Redevelopment Archives - Page 13 of 25 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

October 5, 2010Fullerton 2010

Will Redevelopment Borrow Another $29,000,000 Tonight?

Acting as the Redevelopment Agency, the City Council will be voting on a $29,000,000 bond tonight. City staff estimate the total cost to taxpayers for the bond at about $45,500,000 over the next 16 years. $45.5-million! The RDA is the only agency that can issue bonds without voter approval. It is completely unethical for our elected council members to break out the taxpayers’ credit card while our library’s hours are reduced, workers are furloughed, and employees salaries are cut. Shame on the Redevelopment Agency staff and shame on any council member who votes for this bond!

Why should we be upset about the RDA spending $29,000,000? Because, as the OC Register reported in July, the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency spent $22,700,000 to evict 600 low-income residents, bulldoze their homes to make room for a few low-income condos. This is on top of another half-baked idea to move a McDonald’s 150 feet at a cost of $6,000,000 to taxpayers. $6-million to move a burger stand 150 feet! Fortunately, the RDA gave into public pressure and the project was shot down.

Some council candidates like to point at Downtown Fullerton as a shining example of the great work Redevelopment does. Indeed it is. Had we not “revitalized” our downtown, we would have fewer calls for police and fire to respond to drunk and disorderly conduct.

Please take a minute to think about the untold damage done by our own City Hall under the direction of our City Council, often acting as the Redevelopment Agency.

September 17, 2010September 17, 2010Arts & Architecture

And Now for Nothing Really Different: Yellowing Observer Bemoans Loss of Fox Block Boondoggle

by Mr. Peabody25 Comments

The folks who write stuff for the Fullerton Observer are either really dumb, or really….

Aw, Hell I can stop right there.

Here’s a bit from page 5 of the recent edition of the bird cage liner noting the reconstruction of the McDonald’s outlet on Chapman and noting that the Council’s failure to blow six million bucks to move it a couple hundred feet has caused the Fox Block project to go belly up and implies that somehow this put the renovation of the Fox Theater in jeopardy.

Wrong! The council finally acted responsibly last summer when they pulled the plug on an emergent disaster of their own creation. And wrong about the “renovation” bullshit, too. Notice how the Observer casually insinuates the idea of “renovation” into the “Fox Block.” Apart from the theater there is nothing to renovate, of course. But the two things were never tied together – except to manipulate the under intelligent.

The whole monstrosity was tied to the Fox Theater restoration to tap into the emotional support for that and gin up support for another downtown monstrosity of corporate welfare. Of course the crew of the S.S. Observer is devoted to the idea that keeping Redevelopment bureaucrats and parasites employed is job one, and common sense be damned.

the-observer-ostrich4-300x225 — What? I can't hear you.

Added to the unintentional high-larity is the writer’s assertion that the developer “spent hours” designing a new Mickey D’s that matched the FHS architecture. Well, he may very well have spent a few hours. The product looked like it.

Instead of bewailing the loss of a sure-fire failure, the Observer should be asking what sort of accountability is going to be demanded of the idiots who cooked up the Fox Block mess in the first place – bureaucrats and electeds, alike.

August 24, 2010August 24, 2010Behind Closed Doors

A Colorfully Gesticulating Norby Loses The Skirmish, But Wins The Battle

by admin3 Comments

Who will win the war? Follow the money.

The GOP Initiatives Endorsement Committee met this past Saturday to debate whether it should recommend to the State GOP to endorse Proposition 22.

Watch and see what happened during the questions and answer period. The proponents for Yes on 22 focused their argument on misdirected “local control,” and the fear that if it doesn’t pass Arnold Schwarzenegger will raid the cities’ Redevelopment funds and give them away to the schools. Hooray! The only problem is that by the time this is voted on Arnold will about as lame a duck as Daffy, and probably already reading the script for Terminator 5.

Did the most vocal Yes on 22 proponent, Jon Fleischman (hot dog alert @ 3:18), really think the voting members in the room would be dumb enough to buy that “Arnold will cook up a bad budget” line? Well, they did – the vote was 9 Ayes and 8 Noes. However, good news came on Sunday when the recommendation of the Initiatives Committee was tossed out by the GOP party who gave a thumbs down to the Prop 22 proponents.

Check out Chuck Devore, one of the few non-repuglicans in office. He gets it.

And yes, I really do have to wonder if Fleischman was on the Yes on 22 payroll. The Howard Jarvis group was no doubt bought off by the purchase of a slate mailer.

August 23, 2010August 23, 2010Redevelopment

California GOP Initiatives Endorsement Committee Hashes Out Prop 22

by admin6 Comments

Proposition 22 here, is an initiative supported by the California League of Cities and Redevelopment agencies and their lobbyists.

Voting yes on 22 would prohibit the State from restricting the use of tax revenues dedicated by law to fund local government services, community redevelopment projects, or transportation projects and services. It would prohibit the State from delaying the distribution of tax revenues for these purposes even when the Governor deems it necessary due to a severe state fiscal hardship.

The question boils down to whether the State should have the authority to redistribute redevelopment property tax increment funds and use it for schools, and fire departments.

The clip below was taken at the GOP state convention held this past weekend in San Diego and features the Yes on 22 proponents debating State Assemblyman Chris Norby at the Endorsement Committee meeting. Each party was given 3 minutes to make their pitch, the Yes on 22 proponents spoke for 3-1/2 minutes, however when Assemblyman Norby was only 2-1/2 minutes into his speech (6:58) one of the 22 proponents rudely interrupted Norby and yelled “TIME” even though Norby still had 30 seconds left of his 3 minutes.

My next post will feature video footage of questions and answers by both Norby (No on 22) and the Yes on 22 proponents. There’s also a little treat at the very end of the clip, enjoy!

July 25, 2010Big Brother

The Wishing Well, Once A Mayor’s Crib; Now A Bottomless Money Hole

by admin11 Comments

IMG00037-20100723-0855 — The Wishing Well Apartments. Someone's wish just came true.

For those interested in obscure Fullerton history, Louis Valasquez lived in the Wishing Well apartments at 466 West Valencia Dr. while serving as the Mayor of Fullerton in 1979.

Those more curious about modern-day Redevelopment Agency boondoggles, may be interested to learn that this past week the Fullerton City Council voted to sell the Agency owned Wishing Well Apartments to an out of town “developer” for $100.

The Fullerton Redevelopment Agency purchased the ol’ Wishing Well for $1,993,433 and paid an additional $60,930 to kick out (relocate) all the tenants that resided in the 16 unit building. On top of that the Agency is going to give the out-of-towners an additional $184,347 to “rehab” the apartments, provided the developer rents the apartments to low income tenants. Here in Orange County “low income” is 50% of the median income – which for a family of 3 is $70,890. This means that people that make around $35,445 will be living in the Brand Spanking New Wishing Well. I’ll bet ya the previous tenants made less than $35,445 per year. So in reality the city kicked out the poor folks in order to replace them with richer poor folks.

Now that’s not very good is it?

And if the units were so dilapidated, why didn’t City Code Enforcement simply cite the landlord and require the units to be standard units?

I think I’ll do a follow-up post and focus on code enforcement failures under Don Bankhead’s and Dick Jones’s years of “leadership.”

July 18, 2010July 18, 2010About Us

To Hell In A Handbasket

by admin7 Comments

If you spend much time driving around Fullerton you become painfully aware of the sad state of the streets. The deteriorating infrastructure underneath is a disaster just waiting to happen. Some folks might characterize this as blight. I know I do. And yet when it comes to dealing with blight, the one and only mission of Redevelopment law, our agency would much rather spend millions on subsidies to commercial developers, land “write-downs,” low income housing, crummy remodels, fire sprinklers for dance clubs, transforming a useful alley into an elevated pedestrian paseo, purchasing a poisoned park, and relocating a McDonald’s for $6,000,000, etc. etc.

One of the key points of our settlement negotiations with the City over its Redevelopment project area expansion will be to require the Agency spend a significant portion of its funds on infrastructure replacement – the very “talking point” that the pro-expansion mouthpieces used at the public hearings in the first place.

July 16, 2010July 16, 2010Redevelopment

Redevelopment vs. the Principles of the California Republican Assembly

by Greg Sebourn12 Comments

I was recently asked by a fellow member of the CRA why I felt that Redevelopment Agencies were bad for the public. After my long dissertation (found throughout this blog and elsewhere), I boiled it down to the CRA’s own principles.

7. That the market economy, based upon capitalism and free enterprise, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the greatest system for creating personal freedom, a strong constitutional government, and is the most productive supplier of human need.

8. That when government interferes with the free enterprise system or attempts to control the economy by taking from one individual to bestow upon another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both.

Redevelopment TAKES (purchases at “fair market value”) property from one person and GIVES it (usually for FREE) to another under the auspices of “the public good”. On it’s face it should be apparent that this practice is inconsistent with the CRA’s principles. The public coffers should not fund private development and give one developer/investor an unfair advantage over another.

citypoint-redevelopment — A private pool at City Pointe, funded by your taxes through Redevelopment. No, you may not use it.

June 14, 2010June 14, 2010Boohooism

Downtown Fullerton Redevelopment Failure

by The Desert Rat11 Comments

In 1974 the various Redevelopment project areas were created in Fullerton, including the area that includes the downtown.

This was at the very tail end of the urban renewal era of social engineering that gutted old neighborhoods and districts across the land only to see the creation of bureaucrat-planned ghost towns and vast housing projects that nobody wanted to live in.

Although the downtown area was pretty much left to its own devices in the 70s, the 80s saw a new and noxious interest in re-inventing the area according to the whims of the Redevelopment manager and whatever cookie-cutter standardization idiocy was emanating from central planning workshops. Anybody remember the embarrassing concrete trestles?

True, the old businesses were leaving, put out of business by a new Mall culture. But what was the cure? Specialty retail, standardized street furniture, stamped concrete paving, design guidelines, and a plethora of silliness whose only aim seemed to be to create a roofless mall (an obviously pointless goal) – and provide employment for the Redevelopment manager. Hideous trees were planted that destroyed the sidewalks and on-street parking was removed, spelling final doom for what was left of the downtown businesses, but it was all part of the Master Plan, see? And new Master Plans kept being spit out every five years or so.

And while the City professed an interest in historic preservation, and even took credit for it, historic buildings kept disappearing – either completely or under a wall of brick veneer.

Things weren’t working. A ban on churches and pawn shops and junk yards couldn’t alter the fact that the low rents were pulling in businesses that weren’t “specialty retail.” They were mom and pop second hand stores masquerading as “antique” this and “vintage” that.

Ah! Much had been accomplished, but more work needed to be done. Job security for life!

The FFFF pages are strewn with the ugly history of the late eighties and the nineties when an unaccountable city staff engaged in boondoggle after boondoggle with a complaisant council going along every step of the way, and always taking credit for “revitalizing” downtown Fullerton.

Much had been accomplished, but clearly more work needed to be done.

Huge apartment blocks were approved, giving away millions in profits to favored developers through entitlements and grants. City streets were handed out like Monopoly deeds. The hope was that a captive residential audience would have to patronize downtown business. Synergy was the watchword of the day!

Much had been accomplished, but clearly more work needed to be done.

A new phenomenon was beginning to emerge in the late 90s. The subsidized restaurant. And a new booze culture was coalescing. Was it policy or accident? Who can say now. But what is inescapable is that for more than a decade the City’s actions and lack of actions had demonstrable effects. And the effects weren’t salutory. The restaurants morphed into bars and the bars morphed into bootleg night clubs and dance halls. The latter weren’t shut down; they were permitted. And then they were subsidized by the taxpayers with free fire water lines.

Every night the downtown area was filling up with drunken out of towners; fights, rapes, a murder. The City Manager wrung his hands. The downtown area was costing over a million dollars a year more to manage than it was bringing in in revenue.

Much had been accomplished, but clearly more work needed to be done.

In the 2000s the merry chase for revitalization continued apace with lustful Redevelopment eyes alighting on a vast Fox Theater project, cynically calculated to leverage popular interest in the Fox Theater. Aha! The anchor project that would make all the other pieces fall into place: success was at hand! Sure, we could move the McDonald’s a couple hundred feet. Six million? No problem! Environmental impacts? No big deal.

Then there is the Amerige Court monster. Aha! The anchor project that would make all the other pieces fall into place: success was at hand! Environmental impacts? No big deal.

And now Redevelopment in downtown Fullerton is 36 years old. Let’s put this in perspective: Fullerton was founded in 1886. And that means for 30% of its life span downtown Fullerton has had Redevelopment. And in 2010 the very sort of business that redevelopment bureaucrats find abhorrent starts up in the very heart of Redevelopment territory. See the irony yet? I do. It’s not about sex, it’s about failure. Oh, well.

Much has been accomplished, but clearly more work needs to be done.

June 13, 2010Fullerton City Council

The Register Finds Time for Sex

by The Fullerton Savage6 Comments

It’s been a couple of months since The Fullerton Savage’s debut on this blog drew over sixty responses to the story of a new sex oriented shop in downtown Fullerton. Now the Register has gotten into the act with a story about the same subject. Adam Townsend, the author, and many commenters on this blog seem to think I had something inherently against the business in question. This is what Mr. Townsend wrote:

‘The author called the shop’s merchandise “trash.” ‘The blog said that seeing the underwear-clad mannequins and other sexually-oriented merchandise would harm children and said allowing the business to operate was “engendering blight.’

To be fair, I did use the word “trash”, but trashy isn’t the worst thing to associate with lingerie. I never wrote that the sight of the busty mannequins etc. would “harm children.” I did write that they would get “quite an education” from looking into the shop’s windows. Remember, we are The Education City!

So maybe Adam Townsend got the wrong idea about my attitude toward a sex-themed business. No big deal, but where he really blew it in his article was when he wrote that I ‘said allowing the business to operate was “engendering blight.”‘

No, Mr. Townsend, what I asked was “Is there any better evidence of redevelopment engendering blight?” This is no small distinction. Shops like The Naughty Teddy are sometimes cited as examples of blight when cities are trying to establish redevelopment zones. Downtown Fullerton has been a redevelopment zone since 1973. My point, Mr. Townsend, was that despite nearly forty years and millions of dollars spent to push out pawn shops, lure in restaurants, add trees, build signs, commission murals, rehab storefronts, brick street medians, redesign traffic signals, build mixed use developments, and whatever else The Redevelopment Agency unilaterally decides is good for the area, in the end a 5,000 square foot shop that sells lubricants, videos and sex toys to the 21-and-over only crowd is open for business near a major intersection downtown.

Well, just for the record, I don’t really care what consenting adults do for sex and I don’t care what a business sells, as long as both are safe. But if a city spends millions of taxpayer dollars trying to turn a downtown into restaurant Disneyland or whatever it is they are trying to do with it, I would really like to know how The Naughty Teddy fits into their vision for the whole place.

Did the business lie on their application to the city, as has been claimed, or are they the victims of a prudish municipal mindset? I don’t know. Several tattoo parlors have already opened downtown, and the city is right behind that curve. Look for an agenda item concerning the classification of tattoo parlors on the next council meeting agenda.

April 27, 2010Redevelopment

The Missing Conversation with the Redevelopment Department

by The Fullerton Savage4 Comments

Last Thursday marked the second in a five part series of presentations at the Fullerton Museum Center entitled “Conversations with your City”. Organized by Fullerton City Council member Sharon Quirk-Silva, each evening features managers and directors of some of our city’s most prominent departments, including Police Chief Michael Sellers and City Manager Chris Meyer. June 24 brings Parks and Recreation Director Joe Felz, followed by August 26 with Fire Chief Wolfgang Knabe, and ends with an October 28 double header with Engineering Director Don Hoppe and Maintenance Services Director Bob Savage. Just about everyone you’d want to talk to as an active member of your community, right?

Conspicuously missing are the Community Development and Redevelopment Department directors. As it happens, Community Development (aka Planning Dept.) Director John Godlewski will finish his contract with Fullerton very soon. Who knows when his successor will be hired, so perhaps it was just awkward to try to schedule someone to speak with the public about that department.

But Redevelopment is something of a puzzling omission. Why was Redevelopment Director Robert Zur Schmiede not included in this series of conversations with our city? After all, his department’s current fiscal year budget is over $ 13 million, about twice that of the Parks and Rec. Dept., and nearly twice the budget of Community Development (see them all here.) Redevelopment does big things. You’d think they would be proud to talk to us about their past accomplishments and how they can be more responsive to all of us (because you know that’s what everyone else will say is the goal of their departments).

Did no one invite Mr. Zur Schmiede to the party? Or does it go without saying that the Redevelopment Department simply isn’t thought of as being accountable to the people of Fullerton? Mr. Zur Schmiede answers directly to the Redevelopment Agency, better known as your city council. Wouldn’t you like to have an hour or to ask Robert Zur Schmiede a few questions about how his agency operates?