks did NOT come from anybody at the City or Fullerton Heritage. In other words, the “editor” – Skasia Kennedy made a glaring editorial error that wouldn’t have been made in a high school news paper.)
This “letter,” doesn’t quite seem right. It’s a sort of patched together amalgamation of supposed innocence (just asking questions here!) while sharing both outright libel and concocted “guesses” that lead the reader to suspect that information was shared with M. Chapman (if there even is one) from a source that wants to publicly disparage “Bushala” over something nobody gives a damn about.
And that means that the Kennedy SIsters, Skasia and Sharon, who published this tripe are complicit in this cut-rate farce.
According to the Fullerton Police Department, their employees killed another person Saturday night.
Responding to a domestic dispute call in the 700 block of West Orangethorpe Avenue the cops arrived on the scene and discovered a 19 year old male “matching the description” on the sidewalk. Here’s the tale from the press release:
Despite repeated commands from officers, the suspect was noncompliant. In a sudden turn of events, he lifted his shirt and pulled what appeared to be a handgun from his waistband, prompting an officer-involved shooting.
Officers immediately began life-saving measures until paramedics arrived, but the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene. A pellet gun, closely resembling a Smith & Wesson handgun, was recovered near the suspect.
Oh, no. Another one of those dreary FPD press releases that always sound like an immediate exculpation rather than a simple statement of the bare facts
At the point of first contact the cops confronted a guy who may or may not have done anything wrong. We know he wasn’t juiced because if he had been the statement would have said so. There goes Excuse Option One.
We don’t know what those “commands” given by the police were, of course, or even if they were reasonable. It will be interesting to see and hear what sort of dialog ensued during this confrontation. Was it calming, or was it the sort of thing that might prompt escalation?
Then there was “…a sudden turn of events.” What is this a high school creative writing class? For some as yet unknown reason this young man decided on the ever popular Excuse Option Number Two: suicide by cop. The inevitable “waistband” is deployed by the cop writer, although the PR had earlier stated that the culprit had been waving a knife at Dad at the incident address. I’m not sure who wanders around with a pellet gun shoved in his pants but there was one, apparently that (closely!!) resembled a Smith and Wesson handgun.
We will be comforted to know that all will be revealed within 45 days via one of those Critical Incident Community Briefing Video.
No, it’s not a musical recording. Not exactly. There’s no music, but there’s a lot of singing sad songs and lamentations.
Fullerton Boohoo, old and new…
It seems that what’s left of Fullerton’s Old Guard liberals and a scattering of younger adherents to no-fault government are having a real hard time grasping the reality of the Fullerton City Council’s new commonsense majority. These lefties don’t ask a lot of intelligent questions. They believe in empty abstractions and are happy to regurgitate whatever nonsense is spoon fed to them by the likes of Ahmad Zahra. They are appalled by councilpersons Jung, Valencia and Dunlap who have the audacity to question the go along, get along status quo of unaccountable government.
The meeting on Tuesday, March 4th was a total disaster for the so-called “progressives”
We noted that the idea of exploring charter city status for Fullerton was moved along, despite the all the silly fears of those gathered together by Zahra to oppose the concept.
What we didn’t cover was the introduction of measures to keep people from camping in public places and the protection of public facilities. It’s about time the City decided to end its attraction to vagrants who pose a public safety risk. Those votes were 3-2, of course, with Zahra and Charles siding with the immigrant homeless instead of their homed constituents.
No bueno…
Other issues were agendized, too. There was the topic of a letter opposing an AQMDs ban on gas appliances. Seeing the practical problems of the policy, the majority decided to oppose the measure. The vote was the same 3-2. Since there’s nothing a liberal likes more than following the mandates of completely opaque government agencies, Zahra and Charles were compelled to vote no, citing “public health.”
The following entertaining interchange took place (according to the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters with their usual additions):
Mayor Jung without asking for council comments, said “I will move the item” – but Councilmember Zahra said he had some questions.
Councilmember Zahra made some clarifications, “For those who mentioned this was overreach from the state – this is not from the state. The governing body [SCAQMD] is multiple cities in Southern California, a regional body of members from LA, Orange and San Bernardino counties.” He said the letter merely states that we are supporting this – or not supporting this. So nothing is being imposed here locally whether it [the letter] goes out in the negative or positive. The actual SCQAMD meeting where this will be decided happens on May 2 – so anyone passionate about it can attend that meeting,” he said.
Mayor Jung “Is there a question somewhere in there?”
Councilmember Zahra passing over Jung’s unnecessary interruption went on to say – “The clean air rules are for manufacturer’s not residents and the rules transition gradually. So no one is going to come and take your gas stove. If we are looking at this from a public health view – he said we do have high air pollution in Orange County – those are facts. I think we should stay out of this discussion for now, or – in my opinion – we should support public health. So I am not in favor of sending this letter out.”
Jesus H., speaking of gas emitting appliances…
First, Mayor Jung was actually following Robert’s Rules of Order, in which motions drive discussion, not the other way around. But Zahra had questions, right? Questions? No, that was a lie. he wanted to make yet another campaign speech, and he did. Jung, quite reasonably, lost his patience with the usual Zahra pontification, and asked where the questions were. The “interruption” was not unnecessary since Zahra had already interrupted a legitimate motion; Jung’s was appropriate response to Zahra’s out-of-order speechifying, which Jung did allow to continue.
Naturally, Zahra lied once again, trying to make the SCAQMD look like a sovereign local agency, when in fact it gets its diktats from Sacramento, via the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the Governor, and the Legislature.
Finally, there was a traffic issue, the topic being the signalization of the Euclid/Valley View intersection. Staff supported this, but only by using some sort of grant money, meaning it’s not a priority; the guesstimate for the cost would swallow up the City’s total traffic signalization budget for a year. As a side note, there’s already a signal at the Hiltscher Trail crossing – just a few hundred feet to the north.
Zahra and Charles really wanted to throw half a mil at the problem and move on.
However, in the end the council chose to turn the item back to the Traffic and Circulation Commission for more review and more public outreach. For some reason Zahra pushed for “closure” on this issue, probably just out of spite, and to make the council majority look bad in front of the audience. But since they had no dopey, liberal ideal that could be used to manipulate anybody Zahra and Charles went along with sending the thing back to the TCC.
