Redevelopment Archives - Page 14 of 25 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 30, 2010March 30, 2010Behind Closed Doors

12 Years Was More Than Enough. The “F” Is For Fail

jones-gone-wild1 — The worst thing I've ever seen...

And now, a year and a half after Fullerton Councilman Dick Jones was re-elected to a fourth dreadful term it only gets worse.

During the fall of 2008 FFFF shared Joneses’ mastery of the rude, ignorant, nutsy outburst. We even got creative. Last year we chronicled Jones’ comical misunderstanding of Redevelopment, as well as his crazy melt down at a Vector Control meeting. And just last week we related the story of Jones standing up during a meeting, walking out, and quitting the Vector Control Board.

Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt on the female cop derriere incident, I wonder how long the people who have propped up this asinine buffoon can continue to look the other way.

Well, enough is enough, already. This guy has spent 14 years making himself a laughingstock, and it seems he won’t be satisfied until he does the same thing for Fullerton.

February 20, 2010February 20, 2010Arts & Architecture

The Making of An Eyesore; And a Hell of a Climb, Too

by admin16 Comments

A little less than 20 years ago, some friends and I stood in front of the Fullerton City Council pleading with the Redevelopment Agency to build a pedestrian underpass at the train station instead of a steel bridge overpass. We had three reasons. The first was expense: an underpass was about half the cost of a bridge. Second was the matter of practicality and convenience: it is easier for a pedestrian to climb 24 steps versus 49; not to mention the cost of maintaining two elevators. Third, the bridge was going to tower over the Historic Santa Fe Depot – a real incongruous pairing and one in which the Depot suffered.

When the question was asked to the city staff during the public hearing about the possibilities of an underpass the Fullerton Redevelopment Manager Terry Galvin answered that an underpass would be too dangerous and could end up smelling like urine and besides, “nobody builds underpasses.” He even dug up an incident (and only one!) where somebody got stabbed – in Raton, New Mexico. Ooooooh, so scary! The fact of the matter is that an underpass would have been a mere 50 feet long – a little more than half the distance from home plate to first base!

The staff also dismissed Vince Buck’s brilliant idea of using the existing Harbor grade separation to get people from one side of the tracks to the other, a solution that would have been the most practical and cost efficient of all!

What has always bothered me about the city staff is that when they want something they will not give the city council all of the pertinant facts to make an intelligent decision; or they will deliberately inflate the project they want and diminish options they don’t want. And then the city council does not hold anyone on staff accountable for the messes they create. And that my Friends, is the history of Redevelopment in Fullerton.

A couple years later I was at the Oceanside train station and guess what?

Of course lots of local Metrolink/Amtrak stations now have underpasses including Orange, Tustin, Laguna Niguel and many others. Money was saved, citizens were spared visual monstrosities, and maintenance costs were minimized.

But in Fullerton we have Molly McClanahan (who voted for the bridge), and her immortal words: hindsight is 20/20.

Almost twenty years later and the City of Fullerton doesn’t even seem to bother with the graffiti etched into the elevator towers’ glass.

January 15, 2010July 14, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Fullerton Decision-makers Lied To. So What’s New?

by admin9 Comments

Last year just before Christmas the Fullerton City Council voted 3-1 to approve the idiotic Richman housing project, a staff-driven boondoggle that makes zero planning, housing, or economic sense. We wrote about it here.

We also wrote about the review of the same fiasco-in-the-making by the Planning Commission here, in which we lauded Commissioner Bruce Whitaker for his solitary stance in opposing it. As the YouTube clip shows, Whitaker objected on economic grounds citing the project’s dubious fiscal foundation.

This position was immediately questioned by Commissioner Lansburg who inquired about it of the city attorney, Tom Duarte:

Commissioner Lansburg: is it within the Commission’s purview to look at this from a financial standpoint or are we only to look at this from a planning standpoint?

The city attorney Mr. Duarte answered: In the commissions purview its a land use issue, the city council will look at the financial impact.

Well, the project was passed by a Commission majority, with only Whitaker dissenting.

Subsequently Commission Chairman Dexter Savage addressed the following communication to staff, seeking clarification of the issue.

And now, Lo and Behold, the issue has been agendized by the City Council; and just look at staff’s response: economic considerations are indeed within the purview of a planning commission in many respects, and are nowhere prohibited.

This response begs several questions. Why did the city’s attorney misinform the commission? Is he incompetent, or was he motivated to press the approval of a project near and dear to the hearts of the city staff, without any reference to the law.

Why did the staff present like (John Godlewski) not correct him? He countersigned the above memorandum contradicting Duarte, yet was at the meeting and said nothing.

The facts can really only be interpreted in one way. Both the attorney and staff were more interested in the approval of the project, no matter how bad, than in the service of the public interest, or the truth, or the law.

Now the entire matter has been brought to the City Council for its enlightenment as agenda item #16 at the January 19, meeting. But it’s really to late for the Richman project – a Redevelopment/housing staff concocted project that has all the tell-tale signs of a disaster in the making.

And Friends: there you have it.

January 5, 2010January 5, 2010Boohooism

The OCCCO Scam

by The Desert Rat7 Comments

Earlier today a Friend tipped us off to this self-serving video produced by OCCCO (Orange County Congregation Community Organization) touting its alleged accomplishments. The whole thing is really embarrassing. Trying to take credit for Anaheim’s “$100,000,000” housing policy is just laughable.

But when this group of group of lefty do-gooders bragged about their successful petition to the Fullerton City Council for west Fullerton to be included in the fraudulent Redevelopment expansion, some of us in the editorial room got pissed off. Cut to the 7:30 mark of the youtube clip to avoid a lot of uber-mind-numbing drivel.

Pam Keller4 — Oh yeah, I got a posse and man are they dumb...

First, we have already demonstrated the not too coincidental elevation of some woman called Lee Chalker to the Board of Directors of the Fullerton Collaborative with her sudden interest in Redevelopment issues, here; could any reasonable human being believe that Chalker and her OCCCO pals weren’t persuaded by Collaborative Executive Director and City Council woman Keller to go to public meetings and pimp something they knew absolutely nothing about? They got $26,000 bucks a couple of years ago for “community organizing” from Keller so maybe they figured they owed her, quid pro quo.

But to take credit for their stoogery in a fraudulent political act as an accomplishment not only suggests a complete lack of real accomplishment, but it also suggests a moral bankruptcy, too. Either that or a really low level of intelligence.

Well, really, what did you expect?

January 5, 2010January 5, 2010Behind Closed Doors

A Good Article, By George!

by Mr. Peabody4 Comments

I've never even been to Fullerton — Fullerton? Where's that?

Although George Will can be stuffy and, well, fat-headed on occasion, there is nothing off the mark about his opinion piece in the Washington Post the other day about the Atlantic Yards eminent domain scandal occurring in Brooklyn, New York. Read it here.

Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? Trumped up findings of blight that justify the creation of a government-as-developer zone. In Fullerton we have the proposed Redevelopment expansion – leveraged off a completely fraudulent finding of blight. There are no massive projects in the expansion area – yet, but the idea of securing property tax increment and using the expansion to extend the life of the existing Redevelopment project area foreshadows all sorts of problems with government overreach and the misdirection of public revenue.

January 5, 2010January 5, 2010Fullerton BooHoo

Pam Keller: Funneling Grant Money Into Liberal Activism for Fun and Profit

by The Fullerton Shadow23 Comments

We’ve burned quite a few pixels explaining how Pam Keller’s is using her non-profit, The Fullerton Collaborative, as a vehicle to peddle influence, fund political activists, and profit Keller herself through excessively convoluted financial relationships.

But some of our loyal Friends still don’t get it.

That’s admittedly understandable, since the entire contraption is remarkably complicated. But to help everyone wrap his or her cerebral cortex around the many conflicts of interest, we present this valuable flow chart to demonstrate where The Fullerton Collaborative’s money comes from and where it goes. Naturally the nexus of the whole tangled web is Pam Keller. And that’s the big problem.

Fullerton-Collaborative-Illustrated — Click for an eye-opening experience...

Enjoy following the arrows. After perusing this chart there really is no excuse for not being concerned about the manifest conflicts of interests on the part of our City Council woman Pam Keller.

Unless, of course, you are part of the web.

December 24, 2009December 28, 2009Boohooism

In Fullerton It’s Only Over When Staff Says Its Over

by Jan Florys Dog6 Comments

I don't mind being led around just so long as I don't know where I'm going. — I don't mind being led around just as long as I don't know where they're taking me!

A few items in 2009 have caused me to reflect on the way things go in Fullerton, the way things have always gone, in fact. My poodle friends have a saying: la plus ca change, la plus c’est la meme chose. Man, that’s Fullerton all over!

In Fullerton, no screw-up, no cluster f, no civic disaster ever goes away if the city staff doesn’t want it to. They’ll dig in their heels and start the ol’ push-back as soon as it looks like something they really want is about to get torpedoed.

Consider the absolutely horrible decision to relocate the McDonald’s outlet at a jaw-dropping cost of six million bucks. Not even the most compliant council could swallow that one, and ours pulled the plug on it (so we thought, foolish us!) last summer. But within a a few weeks, the Redevelopment staff cooked up a “new” plan for the brainless “Fox Block” scheme. And guess what? It too, involved relocating McDonald’s – just not all the way to the corner. Geez, wasn’t anybody paying attention? That episode was so bad that it really crossed the line of insubordination. But did anybody on the council say a word? ‘Course not. This is Fullerton!

Of course the real problem is is the sort of people that we keep electing to the City Council. The mentally lame, the incompetent, the inert; people who by political and personal inclination identify with the bureaucracy instead of the citizens and taxpayers of Fullerton; people who dodge responsibility. Of the current crop, only Shawn Nelson really seems to take offense at being lied to and led around by the nose like a prize bull. And speaking of bull, Sharon Quirk seems to have finally realized that her advisors have their own agendas that more likely than not are incongruous with the interests of the rest of us. Well, that’s some progress, anyway.

What will 2010 bring? More of the same, no doubt. This is Fullerton. If there’s any hope for us the brain-dead gerontocracy must go. And by gerontocracy I mean the ossified geriatric thinking displayed by councilmembers of all ages, and the interests they represent. Of course Bankhead must go. Jones, too. And Keller. But if they’re replaced with stooges like Marty Burbank or Pat McKinley what the hell’s the difference?

Well let’s throw out a few issues to track to see how bad, or good, things will be in 2010 as far as accountability goes:

Will the council finally once and for all end the Fox Block scam?

Will Keller, Quirk, and Nelson stick to their promise to put the issue of term limits on the June ballot?

Will the council quit wasting time and energy on the idiotic Transportation Center master plan?

Will the council give up on the bogus Redevelopment expansion?

Will the council ditch the moronic “at-large” members of commissions altogether?

Will the council demand accountability on the UP park scandal before they sink another dime into more Redevelopment of it? Will they tell the city manager to quit making unilateral policy decisions?

Will the council have the courage (very little required really) to forget the useless UP ROW “trail”?

Will the council quit subsidizing and encouraging illegal behavior by downtown bars and dance halls?

Well, really, the list is endless and the Friends could no doubt supply their own favorites. Bon chance!

December 19, 2009December 30, 2009Behind Closed Doors

Another Disaster in the Making

by The Fullerton Shadow9 Comments

How come our electeds don’t seem to be able to grasp simple concepts; why have they no resistance to the bureaucratic sales pitch; why must they obscure their own ignorance in a cloud of asinine nonsense or outright lies?

Last Tuesday night the Fullerton City Council/Redevelopment Agency approved the idiotic Richman housing project, a staff-concocted, no-bid, pet project that proposes to subsidize ownership of condos. The vote was 3-1, Sharon Quirk-Silva, dissenting. Shawn Nelson took a powder.

Why is this project idiotic? First we believe that the ownership of a house is something that should be available equally, and not doled out by the government to its own selected recipients.

Second, the units in this project will have to be perpetually restricted to people whose income levels qualify. Perfect: perpetual housing bureaucracy! The necessary deed restrictions are a pretty significant encumbrance and will just add to the financial shakiness of the whole enchilada. But without these restrictions the original buyers would be in line for a massive windfall courtesy of all of us, when they sell.

A third point, as was admirably developed by Sharon Quirk-Silva, the proposed occupancy restrictions would very likely disqualify people who need housing the most. Which leads to the fourth point. These units will not count against Fullerton’s most neglected RHNA category – low and very low income. Which leads to:

Five. Dick Jones claimed that approving the Richman project is required to satisfy some legal mandate – it is THE LAW. That’s just a tin-plated, bald-faced lie. The SCAG RHNA allocations are goals, not a legal mandate. Cities are required by the State HCD to provide evidence of programs used to achieve those goals – not specific projects. And, in any case hypocritically, this project does not address the most urgent RHNA category of all which means that for folks who profess to really like this sort of thing, an opportunity has been lost.

Finally, FFFF has tried to promote better, more sustainable design in government-subsidized projects. And this project just promises more of the same old architectural crap we’ve been getting all along.

And now that we contemplate this fiasco, we feel the need for a last minute adendum to the Fringie Worst Vote category.

December 16, 2009December 16, 2009Redevelopment

The Empty Seat

by admin27 Comments

In military air forces they have what’s known as the Missing Man Formation – an aerial salute to reflect the loss of one of their members.

The Fullerton redevelopment Agency now has it’s own Missing Man, Shawn Nelson, who has had to recuse himself many times because of a financial interest in a downtown bar. Now, it seems, his financial stake in the building that the bar is located in, is preventing him from participating in any Redevelopment activity at all. At least that’s the appearance. He recused himself at last night’s meeting twice. The second time was on the disastrous Richman housing project in which a critical voice of reason was much needed.

Well, enough is enough. It’s clear that Nelson has placed his own interests ahead of the citizens of Fullerton. It’s time Shawn formally resigned from the Redevelopment Agency Board and let the City Council appoint a replacement who can actively particiapte in all of the Agency’s business.

December 14, 2009December 30, 2009Behind Closed Doors

On the Agenda: December 15th, 2009

by Christian4 Comments

The Fullerton City Council has just released their agenda for December 15, 2009 and it’s a fat package!

Something near and dear to me is baseball so I take a little more interest when the subject shows up on the agenda. Item 2 of the closed session is a conference with the real property negotiator concerning 304 W. Commonwealth Avenue. It would appear that the Orange County Flyers of Fullerton want to move to downtown Fullerton to be closer to City Hall. In fact they want to have the baseball field across the street where many a young man played pony league baseball. The Duane Winters Field just might be the sight of the next Golden Baseball League Championship. In March 2007 the team gave up being the Fullerton Flyers because the new partners wanted to be more marketable. Hmm, sounds like an Arty Moreno stunt! So the changed to the Orange County Flyers. I have a t-shirt that says “Top 10 Reason’s To Be a Fan: …Reason #4: They aren’t the L.A. Flyers of Fullerton.” That’s true; they’re the O.C. Flyers. So, will Parks and Rec Director, Joe Felz, give them the field? We’ll see…

Also in the closed session is another real property whiz-bang. Rob Zur Schmiede is working on 655 W. Valencia. In 2007 this was a 63 unit condo by John Laing and the project was in plan check. 3+ years later, what could they be discussing? Price and terms with C&C Development’s Barry Cottle, according to the agenda.

In the open session you can look forward to a presentation by MWD and a few awards to people like Quirk-Silva, Dick Waltz, and – drum roll please – The Golden Bell Award, Fullerton Union High School District and (another drum roll please) Fullerton School District! How ya like dem apples?

Make sure you fill out your blue card before you yell at the council – which you will want to do…

There are a few appointments being made to the Library Board of Trustees. Your favorite Mayor, Don “Don’t Mess With Me” Bankhead and Shawn “See Ya Later Alligator” Nelson. Their terms are to expire December 31, 2012 – if they last that long.

We have a busy consent calendar to cover so hang on tight. In the mix is the amended landscaping ordinance, group insurance for city employees, the employee’s deferred compensation, more sewer replacement, a bunch of Redevelopment stuff, air pollution, SALE OF THE ORANGE COUNTY FAIR GROUNDS (seriously – item 11), Raymond Avenue grade separation, Fire Management Association agreement, Bastanchury/Valencia Mesa bike path. There is too much for me to cover here so I’ll expand a little on just a few.

First, there for Redevelopment. Item 6’s title should tell you everything you need to know… “Redevelopment Agency’s Annual Determination That Planning And Administrative Expenses Are Necessary For The Production, Improvement, or Preservation of Low and Moderate Income Housing”. Yep that’s all you need to know so don’t look into it or question it. I suggest that if you ever had a beef with Redevelopment, this is a chance for you to SCREAM at your elected officials. This “determination” is the justification for wasting your money. Because if that isn’t enough reason, read item 7, the Redevelopment Agency’s annual report. This the RA’s justification for existence to the State and Feds. If it doesn’t dazzle you with brilliance, rest assured, it will baffle you with bullshit!

Ok, enough with the Redevelopment Agency, let’s get down to real business. According to item 8, it’s time to modify the signals at Orangethorpe and Highland, as well as re-stripe the area and add some signs.

Air pollution shows up 9^th on the list. It’s actually a MSRC grant for $450,000 for a compressed natural gas station. I wonder how much money we will throw at it to get the gas station operational. How much will we sell the gas for? Are there enough customers to make it profitable or are we, the tax payers, suppose to subsidize CNG vehicle owners? I’m sure the details are all there waiting to be found.

Don Hoppe gets an appointment as the Public Works Dispute Hearing Officer. Will he get paid extra for the job?

And then we have the Fairgrounds. It appears that the council would like to request the Governator to not sell the O.C. Fairgrounds. I’m sure Arnold will read the letter and quickly cancel the whole sale.

The Raymond Avenue Grade Separation is getting a change order for AECOM. Their fee is $2,450,000. It is unclear from the agenda or staff recommendation just how much the change order will cost us, if anything. According to the recommendation, there is $63,739,000 for the project. That’s a lot of money!

Skipping ahead to the Public Hearings we have some more Redevelopment doozies. The first one, item 15, is for 524 and 530 S. Richman Avenue where the Olson Company wants to erect 34 moderate income housing units. I believe the Honorable DR. Jones said we “…absolutely have to build these. It’s the law!” Well, sort of…not really.

Also, item 16 is the Five-Year Implementation Plan for Redevelopment Agency. The item is on the agenda so that a request can be made to have a public hearing on it and consider adopting the plan. What a racket!

Here is an interesting one. Item 17 is an appeal to install a nature/wildlife habitat along a portion of the Juanita Cooke Greenbelt (known to many who are not as up to date on official trail names as “The Equestrian Trail Behind the Court House that goes to Laguna Lake”). After looking at what they wanted to do and where, I’m not sure why the City didn’t take advantage of the situation. Here are a couple who want to improve the trail where it runs along their backyard. They wanted to make it wilder (I guess) on the slope NEXT TO the path. The fix could have been to enter into an agreement whereby they can install certain pre-approved plants in a pre-approved manner, the total costs of which would be paid by the applicant. The City could have the homeowners maintain it until such time as the agreement is cancelled in which case the homeowners could be on the hook for removal/restoration costs. The cop out from Parks that the trail has two paths and this would confuse people is silly. Are people really that stupid? Also, from what I have seen, the encroachment would be onto the slope. I don’t think the mountain bikers are on the slopes nor are the walkers or horses. So what’s the problem?

The city will also be looking at parking permit fees in certain areas. (See item 18)

Moving on to Regular Business (I said this was a big package), we have a few reports on the City’s financials as well as the Airport. Also in the Regular Business is the Commission/Committee At-Large Appointment Process.

I urge you to read through all of the supporting documents for the agenda. That is where you might find some nuggets of truth that should be brought forth. I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to do it. Thanks for reading and feel free to point out other topics that I missed or are important to you!