The humiliating story no one wanted to talk about.
After years of being fenced off by the Parks and Rec. Department, the Fullerton City Council voted to reopen the Union Pacific Park in the 100 W. Block of Truslow Avenue. The park, brainchild of former Parks Director Susan B. A. Hunt, cost several million dollars to be acquired and built in the early 2000s but was almost immediately shut down due to soils contamination. The City failed to perform its due diligence in purchasing polluted property and building a park on it. Adding insult to injury, the park became a magnet for anti-social behavior. So the fence stayed up.
And up. For almost 20 years.
A sign with its own tile roof? And why are they all broken?
And yet somehow this long-running civic embarrassment became the all-important anchor for the foolish trail project that City staff kept promoting. While the trail screamers were lamenting south Fullerton’s park poorness (more on that later) they never bothered to reflect on the City’s shameful history of incompetence delivering open space at the UP Park.
Mayor Fred Jung decided enough was enough and at the last City Council meeting suggested that the the fence around the park be removed and the park opened for a neighborhood whose patronizing patrons say is “desperately needed.” Well, good. More open space for the community to desperately enjoy while the UP Park ad hoc Committee, the same committee that was ignored during the trail propaganda saga, can figure out what its future is. Councilmen Nick Dunlap and Bruce Whitaker agreed and the motion was approved 3-2.
It will be interesting to see if Ahmad Zahra will give up on keeping this park fenced off. Remember, he was the one who desperately wanted to illegally rent it out as a private, fenced and gated events center. And remember too, that to him, even to question park maintenance costs in his district is “offensive.”
On Tuesday night the Fullerton City Council again shit-canned the moronic recreation trail proposed on the old Union Pacific right-of-way.
Councilmen Bruce Whitaker and Nick Dunlap both presented compelling reasons; that the proposal failed to address requests from the Council in 2021 that the area be addressed wholly, not by piecemeal projects. Mayor Fred Jung joined them in voting to turn back the grant money.
Looking down from above…
Naturally, Ahmad Zahra championed the wasteful project, pretending to be offended by Dunlap’s observation that maintenance was issue since Fullerton can’t take care of the parks we already have. It didn’t seem to occur to him that his position was grossly patronizing to his own constituency who must be separated from the hard truths of fiscal realty. He was joined in his profligacy by Shana Charles who giggly gushed over the opportunidad to bestow a top-down gift to the community – and after all, it was free money and wasn’t going to cost anything.
A gaggle of speakers showed up to defend Option 1 – a bike trail that would pass through some of the worst, least safe parts of Fullerton. A couple opined that a useless trail was desperately needed. A few Spanish-speaking women appeared to regurgitate the talking points of Zahra, but as usual displayed a complete factual deficit. Their job was to bad-mouth Option 2 that could have include an auto passage along the trail, and again to babble about “the children.”
Jane Rands. Commonsense prevailed…
One speaker named Jane Rands actually provided intelligent and pertinent points, to wit: the City staff had notdeveloped a general concept for the redevelopment of the area, and that the trail has no connectivity to anything else in the trail system, a point lost on the thoughtless Zaharites.
So in the end the council majority voted on Option 3 – give the money back to the opaque agency that took it from the taxpayers and doled it out in the first place. In a fun twist, Jung added a caveat to his Option 3 support: that the Up Park be re-opened ASAP.
After the vote was taken, one of Zahra’s lunatic followers began screaming at the Council about being racists and insensitive beasts, etc., and had to be removed from the chamber by the pit-sitting cop. And Zahra could be heard muttering under his breath into the open mike: “Bushala.”
It’s a truism that cherished ideas of bureaucrats never die, despite the best efforts of people with common sense to kill them.
Just keep reapplying. You may get the job someday…
And so the previously proposed recreation trail from the poisoned UP Park to Independence Park is back in the news. How do I know? Because of a typical propaganda piece in The Fullerton Observer. This “article” is so lame, so badly written and so full of bias for this idiot idea that I am reproducing it in its entirety.
Revitalization of Union Pacific Park Gets Approved
In a remarkable display of community engagement, the City of Fullerton organized a public meeting on June 29th to gather input from residents about the revitalization of Union Pacific Park and the construction of the Union Pacific Trail. The conference aimed to hear the public’s desires and ideas for these projects, with the park set to be refurbished and the trail transformed into a fully realized pathway connecting Union Pacific Park and Independence Park.
During the meeting, various discussions ensued, with attendees grappling with visualizing certain areas based on maps and images. To gain a better understanding, the proactive community decided to schedule an on-site visit to the park and walk the trail together.
Egleth Nuncci took the initiative to collect participants’ contact information, and on July 8th, an enthusiastic crowd, including new faces, gathered for the expedition. With the valuable assistance of the Parks and Police departments, the walkers could explore the proposed trail route safely. Among the participants were notable figures such as Parks and Recreation Commissioner Adrian Meza, Active Transportation committeemember Anjali Tapadia, and Fullerton School District Board Members Ruthi Hanchett and Aaruni Thakur.
As they traversed the trail, they encountered rough terrain filled with rocks, weeds, and litter. However, despite these challenges, everyone recognized the trail’s immense potential as a seamless pathway connecting the parks. After the enlightening walk, the project options were brought before the commission.
Option 1 was to create a simple trail with a bike lane, fully funded by grant money from the city.
Option 2 involved building an additional road alongside the path, but this would require city funding as the grant wasn’t sufficient to cover road construction.
Passionate voices emerged during the commission meeting, with many walkers advocating for the trail-only option, urging against sacrificing greenery for a road. Commissioner Meza thanked everyone who participated in the community walk, including city staff members, for their invaluable insights.
Ultimately, the commission voted in favor of the trail-only option, a testament to the power of community involvement and the collective vision for a connected, green, and vibrant future. The decision now heads to the council for final approval, further exemplifying the democratic process at work in shaping the future of Union Pacific Park and Trail based on the voices of the people it will serve.
Time to recreate.
The title suggests something has been approved, which isn’t even true – par for the Observer course, of course. We are told that the City of Fullerton organized some sort of field trip along the UP right-of-way and that a remarkable display of community engagement occurred. We learn that “notable” figures showed up; notable to whom? We are left to wonder. In a hilarious and ironic comment we learn that there was some police presence to escort the limousine liberal entourage along the rocks, weeds and litter. Clearly somebody thought this jaunt could be unsafe, and somebody was right. However the proposed trail will somehow alleviate all this unsafeness.
The Observer tells us about the boundless potential of “seamless” pathway between parks (if you don’t count Highland and Richman Avenues). At least these people have given up peddling the lie of connectivity between this route and anything else at either end.
What’s really strange is that in this article the “community walk” somehow morphed into a “commission” meeting with a vote taken to eliminate a multi-modal option (a direct contradiction to the position already laid out by the Fullerton City Council). And the Observer sums up fulsomely by claiming preposterously, that some sort of democratic process took place and the voices of the people, rather than the stupid idea of a couple stubborn and insubordinate bureaucrats, won the day.
What really happened is that on June 29th a select gaggle of hangers on was invited to walk the length of Alice Loya’s pipe dream. The Parks Commission met on July 10th to get the one-sided report of what happened and to make a recommendation (not an approval) to the City Council. The staff report for this meeting makes no mention of the council’s previous position on these topics: namely that the area should be treated as a whole – not a piecemeal collection of bad ideas, and that furthermore, a multi-modal approach to the right-of way be considered. This last option was never considered at all. The report also ignores the fact that the UP Park ad hoc committee has committed itself to nothing as yet.
In other words, Parks staff wiped the slate clean and regurgitated that same garbage they tried last time. Same old strategy that has worked so well for them in the past.
If I knew what I was talking about this wouldn’t be Fullerton!
Yesterday I posted a letter from the Gingerwood HOA claiming that District 3 councilperson Shana Charles lied at a public workshop about having consulted them about the proposed re-alignments on Associated Road that are being proposed by Fullerton’s Engineering Department. That’s a pretty bad look for a novice politician.
So now, Friends, let’s explore what’s being proposed. It’s one of those ankle bone-connected-to-the leg-bone kind of things.
First, the City is proposing a sewer and water line improvements in Associated Road between Bastanchury and Imperial. When this is complete, our engineers reckon, it would be an excellent time to repave the street. And then, why not reconfigure the roadway and reduce the lanes from four to two, and add street parking that will act as a physical barrier for a “Class IV” bikeway. Here’s an example of what it would look like, courtesy of Caltrans:
They did what, now?
The City reasons that the reconfiguration is justified because the traffic “warrants” are low enough to re-designate this stretch of Associated Road to a mere “local collector” in traffic engineering terms.
The folks who live in the various condo projects along Associated, like Gingerwood, are up in arms about this, and who can blame them? They reason, among other things, that turning out into the one lane of traffic would become more hazardous as their lines of sight will be blocked by parked cars. They will also have to slow way down, in traffic, to turn into their entries. Then there’s the issue of strangers parking in their neighborhoods – overflow from nearby apartment inhabitants and visitors to Craig Park.
This entire situation smacks of social engineering on a small scale. I have no idea how many bikers use the existing bike path and if the new configuration is even safer using parked cars as a barrier. But this seems like an unnecessary battle for City Hall to fight against its citizens.
I can’t think of a convincing reason not to restripe the street the way it is and move on.
Anyhow, the discussion of this matter is on the City Council this week (Item #14) where we can expect a lively confrontation between the irate neighbors and the people, like Shana Charles, who are behind this.
The Fullerton Collaborative hosted a candidate forum, which featured some good questions and some not so good. It featured 5 out of 6 City Council candidates running in Districts 3 and 5 this year. Shana Charles received a hall pass and did not stay for the forum.
Ahmad Zahra was his usual full of himself self. The notorious man who never wasted a selfie opportunity was untruthful, effortlessly deceived the audience, remaining true to his duplicitous self.
SERIAL LIAR
Here’s a list of the many, oh, so many lies.
LIE #1: “The district I’ve called home for the last 21 years.”
TRUTH: Zahra’s voter registration record doesn’t agree.
LIE #2: “As a medical doctor.”
TRUTH: Zahra is not a licensed medical doctor or a medical professional of any kind.
LIE #3: “The budget needs to be reflective of the needs of our community.”
TRUTH: Zahra wasted a million dollars of the people’s money frivolously suing a local blog and its authors, and were it not for the new Council, that bill would still be accumulating. A million dollars would have paid for a fire engine and more than a handful of Parks and Recs, Police, or Firefighter, or Maintenance employees.
LIE #4: “We have a shortage of staff and we need to invest in those areas.”
TRUTH: Zahra had an opportunity to pass a budget with a 1% cut and $1 million dollars to the City Manager to fill staffing concerns. He voted no, not once, but on three different City Council meetings.
LIE #5: “I would love to see more drug programs and engaging our school district on drug prevention programs.”
TRUTH: Zahra advocated for publicly and voted for on four separate occasions to have weed sold in Fullerton with only a 100 foot buffer zones to schools or homes or churches or parks.
LIE #6: “Supportive housing is crucial, but we need to make sure we are also outreaching and creating transparency.”
TRUTH: 1600 Commonwealth is an affordable housing development and so little transparency and outreach was done that the neighbors protested en masse and killed the deal with Pathways of Hope because of lack of outreach and transparency.
LIE #7: “We need to make sure our parks are maintained and cleaned.”
TRUTH: Zahra voted to give away Union Pacific Park in the heart of his district to a for-profit event planner for weddings.
LIE #8: “I have been one of the most engaged Council members. Everybody knows I’m out there.”
TRUTH: Woodcrest neighborhood mothers and residents have come to one Council meeting after another in the past 2 years complaining about Zahra’s lack of accessibility and lack of engagement with them. But then again, they are not kissing his ass and stroking his giant ego. He works with the Center for Healthy Neighborhoods. Why? Because their director donates to his campaign and their employee Egleth Nuncci is his permanent tag-a-long. No other non-profit or community group gets any engagement from Zahra.
LIE #9: “We also need to expand our ability to do corporate partnerships.”
TRUTH: Zahra strong armed Republic Services, the City’s trash hauler to give his pet project city in a foreign country a trash truck and then promptly took a selfie and credit for saving democracy. That’s not a corporate partner. That is a quid pro quo.
LIE #10: “I have worked with this Council, despite sometimes the hard times and differences we’ve had.”
TRUTH: Zahra only works for and with Zahra. He has no contact with his Council colleagues. So how are you working with this Council, Ahmad?
LIE #11: “Be faithful with my votes.”
TRUTH: Zahra made an impassioned speech about how important voting was in his country of Syria and that the at large Council seat vacated by Jesus Quirk-Silva should be determined in a special election to betray the people and his faith in democracy the very next meeting and appoint the elderly disaster Jan Flory, who in turn voted to appoint him to the Orange County Water District and its healthy stipend, one he took without objection and then donated to his campaign.
LIE #12: “We see so many Councilmembers come and then they make backroom deals.”
TRUTH: See TRUTH #11.
The truth is Ahmad Zahra is nothing more than a serial liar. Things come apart so easily when they are held together by lies. It’s always the ones with dirty hands doing all the finger pointing isn’t it?
Some folks might think that continuing conversation about Jesus Quirk-Silva’s and Ahmad Zahra’s aquaponic farm/event center scheme would be like smacking a dead mackerel.
The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…
Well, here at FFFF we believe it’s never a bad idea to remind the public of hare-brained proposals made by bureaucrats and supported by bobble-headed politicians.
So to recap: last spring the Fullerton City Council deliberated on a scheme to create an aquaponic farm on the site of the abandoned Union Pacific Park site. The problem was that the exclusive negotiating deal was with a guy who had no financial wherewithal and proposed an event center on the site – just like he had done in Anaheim and Aliso Viejo. Staff even dredged up a last minute “partner” to sell the deal. The idea was rejected, but not for lack of trying.
And we have just received word from down south in Aliso Viejo about the negative impacts of an identical operation there, Renewable Farms, run by the same people.
Let’s hear from a MV resident to a concerned Fullerton resident:
My name is Dena LeCave and I am a resident of Aliso Viejo. While looking into information and press on Renewable Farms I came across a story from the Fullerton Observer regarding the aforementioned. I wish to congratulate you on terminating your contract with Renewable Farms. As a long time resident of the city of Aliso Viejo, 20+ years, I am astonished and horrified by what our city council has allowed to happen to my community, neighborhood and particularly our quality of life since Renewable Farms started hosting wedding receptions on the vacant land behind our home. We live less than 50 yards from the event center for Renewable Farms and they host weddings every single Saturday night and have been doing so since May. The noise, lights, music and constant yelling goes on for 7+ hours. The city has done little to alleviate the problem and has instead hamstringed us by making these events private by the City, meaning we have almost no recourse in getting them to quiet down. I do not wish to take up your time, I’m sure you’re quite busy, but if you would like to further discuss our situation you may email me back or call me. Thank you, and have a good day.
Sincerely,
Dena LeCave
Ms. Le Cave’s words have the ring of truth, all right, and they certainly would have applied to the proposal in Fullerton – problems that show the complete lack of concern, disdain even, that our staff shows for this neighborhood. And then of course there was the attitude shown by Quirk-Silva and Zahra about the residents who would have suffered the negative impacts of this proposal, without so much as a by-your-leave. Their current concern over public input on the park site is extremely recent and undisputedly hypocritical.
The purveyors of bad ideas were holding their own. For a while, anyway.
And of course the deal would have illegally converted a public park into a private, fenced and gated place to hold events, and incidentally an aquaponic facility, effectively giving away parkland – something our City Attorney Dick Jones just got caught approving in Westminster. Of course there was no parking, no business plan and nothing but a site plan to recommend it to the Council, so naturally Quirk-Silva and Zahra latched on to it like a couple of lamprey eels.
I know, lets get some running exercise. Before they catch us!
At the Fullerton City Council meeting last week the topic of the idiotic Union Pacific “trail” came up. I put quotation marks around the word trail because it has never been one, and if the council continues to exercise commonsense, never will be one.
On a 4-1 vote our Lords and Masters decided to entertain an RFP process to see if the City might be able to look at wider area on either side of the abandoned right-of-way in a unified, rather than piecemeal fashion.
Parks staff have been trying for a couple years now to waste millions on a “greening” trail that would pick-up where “Phase 1” left off and continue through the junkyards, debris fields, used tire business and junk car to Independence Park. These people who stand to gain from billing hours against this project have no idea how much maintenance will cost, how safety might be ensured, or most significantly, who would even want to use it.
They continue to describe the Phase 1 thing as a trail when it is evidently not; not to anybody who takes the time to see that it does not pass Harbor to the east and ends up at the low point of Walnut Avenue on the west. There is decomposed granite and a horse rail to serve all the equestrians in the barrio to add to the comic nature of the previous development. There are also trash, homeless, evidence of arson, graffiti, and of course recent memories of a murder.
After writing a staff report that positively glowed with the eventuality of “connectivity” to a County-wide rec trail system, even Alice Loya (the Parks employee who has been nurturing this nonsense) was forced to admit that there was no present plan to acquire more railroad right-of-way to get past Independence Park, and no immediately feasible way to cross the train tracks at the Commonwealth underpass.
The train of thought was feeble but it sure was short…
In the world of lefty identity politics it’s the thought that counts, and the more money wasted on the thought, the better. Jesus Quirk-Silva referred to this as a “pipe dream,” his fantasy, apparently. He’s all about “equity” whatever that means, as if wasting $2,000,000 in public money is justified by the kind gesture to an “underserved” population.
But it’s hard to know if these chuckleheads even take themselves seriously. Let’s not forget that Quirk-Silva and his pal Zahra voted just six short moths ago to permanently convert the ill-fated Union Pacific Park to a private events center.
It’s the though that counts…
Zahra trotted out a bunch of middle aged Latina women to blather (in Spanish, just to extend the pain, apparently) nonsense about a veritable linear oasis that of course neither they, nor their children would ever use.
In the end, Quirk-Silva went along with Dunlap, Jung and Whitaker, who reasoned that a broader look at the whole area was needed, and that private sector ideas were just as likely to prove fruitful as the dead hand of the Parks Department under Alice Loya. Where this process will lead is still uncertain. Quirk-Silva said he must have his pipe dream included in any proposal; Whitaker amended that to a multi-modal facility that could serve as some sort of viaduct for the area using the UP right-of-way flexibility that makes a lot of sense.
Our City bureaucrats want to waste $2,000,000 in public funds to build a trail from Highland Avenue to Independence Park along the old Union Pacific right-of-way. The idea they say, is to link the Transportation Center to “parks.”Of course we all know that the existing “trail” east of Highland doesn’t even make it to the Transportation Center, and is deficient as a multimodal facility; and we know that the Poison Park that nobody outside City Hall ever wanted is a moribund, attractive nuisance with such a sketchy history that the City has fenced it off for 15 years.
And recently a murder occurred at the end of the so-called trail, raising legitimate questions about the safety of future trail users, if there are any.
One of our critics has tenaciously clung to the theory that a trail will attract users, thereby mitigating the safety issues along this swath of industrial buildings, junk yards, cut-rate auto related businesses, metal plating and asphalt concerns. Naturally our critic, like all knee-jerk liberals applied some theory to a practical situation he knew nothing about.
And so, Friends, I am sharing some current images of the right-of-way, to illustrate the idiocy of building a rec trail through this area. Enjoy
Just west of RichmanWest of RichmanMaybe some trees will help…Maybe it will look better at night…
This is getting tiresome. The other day, another one.
Somebody found with a guy with a fatal stab wound; this time the location of the corpus delicti was discovered at the Fullerton dog park next to the former Hunt Branch Library. The cops say the stabbing occurred around one o’clock in the morning, meaning that probably somebody else, presumably not the killer, was hanging around the pooch park in the middle of the night, too. Apparently, none of these good citizens understood that Fullerton parks and trails close at sundown.
Well, that’s three stabbing deaths in the past month or so. A casual observer might almost perceive a trend. But I’m not going to rush to any irresponsible conclusions.
It is somewhat ironic that this crime was committed at what our Parks staff believes will someday be a spot on their expensive recreation trail gamble through Fullerton’s no-man’s land. Let’s let Parks “Deputy Director” Alice Loya remind us in a May 2021 staff report:
“…linking the Transportation Center and several parks, including Independence Park at its terminus. This proposed trail aligns with the Hunt Branch Library to the west, providing potential future linkages.”
If we simply discount all the lies in those two sentences, we can discern, besides a comfortably compulsive prevaricator named Alice Loya, a city government unable to attend to existing facilities in this troubled area of Fullerton; and yet possessed of the mindset that remains the same: double down on previously wasted resources and continue the march forward. After all, it’s only other people’s money.
Sometime on Sunday night or early Monday morning a man was stabbed to death on the old Union Pacific right-of-way where it crosses Harbor Boulevard.
The cops are investigating the crime to see if they can figure out who’s who and what’s what. The Friends may draw their own conclusions as to the likelihood of a successful investigation. Fortunately a building owner has equipped himself with surveillance video cameras that captured the grisly death of the victim. Maybe the FPD can make something out of it.
The Fullerton Formula: keep doing the same thing until it works…
I think this would be an excellent time to consider the site of the murder – one end of the desolate strip where our crack parks staff wants to spend two million bucks on a “recreation trail,” because…well, just because. Naturally all the patronizing lefties want to describe the idea of a linear park as just the ticket to revitalize the industrial uses on either side; something “nice” for south Fullerton.
Once you bother to peel back all that nonsense, the reality stares back at you: this is no place for anybody to be wandering around, especially kiddies, females and the unarmed. Of course our staff and City Council deal in abstractions, having accepted the grant money there will undoubtedly be bureaucratic lust to waste it – somebody else’s money. I seriously doubt if any of them have even bothered to walk along this strip, especially at night, to see that the idiot gesture of putting a trail there wouldn’t result in anything “nice” at all.
