Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu surfaced last year in this image used in his scampaign for 4th District Supervisor (a district in which he didn’t and doesn’t live).
He seems to be in a kiddie library listening to an unseen story teller. Unfortunately our guess is that the rest of the class learned a lot more about communication than their older classmate Sidhu, whose garbled syntax and undecipherable gobbledygook dropped the jaw of many a campaign event attendee.
Those children are probably still wondering about that big, dumb kid who showed up for story hour.
Tracy Woods at The Voice of OC has written a post about the slick salesmen of the Cal High Speed Rail Authority, and a supposedly meaningful poll that shows 77% of Californians supporting their massive boondoggle. Apparently Anaheim’s Mayor-for-Hire and HSR Authority Chairman Curt Pringle is going to use the poll on a trip to Washington today to grease up some of the DC skids.
Most telling is the fact that the CHSRA didn’t release the poll questions so we’ll never know how hard the respondents were pushed. My guess is very hard.
Meanwhile, the City of Orange has passed a resolution opposing the HSR morass.
Have you ever wondered how we got ourselves into this financial crisis? In California and in Fullerton we have an out of control public employee pension crisis – a crisis where thousands of retired public employee end up receiving mammoth retirement payouts, in some cases tens of thousands more than they ever made while they were actually working.
Well, one candidate for Fullerton City Council is a posterboy for this system run amok, and his name is Patrick McKinley. Before the next time you cast your ballot, check to see that the person your are voting for is not a retired government worker that would be making any decisions affecting out of control public employee retirement pensions.
The Wishing Well Apartments. Someone's wish just came true.
For those interested in obscure Fullerton history, Louis Valasquez lived in the Wishing Well apartments at 466 West Valencia Dr. while serving as the Mayor of Fullerton in 1979.
Those more curious about modern-day Redevelopment Agency boondoggles, may be interested to learn that this past week the Fullerton City Council voted to sell the Agency owned Wishing Well Apartments to an out of town “developer” for $100.
The Fullerton Redevelopment Agency purchased the ol’ Wishing Well for $1,993,433 and paid an additional $60,930 to kick out (relocate) all the tenants that resided in the 16 unit building. On top of that the Agency is going to give the out-of-towners an additional $184,347 to “rehab” the apartments, provided the developer rents the apartments to low income tenants. Here in Orange County “low income” is 50% of the median income – which for a family of 3 is $70,890. This means that people that make around $35,445 will be living in the Brand Spanking New Wishing Well. I’ll bet ya the previous tenants made less than $35,445 per year. So in reality the city kicked out the poor folks in order to replace them with richer poor folks.
Now that’s not very good is it?
And if the units were so dilapidated, why didn’t City Code Enforcement simply cite the landlord and require the units to be standard units?
I think I’ll do a follow-up post and focus on code enforcement failures under Don Bankhead’s and Dick Jones’s years of “leadership.”
The Voice of OC is reporting on a plan by County Board of Supervisors Chair Janet Nguyen to create a redistricting committee of which she will be Chair, and Supervisor Bill Campbell, Vice Chair. The remaining three positions will be filled by appointment by the other Supes.
If only I had Harry...
Apparently this little plan was not well-received by the three dissed supervisors – for obvious reasons. Although Brown Act issues have been raised, the real question seems to be how the Empress thought she’d ever get this ticket validated: the Census won’t be complete and published until 2011 when she won’t even be Chair any more; she is also running for re-election in 2012 and the idea of her manipulating this process to shed unwanted Latino votes from her district must have occurred to just about everybody.
Supervisors Shawn Nelson and John Moorlach proposed the redistricting model pursued in 2000 which seems to have been the only one in recent memory that avoided legal challenge, and in which supervisor’s staff members participated with the public in designing new districts.
This issue isn’t over. Next week the County Counsel Nicholas Chrisos will report back on Brown Act implications and the full Board will take up the matter again.
Wow. It’s sort of weird. I spend a few months in eastern Nevada and when I get back it seems like nothing has changed. It was way back in February that Joe did a recap on the doings of Pam Keller – and what a recap it was. We had over 130 comments, most from some pathetic Keller apologist calling him/herself 4th SD Observer.
And today I learned from a pretty reliable source that last night the Fullerton School Board renewed the Keller/Collaborative contract. You remember, the contract that permits Keller to be an FSD employee while in actuality she goes gallavanting around Fullerton, latte cup in hand, hobnobbing with other professional do-gooders, and taking credit for real philanthropy performed by others.
Anyway, I gather that the vote was 3-2, with Bev Berryman and Lynn Thornley, to their credit, dissenting. As usual Ed Royce liberals Hilda Sugarman and Ellen Ballard voted yes; and of course our old friend Minard Duncan had to go along, too. That figures. He has popped up here occasionally to inform us of how hard Pam works.
One of our observant friends passed along this iridescent pearl from Rob Reiner’s under scrutinized Tax and Redistribute OC Children and Families Commission:
July 15, 2010
The Children and Families Commission of Orange County was awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). This achievement is the highest form of recognition among government finance and is given annually to promote high quality finance reporting in the public sector. More than 3,500 governments participate in this program each year.
This self-congratulatory item was no doubt scribbled by Chief Commission Wordsmith and $200 an hour toothbrush hander outer, Matthew J. Cunningham, and is typical of government accountants passing out accolades to each other.
Doing well by doing good!
Too bad nobody has done a real external performance audit, including investigating how exorbitant PR and lobbying contracts are being handed out to Commission member Bill Campbell’s political running buddies like Curt Pringle and Cunningham himself.
Well, not to worry. Something tells me that come 2010 Fringie Award time we’ll be recognizing the Commission with our own special brand of recognition.
Last year a few downtown Fullerton property and business owners lobbied the City Council to impose an tax assessment on downtown Fullerton. The purpose of this “Business Improvement District” was to raise money to clean up the mess introduced into Downtown by the numerous booze joints and illegal dance clubs.
The first step was predictable: hire yourself a “consultant” who will tell you what you want to hear. But the price tag was too steep and the promoters couldn’t get a clear majority of the Council to go along.
But apparently now Councilwoman Sharon Quirk-Silva has changed her mind about hiring a consultant to meet and greet and spread the BID propaganda.
The direction here is all too clear: build up some momentum toward the idea and then rely on the self-interested parties to vote their interest and hope that the other property owners don’t catch on.
Well I think this stinks. Why should all the downtown property owners pay to fix the problems caused by the bar owners and their out-of-control customers, not to mention a City policy that has enabled all these problems? And let’s not forget – former police chief and council candidate Patrick McKinley who liked to look the other way.
And why should the taxpayers keep footing the bill?
As quickly as you can, Grasshopper, snatch the park from its owners...
When it’s Fullerton’s Hillcrest Park, of course. Then it’s a resource of a different kind: an opportunity for City Staff to play upon the sentimentality of Fullerton’s park and history lovers to destroy the very resource that is ostensibly being saved.
They did it 15 years ago and they are doing it again.
I went to Saturday’s latest public meeting to “save the park” and witnessed something quite remarkable. Just like last time the City staff has employed a consultant to remake the park in its own desired form, replete with new facilities it can market or operate, while ignoring the true needs of the old girl.
But this time the ludicrousness of the whole operation became apparent immediately. A representative of the landscape architect hired to foist the exploitative plan informed us all what was wrong with Hillcrest Park. It has badchi. And all these years we just thought it was neglect by the parks and police departments. Chi. Hmm.
So what’s the solution to clean up the chi and get things all aligned, nice and proper?
A restaurant, for one thing, down by the duck pond; and a new park entrance; new retaining walls along the Brea Creek and an abandonment of the interior roadways might just get that troublesome chi back in balance, we were informed.
I don’t know how much we’re paying these yahoos to further destroy our park, but I’ll bet it’s a lot. And I’ll also bet that Redevelopment money is picking up at least part of the tab. And ultimately the only way to pay to comprehensively destroy this historic resouce is to use big piles of Redevelopment money to do it. Redevelopment destroying historic resources. That’s not a new theme.
Hillcrest Park is on the National Register of Historic places but nobody seems to treat it like it were. Only last year the City embarked on massive alterations to the north slope of the park without review by the Landmarks Commission.
Well, good luck Hillcrest. And in the meantime may the chi be with you.
