Setting The Bar Low Archives - Page 6 of 114 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 24, 2025March 25, 2025Ahmad Zahra

Accessory to Commit Perjury

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.

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.

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.

March 24, 2025March 24, 2025About Us

Boutique Bungling Bears Bounty

by Mr. Peabody18 Comments

And by “bears bounty,” I mean the boutique hotel scam pulls Fullerton into ever deeper shitwater.

By now we all know how stupid, inept, and problematic the so-called “Tracks at Fullerton” has been.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

March 19, 2025March 19, 2025Boohooism

Observer Sisters Sink to New Low

by Mr. Peabody48 Comments

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.

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.

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.

March 17, 2025March 17, 2025Bad Cops

Another Police Shooting Fatality

by Joe Sipowicz34 Comments

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.

March 6, 2025March 6, 2025About Us

And the Award for Worst Over Acting Goes to…

by The Fullerton Harpoon34 Comments

The other night City Councilperson Ahmad Zahra put on quite a display of self-righteous indignation. The topic was whether or not to look into the advantages of Fullerton becoming a charter city. That move might give the city some flexibilities our current status as a General Law city might not afford. The issue was about as dangerous as self-rising flour, but to hear Zahra go on about it you’d think a vast conspiracy was afoot to separate Fullerton citizens from their freedom.

His outraged and disjointed diatribe must have lasted five minutes. He went for the cheap seats. Anger. Sardonic smiles. Dramatic hand gestures. Putting on, taking off glasses. Goodness gracious. How he longs to be a Third World dictator.

Zahra’s indignance was theatrical, of course. He had to play out his part in front of the dozen people he could muster to attend the meeting and cry about impending doom. But his description of the charter city idea was phrased in language that denigrated the current Council majority whom “nobody trusts,” nobody being, presumably a few dozen Zahra puppets and the Observer Sisters.

Their goal, according to Zahra, was to create new “land use” rules that would benefit the person who put the majority in their Council chairs and who spends his time buying up properties left and right. The unnamed bogeyman of Fullerton Boohoo – Tony Bushala. Goodness gracious, Zahra went on, the City of Fullerton itself was at stake.

Zahra’s other claims were so stupid and impossible that they hardly need to repeated except to show how desperate he has become. A charter city he falsely exclaimed, could get rid of competitive bidding on projects leading to shoddy construction! A charter city he falsely claimed could evade California’s prevailing wage laws leading to shoddy construction!

And then: the roads fix the roads. The roads are as bad as ever. The priceless wrap up? Zahra said the Council majority would tell people what they want to hear. And it won’t be the truth. Wow. Coming from leaky, weepy, dedicated to his con of the boohoos, Zahra.

When Zahra had finished his histrionics he was immediately challenged by Councilman Nick Dunlap for his previous no votes on infrastructure spending. Zahra interrupted noisily, as he has been doing lately, but was shut down by Dunlap and Mayor Jung. Councilwoman Jamie Valencia told Zahra not to worry – his Academy Award will come someday. She was greeted with boohoo boos from Zahra’s pals in the audience.

One telling part of this episode was when Councilperson Shana Charles, who had just cheerfully stated her interest in the charter possibility, voted no on the motion simply to study the idea – right after Zahra’s melt down.

The motion carried 3-2 so we have not heard the last of this issue.

February 28, 2025February 28, 2025About Us

Fuck-ups For Fullerton’s Future

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

The City Council meeting agenda for March 4th has some interesting “Closed Session” items on it. For those who don’t know, Closed Session is a private meeting of the Council when legal, personnel or real estate issues are involved. The City Attorney attends the session, too, in our case the hapless buffoons of The I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm of Jones and Mayer.

Here’s the line up of issues.

Number 1 is about something up at the City Owned golf course – one of the too little scrutinized assets of the City of Fullerton. This has been a source of embarrassment for City staff and FFFF instruction in the past.

Our Friend David Curlee ran afoul of City Staff when he uncovered the rank incompetence of Alice Loya and Hugo Curiel as well as the misappropriation of Brea Dam Enterprise funds. And that’s likely the reason they dragged him into the FFFF/Joshua Ferguson lawsuit.

Number 2 is about the idiotic “boutique” hotel fiasco in which the City up-zoned the Hell out our property and then virtually gave it away to “Westpark/TA” an operation run by a couple crooks whose prior record was never disclosed to the City Council or the public. Well we found out all about it, even if our highly paid “professionals” in City Hall didn’t bother.

Any reasonable representatives of the people would have shit-canned this deal on Day 1. Not Fullerton, of course. What in the world could they be negotiating? TA hasn’t met any of its deadlines, got caught recording a phony deed, etc. TA should have been dumped a long, long time ago and their purchase amount forfeited. Interestingly the City seems to have brought in Best, Best and Krieger to do represent the City. At least it isn’t Jones and Mayer. Still, I wonder why.

Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.

Number 3 is about our old friend Mario “Bump Out” Marovic, the scofflaw who took over from the Florentine Family in ripping off the public. He’s still illegally occupying the space he was supposed to have demolished two goddamn years ago.

He is obviously in default of that agreement – a deal that moronically permitted him to open up his businesses and profit off our building on our sidewalk. Our indifferent City staff and Council doesn’t seem to have the stomach to give this weasel notice that he has been trespassing and that they were going to demolish the building add-on and restore the sidewalk themselves.

Number 4 is one of those “anticipated litigation/significant exposure to litigation” items in which secrets can be withheld from potential litigants – like Friends for Fullerton Future – based on the squishy definition of the word “significant,” and self-serving public servant who happens to be defining it. Could this item be related to FFFF’s request for presence on City property? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

February 26, 2025February 26, 2025Ahmad Zahra

Zahra Wets Bed. Again.

by Joe Sipowicz21 Comments

Fullerton Councilmember Ahmad Zahra has been on a roll lately. And by roll, I mean getting humiliated by a council majority that is sick and tired of the immigration fraud, plagiarist, serial liar, and busted woman batterer. Well, no Kitty Jaramillo and no mayorship for you, Ahmad. No stipend-paying, do-nothing wank at the Orange County Water District, and no more idiot Walk on Wilshire.

We’ve seen his own flailing effort to create a controversy over Councilwoman Jamie Valencia’s campaign contributions, going so far as to basically accusing his own City Attorney of incompetence in the matter. And that’s not the only unforced error made by this little fellow.

Back in January Zahra decided not to re-appoint his Planning Commissioner Arif Mansuri, a gentleman FFFF has noted as a diligent and intelligent representative with actual professional credentials. Zahra instead appointed a young guy named Adrian Meza.

Never heard of Meza? I didn’t either so I did some research. The guy is one of those identity politicking “progressive” types, without any discernable ability who hang around politics for critical self validation – just like his apparent mentor, Ahmad Zahra. Meza says he is a Digital Marketing Specialist, whatever that means, and works for a company that arranges egg collection and surrogacy for gay people. What this has to do with experience in land use and planning is beyond me.

More importantly, Meza is a member of the that preachy and self-righteous crowd that doesn’t do an awful lot of thinking for themselves. Naturally he has been a writer of some kind for the Fullerton Observer that touted his video about how bad Fullerton’s roads are. The video recommended new taxes, of course, and even spent time wedging in support for the Trail to Nowhere with a hat tip to the community disservice of FFFF.

His bio on linkedin suggests he is still a Parks Commissioner (his first listed title!) and and even lists his efforts for the Observer as some sort of real job. Other stuff is part-time work in municipal park departments. Of course, like Zahra, he describes himself as a “videographer” with one amateur attempt listed. Man, talk about fluffing. We do have another Zahra on our hands.

Anyway, this selection has come to grief, apparently because Mr. Meza doesn’t currently live in Fullerton. as required by law. WoW. That’s embarrassing. How is it that Zahra didn’t know his guy doesn’t live here? And an even better question would ask whether Meza has been on Fullerton’s Park and Rec Commission while not a citizen of Fullerton. That would look bad. The question deserves an answer from Zahra; if Meza was willing to be on our Planning Commission illegally there’s no reason to suppose he had no qualms about being a Parks Commissioner while living, say, in Anaheim.

Of course no one will get an answer from Zahra about this, because no one will ask. Hopefully one of the other Councilpersons who ratified the nomination will try to find out. But I doubt it, Fullerton being Fullerton.

February 25, 2025February 25, 2025Ahmad Zahra

More Observer Self-Serving “News”

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

A week or so ago the Kennedy Sisters, presumably in the interest of political transparency, posted the 2024 campaign finance activity of Councilmembers Dunlap, Jung, and Valencia. They were also interested in showing the spending of Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform and its opposition to their favored candidate Vivian Jaramillo.

“Follow the Money” is their headline. But wait. Isn’t something missing?

Indeed, yes. They decided to publish information about the three winning candidates whom the really don’t like. And of course Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform has been the bane of big spending bureaucrats and politicians for years. But where is the information on Vivian Jaramillo?

Missing in action, I’d say.

Jaramillo got lots of campaign contributions from local unions, public employees, and lot from Fullerton’s public pension retiree gaggle. Not too much surprise there, so why not publish it? It’s still relevant.

But what really stood out was the omission of the massive Independent Expenditure Committee created to get Jaramillo elected. “Working Families for Kitty Jaramillo” was the recipient of $60,000 up front from the national HQ of the grocery store workers union. The local union “sponsored” the IE, but the dough came from Washington DC and the smart money was on its origin being none other than the Southern California dope dispensary cartel.

The marijuana money would be real hard for the Kennedy Sisters to explain without reminding folks that Jaramillo earned the nickname “Cannabis Kitty” due to her prior staunch support of Ahmad Zahra’s push for the broadest marijuana ordinance – the one he, Silva, and Flory voted on at the end of 2020.

More even handed “reporting,” right? I don’t suppose anything is going to change from these darlings. The sniping, innuendo and criticism of Valencia, Jung, and Dunlap will continue unabated, with the usual conflation of news and editorial – in violation of any journalistic standards.

February 19, 2025February 19, 2025Behind Closed Doors

What if It Blows Up?

by The Fullerton Shadow30 Comments

The wasteful fantasy known as “Walk on Wilshire” may be dead – even though its advocates continue their public weeping – but interesting information about the boondoggle continues to to come to light – information that doesn’t put Fullerton in a good light. WoW is yet another Fullerton cautionary tale.

One issue about WoW never discussed in public, was the Mulberry Street Ristorante parklet’s violation of the standards of Southern California Edison regarding setbacks around their transformer vaults.

Oops.

There’s the culprit, deceptively hiding under car…

It turns out there’s an Edison tranformer vault in the street right in front of the “ristorante,” and right where their “parklet” was built. Here’s the plan for the parklet. The vault is dead center in the middle of it.

The problem popped up in October, 2023 when an Edison inspector discovered a problem: Edison requires a 15ft set back around the outside of their concrete vault, free of construction.

Oops.

Now, we can’t tell what that set back would look like without a sketch. So let’s make one!

The off-limits area inside the black square essentially eradicates the poor parklet. Oops!

Edison sent Mulberry Street a couple warning letters, the second, repeating the issues, in December, 2023.

Mulberry St. Ristorante replied to both these missives, saying more or the same thing each time.

Saying fuck you to Edison isn’t a very smart thing to do if you happen to use electricity, as we will soon see. Be sure to notice how Brandon Bevins, Mulberry’s Manager, also advises Edison to talk to the City of Fullerton!

This correspondence triggered a series of subtly urgent communications between the City Engineer and Edison at the end of 2023. Even our highly paid City Manager, Eric Levitt, was somehow dragged into this low-grade stupidity – all because the City staff who “managed” this project never thought to talk to Edison in the first place.

The tenor of the correspondence and the subsequent meetings was polite, but somewhat stiff since SCE had zero intention of looking the other way. In fact, SCE notified Mulberry Street that they were going turn off the juice to the whole property on January 19, 2024 sans compliance. So Bevins, who must have been panicking, tried to scare the City into desperate action.

Bevins was plenty pissed, and suggested that the we pay the costs for his parklet – just north of $40,000! So now the City had another self-inflicted wound. But wait. Mulberry wasn’t in the clear, either.

In correspondence from December 2022 the City (somebody named Matt Laninovich) erroneously tells Bevins that their parklet can cover the SCE vault so long as there is a hinged door in the parklet platform for access. Of course he pulled that out of his ass; but he also wisely informs Bevins to consult with Edison. Had Bevins done so he could have saved everybody time and trouble, including himself. Nevertheless, the City is now a full partner in a SNAFU that was completely avoidable.

A resolution of sorts was achieved on January 24, 2024 when Edison agreed to let the parklet remain if seating on it were limited to an area outside a 15ft radius from the perimeter of the iron manhole in the middle of the vault. The manhole would have to be reinforced (in case it might blow off in an explosion, presumably) and the vault had to be accessible from the Wilshire Avenue side.

This resolution doesn’t look too promising for Mulberry Street that also had to pay for that additional manhole restraint. Look. There’s hardly any room for seating left.

Was the parklet enlarged to make it actually work? Did Edison finally look the other way? Documents acquired from a Public Act Request don’t inform us: at this point information provided by the City about this issue ends. Was there more? Who knows?

One thing I do know is that images of the operating parklet from last year show tables within the no-go zone.

How much risk were the patrons who used the Mulberry Street parklet exposed to for the past year? How much risk if Edison had not spotted the issue to begin with? I don’t know, but Edison has safety rules for a reason. The explosion of the transformer in Huntington Beach in 2019 gives us some indication of what can go wrong, and the consequences of that episode were actually considered lucky.

Walk on Wilshire. A tail-wagging-the-dog gift that keeps on giving. The thing is a moot issue now, fortunately. But if anybody feels like asking good questions about this or other city-created public hazards, I’ll bet my Nevada ranch they won’t get good answers.

February 18, 2025February 18, 2025Ahmad Zahra

The Trail to Nowhere. Radio Silence With The Capital

by Mr. Peabody5 Comments

The trouble with the City of Fullerton’s Public Records Act system is that responses are so dilatory, so frequently incomplete, and often so non-responsive, as Friends have seen over the years, it’s hard to know if you can draw any firm conclusions from what are charitably called public records.

Here’s an interesting request made a couple of weeks ago.

The request has elicited a “full release” response, so we may infer, I hope, that it really is full.

It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

Why is this request interesting? Because the obscure State Department of Natural Resources is the grant-giving sugar daddy of the 2.1 million dollar UP Trail fiasco.

I noted back on January 27th that there were problems with the Trail to Nowhere project schedule, namely, that the design and construction milestones were seven and five months late, respectively.

It’s hard to know the exact status of this boondoggle because nobody in City Hall is saying anything about it to the public. I (confidently) assume the final design was never submitted to the State because the City Council never approved it, never released a bid or awarded a contract. Construction has obviously not started. Now there are just eight months left to do it all.

This is where the PRA request comes in. The response just shares a short email string between Fullerton and Natural Resource Department people trying to set up a meeting for a briefing on some water project up north and its impact on MWD cities’ water supply. That’s it. There is nothing about the grant for the so-called UP Trail.

The project showed little promise, but they didn’t care…,

So what is the status? Were the milestones waived by the Natural Resources Department? Has some schedule modification been made? If so there’s no correspondence (at least none shared by the City Clerk) that show it. That’s pretty odd, isn’t it? Is it possible the State isn’t even keeping track of the agreement and the City isn’t bothering to remind them? That strikes a believable chord.

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At this point it seems highly unlikely that the Trail to Nowhere could be completed in time, but maybe hope springs eternal. The State doesn’t seem to care.

Ahmad Zahra and his pal Shana Charles made a big deal about this dumbassery and organized such an annoying Astroturf backing for it, that the previous council majority chickened out and agreed to the mess. They haven’t been talking about it either, even though they already took a victory lap and threw themselves a party.

Let’s hope so.