Category: Setting The Bar Low

Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

Who Will Be the Next Mayor of Fullerton? (Improved with Fun Pictures!)

by 53 Comments on Who Will Be the Next Mayor of Fullerton? (Improved with Fun Pictures!)

Friends, it’s that time of year when the Fullerton City Council selects one of its number to be the voice and face of Fullerton to the community, and beyond.

Some folks say the title of Mayor is really only just a name for another voting member of the council; the person who just manages (or mismanages, as the case may be) the meetings, and signs documents approved by a council majority.

Ah resemble that remark, bah golly!

But consider this: how might the world, the nation, the State and the County have perceived Fullerton, if, as the Kelly Thomas police murder saga unfolded, Fullerton’s mayor had been other than the cantankerous southern-fried buffoon who, by all appearances treated the whole event as an annoying inconvenience on his way to a ribbon-cutting.

Doomed to succeed?

Which brings us to the December 6th vote. Last year Pat McKinley weaseled out on supporting Sharon Quirk-Silva for the number two spot, as he, at the behest of the repuglican establishment, joined Bankhead and Jones in keeping the Democrat Quirk-Silva out of the rotation.

What happens when age overtakes IQ.

Well, as they say, that was then. Under normal circumstances the Ed Royce/Dick Ackerman crowd would love to cut her out again. But this year is different all right, and the Slush Fund Gang can’t afford to alienate any more voters, especially a significant liberal-leaning crowd who may very well relish yet another reason to sign a petition, and then vote to recall the Three Blind Brontosaurii.

The fact that many of these folks also qualified a referendum on the Coyote Hills development issue will cause The Three Silent Sloths’ handlers cause to pause: when the Recall signatures qualify the Fullerton lefties will have two swings to reverse the Chevron entitlements approved by Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley.

Heh heh, I'm pretty savvy. If you don't count that Ackerwoman campaign.

Ackerman isn’t stupid (although he has recently made some horrendous underestimations of the electorate). The anti-recall campaign has made a deliberate attempt to woo Fullerton’s liberal/schools/feel-good cadre by attacking a real conservative, FSD Trustee Chris Thompson. Well, okay, maybe Ackerman isn’t smart at all: Thompson out-polled every other candidate in every Fullerton ballot in 2010, so let’s see how that works out for The Dickster.

Still, wait and observe how Quirk-Silva is quietly selected as Mayor by the same bastards that refused her the Mayor Pro Tem job just a year ago.We may even hear lame explanations about last year’s vote

How would that be for cynicism of the lowest kind?

All alone.

Upon further consideration, I believe this post should address the solitary figure of Bruce Whitaker, a principled conservative who is worth ten armies of Jonses, Bankheads, and McPensions. By virtue of his intelligence, stability, and ethics, Whitaker should be the next Mayor Pro Tem, and Mayor in 2013. If that happens I’ll unscrew my right arm and throw it across the room. The Three Silent Slugs will never let that happen. And one more great reason to Recall them.

 

 

 

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Posted onArts & Architecture

Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

by 49 Comments on Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

Friends of Fullerton’s future have read many pages on this site dedicated to cataloguing the manifest failures of Redevelopment and all the attendant boondoggles it brings with it. Blind support for these disasters is one of the reasons The Three Blind Brontosauruses are being recalled. One of the biggest disasters-in-the-making is the lamentable “Amerige Court” project, another gigantic monster to be plopped down into Fullerton, and a totally staff-created and driven mess.

Naturally Bankhead and Jones have supported this gross example of corporate welfare that we end up paying for. McKinley is bound to go along for the ride.   When he does we’ll be sure to let you know about it. Here is an update.

By Judith Kaluzny as published in The Fullerton Observer

The Amerige Court proposal is not dead yet.   The council will vote December 5, 2011, whether to extend a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) first approved February 7, 2006,  the third amended version having been approved by council March 4, 2008.

Since then, two extensions requested by developer Pelican Laing /Fullerton LLC (a Delaware corporation) were granted by staff June 2010 by Rob Zur Schmiede, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), and April 1, 2011, by Joeseph Felz, acting executive director.

Meantime, the Laing portion of the Pelican-Laing developers, had been purchased in June 2006 by a company in the mideast country of Dubai, and Laing subsequently filed for bankruptcy in February 2009.

“Amerige Court,” described as “mixed-use development with up to 124 residential units and as much as 30,000 square feet of commercial area” was to be located on the north and south parking lots in the 100 block of West Amerige.  At one time, the project was to be nine stories high on the south side of Amerige, with a five story parking structure on the north side of the street.

A Draft Environmental Impact Report was prepared in 2008 and concluded that there were “no potentially significant impacts that cannot be mitigated.”

Richard Hamm of Pelican Properties said recently, “It has been impossible to make any progress with the project since the State has attempted to end redevelopment.  Of course, the economy has not helped.

“We have four companies waiting in the wings to join us in Amerige Court. We want to get the extension to the DDA as well as a few details worked out with Redevelopment before going forward with a new partner. Amerige Court is still a great opportunity. Downtown Fullerton is still a great place (despite the recent events).

Points in the original contract included:

-Giving $5.5 million from a $6 million bond issue to Pelican Properties to build the parking garage.  The bonds were to  be paid back by the residents and businesses in the new development.  That will cause the businesses to cost $1.93 per square foot more than any other retail space downtown according to the city’s consultant, Keyser Marsten Associates, which advised the city to do “more due diligence” before they entered into this contract.

-The land Pelican will be given the by the  city was not appraised, but agreed as being worth $8 to $8.5 million.

-A guarantee of 10% profit to Pelican on the project.  Pelican can submit a new budget before escrow closes.  If that does not show they will get a 10% profit, they can withdraw from the project.  However, at that point, the redevelopment agency can volunteer to pay the required profit to Pelican.  The Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency can do this without further input from the city council/redevelopment agency.

-Tearing down the historic properties on the southeast corner of Malden and Amerige Avenues.

[The DDA and amendments are a maze of turgid language:  The Third Amendment provides for a “future amendment,” but if  “a Future Amendment is not approved by Developer and the Agency Board (city council) by April 5, 2009, or such later date as may be approved by the parties in the sole and absolute discretion of each of them, either party shall have the right to terminate the DDA… .”

[The third amended DDA also includes the following language: “However, the Entitlements have not been approved as Agency has not approved the Project or any other project for the Property.  The parties acknowledge that this Third Amendment does not constitute the third amendment that was contemplated under the Second Amendment.”]

Begun in 2001 with a “rendering” commissioned by Paul Dudley, then Director of Development, and shown to city council members in closed session, it has been said that this was a scheme to get more parking for the bars/restaurants downtown.  (In December 2002, restaurants downtown were exempted from having to provide parking or to obtain conditional use permits.)

FFFF has argued for years that this grossly subsidized monstrosity should be killed outright. As I noted, above, the extension of this agreement will become another issue in the upcoming recall campaign: a perfect example of corporate welfare of the type that has characterized massive subsidized apartment blocks in downtown Fullerton already approved by Bankhead and Jones over the years.

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Posted onOrange County Government

Jerbal’s Back in the News!

by 213 Comments on Jerbal’s Back in the News!

After we outed him as one of the biggest hypocrites in the history of OC repuglicanism (and that’s saying a lot), it looks like my old punching bag Matthew J. Cunningham is in the news again.

According to the New Santa Ana blog, Supervisor Bill Campbell looks to be hiring Cunningham’s wife as chief of staff in a new make-work project for which the RINO 3rd District Supervisor is becoming notorious.

Campbell is mercifully (for the taxpayers) termed out at the end of next year and so a rat is apparently leaving the sinking ship. Mrs. Cunningham must need a job, and what better way to misdirect a six-figure income to one of your loyal co-parishioners than give them the job running your office? Mrs. Jerbal, like her husband has close ties to the lobbyist/political handler John Lewis, so they’ve got that going for them, too.

The fact that Mrs. Cunningham ran the Latino outreach for the bigoted and unconstitutional Proposition 8 campaign seems not to be an issue for Campbell who is known as rabidly Catholic: he is the guy who also appointed the pedophile-priest protector Monseignor John Urell to some dopey County commission.   Oh yeah, this was the same guy who Cunningham created a support group for after he bugged out of his sex-abuse case deposition and fled to Canada.

Nice folks.

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Posted onDead heads

Anti-Recall Bozos Step in Own Droppings. Again.

by 70 Comments on Anti-Recall Bozos Step in Own Droppings. Again.
Yes, it's man-dated. Someone told me so.

You would think that politicians who have been around as long as the Three Deaf Dinosaurs would at least have enough savvy not to advertise their own misfeasance in office. If you thought that, boy, would you be wrong.

On their website the other day they were blaming the Recall campaign for making an issue of their illegal utility tax that’s been hidden in our water bills. Of course they have to explain that it’s been around for a long, long time; which doesn’t make it any more legal – or ethical. See, the City has been raising $2,500,000 a year by tacking a 10% increase to the amount of your water bill even though there has never been any justification for what is supposed to pay for some sort of “overhead” provided by the City to the water utility.

This big pile of money has been siphoned directly into the General Fund where it has contributed to the salaries, stipends and pensions of Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Pat McKinley and all of McKinley’s boys and girls currently on “administrative leave.” Last spring Mayor Jones defended the ripoff  here because it would pay for police – obviously people who have absolutely nothing to do with getting that water into your bath tub. And that’s illegal.

The funniest part of the attack on the Recall is some idiot named Larry Bennett’s ridiculous challenge to water rate payers to find any evidence of the this tax on their water bill. Larry even promises to pay your bill if you can find it.

Which begs the question: how stupid can these assclowns get?

Of course the 10% utility tax can’t be found on our water bills. It never has been shown on them. And that’s another one of the reasons it’s been illegal!

 

 

 

 

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Posted onBruce Whitaker

Pat McPension Gets Leash Yanked

by 125 Comments on Pat McPension Gets Leash Yanked
Releasing his inner She Bear may be problematic.

Yesterday, on another thread folks were asking about the upcoming vote for next year’s mayor. I’ll be doing a post on that, real soon. In the meantime enjoy this post by the Desert Rat that was originally published on December 13, 2010. It includes some valuable video in which you may watch the Three Deaf Dinosaurs in action.

– Joe Sipowicz

Well, that didn’t take long. Mr. Pat McPension, he of the $215,000 a year pension (yes, you read that right), exercised his second vote in office denying the Mayor Pro Tem job (if you believe in things like fair rotation) to Sharon Quirk-Silva. SQS’s problem is that she is a Democrat, and hence, in some people’s eyes, the embodiment of all evil.

Now why would Pat McPension stick it to a woman who actually endorsed him in his recent election bid? Well, if you don’t know that answer you haven’t been paying attention to Fullerton politics for the past 30 years.

Check out McPension’s opening statement for clues. Then watch the painful yank on his choke chain.

Aha! Lois Godfrey. Queen Bee of the Raymond Hills Repuglican Women, an organization dedicated to promoting RINO candidates just like Pat McPension. In fact her husband was the worst one of the bunch. These idiots actually think Doc Jones is a real conservative!

Now Lois and her electric blue-haired gaggle have been backing these zeroes since the 1980s when their patron saints were Dick Ackerman, Buck Catlin, and the hideous gargoyle, Linda LeQuire.

And of course let us not forget the role of Little Corporal, Ed Royce, for whom no candidate is too old or stupid to be foist upon Fullerton for his own purposes.

So McPension owes his dubious political accomplishment to these worthy repuglicans; and at the first opportunity they must have made it very clear to their new boy what was expected of him from those who got him elected.

Just for the Hell of it I added Sharon Quirk-Silva’s pretty dignified admonition to her colleagues after the vote. While I don’t agree with a lot of her politics, I will note for the benefit of the brain dead repuglicans whom I know read this blog:

Quirk voted against the illegal Redevelopment expansion. She voted against the worthless Richman housing project. She voted against the idiotic Transportation Center Master Boondoggle. Your repuglican heroes voted for all three!

So go stick that in your blue wigs and smoke it!

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

How To Blow $17,000

by 237 Comments on How To Blow $17,000

 

The good old days...

Item #3 on yesterday’s agenda was a request by Acting Chief-Until-Mike-Sellers-Pulls-His-Head-Out-and-Comes-Back-to-Work Hamilton to buy some spiffy raincoats for his lads. 200 to be precise, at a cost of $17,000. That’s $85 bucks a pop, and presumably Hamilton got a great discount for quantity.

These uber-raincoats meet some sort of Federal guideline for work in “federal-aid” highways right-of-ways (weren’t you losing sleep worrying about that?). And naturally the current coats are old and only “water resistant.” Typical. in government resource mismanagement is always used as an excuse for big, new, outlays.

But consider this: right now Fullerton’s entire police force numbers about 140 (give or take, depending on how many are on paid or unpaid administrative leave and can’t work on any highway, federal-aid or otherwise. Then there’s the fact that not all 140 are on duty at any one time. Then there’s the fact that only a fraction of the force will actually be on patrol when it’s actually raining and might be needed to stand around after a car crash. Finally there’s the obvious fact that these people really ought to  be able to share a few dozen of the same infrequently used garments.

Oh, it's raining all right.

Please note that because the money is from asset seizure and not General Fund, the requestor is unashamed to make such a profligate request.

So how did our esteemed city council vote? Apparently it passed on the Consent Calendar nod 5-0.

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Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

“Dick” Ackerman, Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 1

by 199 Comments on “Dick” Ackerman, Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 1
Heh, heh. They'll never find out...

Some of our loyal readers have asked us who Dick Ackerman is, and why is he the leader of the opposition to the recall of the Three Shop Worn Stooges on the Fullerton City Council: Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley.

Good question. After all, Ackerman is a resident of Irvine, and although he used to live in Fullerton a long, long time ago, it’s not immediately apparent why he should care about defending the Three Burned Out Bulbs on the council.

Well, these three did support Ackerman’s utterly unqualified wife when the Dickster tried to get her into the Legislature by cooking up a fake address in Fullerton.

But there’s more, and as you may have guessed, it’s the cash nexus. You see, ever since Ackerman termed out of the Legislature he’s been looking to grease his skids peddling the influence he accrued on the taxpayer’s dime. He is employed for lobbying purposes by a law firm called Nossaman; but rather than bring in business he’s actually become embroiled in embarrassing ethical and illegal incidents (more on that in Part 2). The word on Easy Street is that he’s got to bring in some do-re-mi to Nossaman and PDQ, or he’s out.

Which circuitously brings us to the latest round of “affordable” housing projects in Fullerton, the kind of housing that costs two or three times as much to build as the regular kind, and the sort that Dick Ackerman vociferously opposed on principal when he was on the Fullerton City Council. Well that was then, before Ackerman discovered he could profit handsomely from them. Now he is a lobbyist for one of the so-called developers, St. Anton’s Partners, who, not surprisingly, received the promise of millions of dollars in City Redevelopment subsidies from Jones, Bankhead and McKinley on a project just a few weeks ago. Jones, Bankhead and McKinley were so eager to pay off Ackerman that they actually tried to rush through their vote before the public hearing was even held!

And that’s why Ackerman needs to keep Fullerton’s Three Blind Bobbleheads in office, no matter what. There is no noble purpose, no moral justification, no principle at stake. There’s just a big potential payday for Ackerman and his employer, Nossaman. And if you don’t understand that, you don’t know Dick.

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which we share a little Dick Ackerman retrospective.

 

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

3 @ 50. What Does It Mean?

by 270 Comments on 3 @ 50. What Does It Mean?
Jeez, retirement's going to be sweet...

Some of our loyal readers have asked about the 3 @ 50 pension formula that many, if not most “public safety” employees receive. It’s pretty simple. You get to retire at age 50. The 3 is a multiplier applied to the number of years you have been employed. The guy or gal who works for 30 years would get 90% of his or her highest salary as a pension. For life. Pretty sweet gig, eh?

Go ahead have three. Somebody will pay for them later...

Many public agencies also tack on other benefits as income, boosting pensions even higher. The worst scam of all is foisted on the public by the agencies that consider the taxpayer’s payment of the employees’ share of pension paycheck deductions as income counted toward their pensions. This charming little ripoff is known colloquially as “PERS on PERS,” PERS being an acronym for Public Employee Retirement System.

So, what is the tie in to Fullerton?

Well, let’s start with the Three Dyspeptic Dinosaurs, Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley. Back in 2001, at the behest of Andy Goodrich and his union, these two voted to give the 3 @50 formula for the Fullerton Police and Fire Departments. The decision was voluntary and wittingly done. If that weren’t bad enough, of course the benefit was applied retroactively, meaning that many cops and firemen who had worked for decades under the previous formula were suddenly handed a titanic bonanza of taxpayer confiscated wealth, with the single stroke of Mayor Don Bankhead’s pen. And that single stroke of glaring incompetence has contributed to a massive unfunded pension liability that Fullerton citizens will have to carry indefinitely.

Yep, that's me!

And who is one of the principle beneficiaries of this generosity with the public purse? You guessed it. Former police Chief and current councilman Pat McKinley, who has picked up the moniker “Pat McPension” for his $215,000 a year pension – far more than he ever made working.

They may be dumb but they sure are slow...

Now this profligate behavior with public funds is typically the sort of behavior attributed to liberal Democrats. In Fullerton the heist was perpetrated by allegedly “conservative” Republicans who believe wearing stupid lapel pins is what really matters. Well, they sold us out, folks.

Bankhead, Jones and McKinley.

 

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