Setting The Bar Low Archives - Page 39 of 110 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

January 7, 2017January 7, 2017Arts & Architecture

The High Cost of Bad Development

The Thing That Ate Fullerton courtesy of Orange Juice Blog.

Someone once advised that bad design costs just as much as good.

This is particularly true of development that squanders resources, overloads infrastructure, gobbles up energy and foists snarled traffic on the rest of us.

So how come Fullerton has gone head over heels for massive, five-story (and more) apartment blocks the past five years?

At first I thought it was because there was no planning director and that in this void stuff was happening without any sort of adult in the room. Then Karen Haluza came along. Yes, the same Karen Haluza who, as a private Fullerton resident and council candidate, opposed the Amerige Court (now Commons) monstrosity back in 2008. But now Ms. Haluza seems to spend all her time pitching the same ridiculous monsters that were approved when nobody was in charge.

Then it hit me.

These huge projects are moneymakers, and not just for the out-of-town developers that rake in the dough and move on. They are one-time bonanzas for city staff that haul in huge developer fees and massive park dwelling fees. These fees run into the millions.

Now, let’s say that you are a garden variety city manager such as Joe Felz. You have mismanaged the City of Fullerton into a string of unbalanced budgets amounting to over $40,000,000 in just four years. Wouldn’t you be groping for any source of revenue you could find?

Apart from the physical cost of these horrible projects, there is the obvious budgetary problem of relying on one-time sources of revenue to make your budget shortfalls look less bad. But to acknowledge that problem would require honesty and a degree of professional integrity.

January 5, 2017January 5, 2017Nationwide

Planned Parenthood Blows Wad

by The Worm27 Comments

Remember that old Zakie Farmer’s Market building down on Orangethorpe? Yesterday my greasy broker called with an interesting discovery. This odd building was quietly sold to Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties in 2006 for $3,375,000. They had credit and they wanted to build one of those women’s clinics here in Fullerton.

Planned Parenthood spent three years submitting plans to the city but abruptly gave up in 2010, leaving the property to sit idle for a total of nine years. They finally sold the property in 2015 for $1,750,000. That’s a $1.6 million direct loss, excluding any opportunity costs, mortgage interest or property taxes. Our team of crackerjack financial analysts estimates the total loss at $3.4 million. That would be more than the original purchase price!

This was a major screw up by any measure. So what caused PP to buy this overpriced pad, kick it around for a few years and then leave it to las cucarachas?

And why does any of this even matter?

It doesn’t.

Unless you are a donor to Planned Parenthood, in which case you might like to know where your money went. Or it might matter if you’re a taxpayer. Planned Parenthood receives about $550 million a year in government subsidies, making each of us some sort of stakeholder in this giant misadventure.

January 4, 2017January 4, 2017Behind Closed Doors

The Formula

by Mr. Peabody5 Comments

See that busy-looking guy over there? He’s the one who won’t be doing anything about this…

The Orange County District Attorney, Mr. Tony Rackauckas, has a pretty miserable record holding public officials and cops accountable for their misbehavin.’ It took a dead man and a killing caught on video to get him to prosecute FPD cops Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli for the beat-down they instigated and laid on Kelly Thomas. Even that prosecution was touch and go.

And for years we have been seeing T-Rack investigatory work product that was just an obvious nothing.

Now we have the interesting case of Joe Felz’s Wild Ride, in which the Fullerton cops apprehended the former City Manager after he jumped a Greenwood Avenue curb, ran over a tree and tried to drive away. The police on the scene administered no breathalyzer test even though they smelled alcohol about Felz’s person. Instead of a ride to HQ, the cops gave Felz a ride home, with no questions asked. The city sent the case to the DA to examine – something – nobody knows what for.

As is often the case, history provides an instructive example with which we may reasonably predict a future event. Here is a story from the City of Garden Grove.

It turns out that the council of this fine city blatantly and willfully violated California’s open meeting law known as the Brown Act. The Mayor forwarded the matter to the DA. The result? A cunningly brilliant amalgamation of apparent action and no action at all. Even though the DA chastised the council for violating the “spirit and intent” of the law, he claimed that there was no way to prosecute because…he is not a mind-reader! Rather, he presented to them a list of findings and concerns, dos and don’ts that would, presumably, help them in their future endeavors to obey the law. Meantime, councilmembers denied all wrong doing, and there the matter ended, with law enforcement providing an expensive yet feeble shadow-show, and with the offenders keeping their eyes closed as the pantomime played out.

I think the odds of a replay of this farce in the Felz matter are extraordinarily high. The DA has lots of wiggle room. He can’t charge Felz with anything because nobody collected evidence. The cops that let him go were just following orders. The upper echelon who gave the orders – the egregious Andrew Goodrich and outgoing chief Dan Hughes – were merely exercising their professional prerogative to ignore their own policies and procedures whenever they feel like it. At worst, perhaps a gentle hand slap to persons unnamed, case closed and no need for the “internal review.”

Wait for it.

December 30, 2016December 30, 2016Behind Closed Doors

Ron Thomas Comes A Callin’

by The Fullerton Harpoon94 Comments

We here at FFFF always value feedback and welcome any comments you may have to help improve our humble blog. Here’s an example from a dissatisfied reader, a phone call:

It seems Mr. Thomas was unhappy with my post this morning, reminding Friends that:

Thomas had gotten a $4.9 million payout in 2015 courtesy of the people of Fullerton, and;
That in 2011 he told the media that he would be donating proceeds from a lawsuit or settlement to “homeless programs.”

Although Mr. Thomas thinks he has been “slandered” I am hard pressed to see any slander in that post, especially since the title of the post takes the man at his word – which is apt given his public persona as a truth-talkin,’ straight shootin’ son-of-gun.

Mr. Thomas says the post is full of inaccuracies, but the only specific he gives is the rather laughable notion that the payout was “handled through insurance,” not the taxpayers, a distinction without any difference as far as he ought to be concerned.

Anyway, Mr. Thomas says we have no idea what he’s done with the money – which I guess must true, since he seems to take issue with the idea that we possibly and reasonably expected him to keep his word. I guess we’ll have to start figuring it out where it has been going.

December 30, 2016December 30, 2016Behind Closed Doors

Ron Thomas To Donate Fullerton Millions to Homeless Programs

by The Fullerton Harpoon51 Comments

Below is a video from late 2015 featuring Ron Thomas, the father of Kelly Thomas, who had just gotten a massive check courtesy of the taxpayers of Fullerton.

First, enjoy the feeble bleating of “city attorney” Dana Fox who is just soooooo darn glad the settlement bought peace of mind so everybody can “move on,” although, damn, that’s a pretty high price tag. Of course it ain’t coming out of his pocket, or “Patdown” Pat “I hired them all” McKinley’s, or Manuel Ramos’s or Jay Cicinelli’s or Joe Wolfe’s. We picked up the check for this, just like we always have for the FPD Culture of Corruption, and as with all settlements, the public who pays the freight never gets to learn key information – in this case the extent to which Captain Dan Hughes and former Chief McKinley may have helped cover up the mess and perhaps even if there was collusion between the cops and originator of the phony phone call that led to Thomas’s death. Naturally, neither Hughes, Joe Felz, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory or Doug “Bud” Chaffee wanted a trial.

And Ron Thomas himself may have wanted to avoid a trial, too, since that would have meant a jury and the general public would have found out that he sold the picture of his broken, comatose son for publication on FFFF – for $1200.

Anyway, at the end of this video you will hear Ron Thomas exclaim that the big settlement is an admission of liability by the City, by which he really meant us taxpayers. He says that’s all he ever wanted. Did that make you feel any better?

And now we pivot just slightly to another video, this one from 2011, wherein Ron Thomas has alerted the media that he is going to donate all of any lawsuit or settlement amount to the homeless.

Now at least we can be satisfied that some good has come out of the Kelly Thomas murder, even if we had to pay for it – $6,000,000 so far, not counting the invoices forwarded by Mssrs. Jones & Meyer, Fox, and of course the ever helpful hazmat clean-up crew run by Michael Gennaco. At least $4.9 million (less Gary Mardirossian‘s giant fee) is being given to homeless programs. Right, Ron?

Ron….Ron…?

December 26, 2016December 25, 2016Boohooism

FFFF Classics – The Baby, the Bathwater and the Blowhard

by Mr. Peabody3 Comments

When it came to boneheaded belligerent bombast there was no one quite like former (and recalled) councilman Dick Jones. Here he is in 2007 and 2008 pontificating about downtown Fullerton and the “monster” he created. His endless fixation on the same tired baby/bathwater cliche remains hilarious as he twists it around and around inside his befuddled noggin. If anybody can explain what a “ruly teenager” looks like, please let us know.

The FFFF editorial staff have enjoyed long hours of amusement courtesy of the corn-pone explursions of Ol’ Country Doc Jones captured on this video. The string of priceless HeeHawisms just gets better with age.

Meantime nothing has changed in downtown Fullerton – except the passage of ten long years and more of “yesterday’s felons” than ever.

December 24, 2016December 24, 2016Behind Closed Doors

Felz Navidad!

by Jan Florys Dog4 Comments

December 23, 2016December 27, 2016Chronic Failure

Important Public Service Announcement – The Shameless Hustle

by Joe Sipowicz42 Comments

FFFF has written about this particular scam before: the Fullerton cop union sends out a pleading request for donations to…itself. Now the supplicant is FPOA boss, Stewart Hamilton, and he writes to you just before Christmas – the Season of Giving!

The thing is so illogical, so dumb, and is really nothing more than pandering to the brainless, or maybe kids with access to their parent’s debit card.

Here’s the latest version of the plea for your hard-earned dough:

Notice first the emotional supplication from behind the Thin Blue Line: we’re there for you now we need you! Well, they want your money, that’s for sure, as will become evident by the end of the letter.

But no, it’s really not about money, see, it’s about family! “Knowing we are not alone” makes all the difference. Alone? They’ve got a over a hundred members plus a completely subservient city council majority.

The cheapest and dirtiest part of this greasy swindle is tying it to helping local charities and their good works. Except that there’s no details and no information about a charitable deduction. And what kind of gullible numbskull would make a charitable donation via the cop union? I’ll answer that: someone who shouldn’t have access to cash or credit.

The recipient is told that somehow his donation will “make a difference” to “fallen heroes” although this is not explained; possibly because Fullerton’s one and only “fallen hero” fell twenty-seven years ago.

But the union, that pours tens of thousands of dollars into each Fullerton politcal campaign to elect lackeys on the council like Flory, Chaffee and Fitzgerald, wants you to know how much they appreciate your generosity. Give a hundred bucks and get a lapel pin! Give $250 and you can add a “toy K9” to your bric-a-brac shelf! Double down on that and you will get a “custom” plaque you may hang on your den wall – right next to the plaque with the singing rubber bass.

For the guy with only fifty dollars to part with, you, sir, will get a decal for your car window, although Mr. Stewart assures us that it will not get you preferential treatment should you be unlucky enough to fall into the clutches of the FPD. Still you have to wonder if, maybe, former City Manager, Joe Felz wasn’t displaying a decal the nigh he jumped a Glenwood Avenue curb, ran over a tree, tried to get away and was subsequently driven home by grateful members of the FPOA.

December 22, 2016December 22, 2016Chronic Failure

How does Joe Felz manage the great city of Fullerton?

by Joe Sipowicz35 Comments

What is that supposed to be some sort of joke?

No, indeedy! The Fullerton JC news operation called The Hornet sat down with our now former Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz back in the halcyon days of October when things couldn’t have looked rosier for our A Number 1 bureaucrat. As you can imagine, the “story” was an almost useless saccharine glob.

However, a couple of really interesting statements did stumble from Felz’s possibly sober lips.

First there was this shiny pearl:

“‘…why don’t we focus on who we are.’ Felz said, stating the city needs to focus on things to be proud of such as the downtown area.”

Proud of the downtown area? Another joke? In business terms, downtown Fullerton is an abject failure – at least as far as the taxpayers are concerned, costing a million and a half more annually to police and clean up than it brings in. Maybe Felz was proud of the profit he helped provide for his pals, lawless bar owners like Jeremy Popoff who is still operating his business, Slidebar, without CUP, as required by the municipal code, almost three years after he postponed his own hearing.

And then this radiant gem:

“Felz has many new ideas for the future of Fullerton and he is highly optimistic about the years ahead.”

Well that happy future went up in smoke the early November morning Sober Joe jumped the Glenwood Avenue curb, ran over a tree, and tried to drive off. And it gives the lie to the sappy farewell notice read by our choked-up lobbyist-mayor, with its formulaic “I’m quitting to spend more time with my family” bullshit.

December 16, 2016December 16, 2016Bruce Whitaker

They Shall Not Pass

by Fred L. Olmsted26 Comments

Another public sidewalk expropriated by a developer.

This is the site of the giant mess coming in the 700 Block of South Harbor Boulevard – a behemoth brought to us courtesy of our present City Council, who approved this monster unanimously.

I don’t get it. There’s nothing difficult about a contractor keeping a sidewalk open. It just takes a City that cares about the people who live here and use the public sidewalks, instead of bending over backwards the the developer of another massive, San Quentin-like apartment block. The only thing missing will be the gas chamber.