A week or so ago the Fullerton City Council reviewed the solicitation for a new garbage hauling contract. Again. FFFF shared the last instalment of the drawn out saga relating how “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra went bonkers because two of the companies offered big upfront payments recouped by a higher CPI multiplier.
The meeting droned on and on and finally the Council went along with yet another temporization – cutting the number of eligible responders to three – CR&R, Republic, and Valley Vista. Republic was told to eliminate its upfront payment plan and revise its fee schedule. The process will now drag on until September, a move that will surely benefit Republic, the current hauler.
Noticeably absent from the final three was EDCO – the original preferred vendor of city staff. Why they were not given the same chance as Republic to delete the big cash offer and rejigger their numbers is unknown. What is known is that Republic, the company that came in dead last in the first round of staff analysis, moves ahead with several nice comments from some of Fullerton’s Left Guard who seem to be terrified of change.
CR&R, you may remember offered what looked like a $4 million gift for the City to pave a few potholes. But companies like this don’t work for free and surely they can lower their fees by getting rid of the Trojan Horse gift. That’s nothing but a hidden tax, right? Just better hidden than EDCO’s or Republic’s.
Valley Vista will surely never get more than three votes since they contributed to the Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform PAC that went after Fullerton Boohoo darling Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo in 2024. Zahra and Charles won’t vote for them because of this political involvement although they certainly wouldn’t mind had Valley Vista given money to the dope lobby’s Working Families for Jaramillo PAC. The Fullerton Observer Sisters like to remind their readers about the bad, bad folks at VV.
But Valley Vista doesn’t need four or five votes, only three.
The Council also decided to let its members talk to vendors directly, something that they had prohibited themselves from doing, apparently. Will the they share who they talked with, and what about? I wonder.
Anyway, let the death march continue. Sure it’s a big deal, but there’s no reason this shouldn’t have been locked up a long time ago.
Right now it looks like Ms. Charles, the sanctimonious and self-important gasbag representing District 3 on the Fullerton City Council has no competition for re-election this November.
I suppose this is a testament to the apathy of the electorate because there should be at least one person willing to challenge the otiose uber-leftist whose constant stream of self-righteous and ignorant bullshit almost demands an opponent.
A visit to the City Clerk’s webpage listing candidate committees shows no one except Charles in the Third District.
This doesn’t mean that a non-committee candidate isn’t running, or that a potential opponent isn’t waiting to file the forms necessary to raise funds like a serious contender. But time is almost up. Candidates will be able to “pull papers” to run in just a few weeks. If they haven’t announced yet, at this late date, it seems unlikely.
Why?
Charles has taken lots positions that would undoubtedly be unpopular among responsible, taxpaying citizens outside the Fullerton Boohoo echo chamber. Let’s put aside her flip-flops on issues like the downtown noise regulations and the issue of private publications on city property. Instead, let’s focus on issues that would be pretty damaging to Charles once voters learn about them. They involve wasting money, or trying to. A lot of it.
First is her steadfast support of handing over $200,000 of public funds to support illegal aliens harassed by ICE. You can feel sympathy for people snagged by the ICE goons without wanting to use public funds to pay for their groceries.
That can’t be good…
Then there is the embarrassing matter of the so-called boutique hotel, where the Council approved massive entitlements on a property and then “sold” it for peanuts to build a massive and harebrained project on Santa Fe Avenue. The worst part was deeding over the property to a couple of inveterate con men who, after many years, haven’t turned a shovel of dirt on the site and never will. Providentially, that approval was Shana Charles’ very first vote.
Green means green. One way or another…
How about the issue of her income from the marijuana lobby – gained via her husband’s effort to get Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo elected in the 2024 D4 election. Her tribe is always blathering about the evils of money in campaigns; Jaramillo got $60,000 of Washington DC lobbyist cash working for her and $4000 went right into the Charles family wallet. Would the residents of D3 like a dispensary on State College?
I don’t want to forget the disastrous Trail to Nowhere that cost $2.5 million and has virtually no use. FFFF predicted that over and over again, although it wasn’t hard for anybody to foresee. The last half dozen times I have driven down Richman at various hours, I have yet to see a single user. Charles was stupid enough to fall for all the bullshit peddled by staff; either that or she knew it was nonsense and didn’t care. Does it make a difference?
Spinning, spinning…
If there is a tax on the November ballot Charles will have to take a stand. Spinning won’t help. She won’t get her 13% general sales tax increase, but there could be two 6.5% special sales taxes to vote for, infrastructure and “public safety.” Opposing these would send a signal that she doesn’t care about fixing the budget deficit she helped create: just a couple years ago she bragged about hiring more people.
She has to run on the state of the City and that state isn’t good. She’s been there for four years with nothing to show for it except foolish positions and non-stop, rambling lectures.
Why did this go away? I don’t know, but I suspect that three councilmembers who voted for it lost interest or maybe decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, political or otherwise.
“Dr.” Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles stirred up his usual claque to clamor against it, citing Fred Jung’s vaulting ambition, but failing to explain how, exactly, a charter would deliver an evil outcome.
I think it’s time to resurrect this idea, even though no one seems to want to chat about it. A lot of good could come from it. Despite the cries of horror from the Kennedy Sisters and their ilk, a new municipal organization could be created, with a strong, city-wide elected Mayor holding executive power and the accountability for it.
The “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” argument now seems absurd. The City is a breaking mess. The infrastructure is a disgrace and the finances seem to have been handed over to cluster of chimps. Things are not working. One only has to look at the budget disaster and the basic accounting errors to know it. Who knows what the proverbial “deep dive” into Fullerton’s personnel, purchasing, asset management and risk management might reveal?
When things don’t work, and haven’t worked for a long, time it sure looks a lot like an invitation to change.
But change is hard for everyone, especially when lots of people are involved in the making of it.
Fullerton is supposed to have its budgets wrapped up by the end of June. That’s when fiscal years end and new ones begin. It’s in the Municipal Code.
But not this year. So a resolution was needed to keep the gears of government grinding in Fullerton at current levels so that “essential services” be maintained. At the June 16th meeting the City Council passed the appropriate resolution authorizing the continuation of the process into July. Here’s the casual explanation of what’s going on::
“Staff continues to evaluate revenue projections, expenditure estimates including cost containment and deficit reduction strategies, capital improvement requirements, reserve levels, organizational needs and other fiscal considerations as part of the FY 2026-27 budget development process.”
Permit me to translate the double talk: “a complete absence of leadership has stalled the process and nobody in City Hall has the remotest idea how to deal with the massive, impending budget shortfall except by taxation.”
Where there’s smoke…
We have seen over the past year the revitalization of the footling Budget Sustainability Committee that accomplished exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. Well, not quite nothing, because its members reflected the positions of those that appointed them. Dunlap’s appointee voted against all tax proposals offered up. Jung and Valencia’s appointees supported a half-cent special infrastructure tax, but not a general sales tax. Zahra and Charles’ appointees rejected a special sales tax and pushed for the one cent general sales tax.
One committee member suggested privatizing the Water Utility; another suggested borrowing from the deep pockets of the new (or old) waste hauler. Another idea was creating a business district to pay for the Downtown Fullerton deficit. Innovative concepts for a City on the edge of insolvency that got no traction. T he committee how disastrous budget cuts would be to the public, especially to the hallowed halls of “public safety” that sucks up the lion’s share of the budget. Service levels, donchaknow.
I don’t recall anybody discussing mandatory salary reductions. Maybe I missed it.
Which leaves the City with no viable tax path forward even getting one on the November ballot. Other revenue generating ideas went nowhere, including selling off real estate, particularly that where Water Fund activities are going on. Other ideas, such as selling the boutique hotel site aren’t practical because Council and staff and City Attorney have led to humiliation and fraud on the property and has seen it tied up in dispute.
Even as Fullerton’s “leaders” fiddled away their time, new information about huge accounting errors revealed the situation was even more dire than previously imagined.
It would be dereliction not to remind Friends that our illustrious City Council actually agreed to hire a bunch of ambulance drivers on credit and a dozen new “firefighters” at the behest of the their union even as the budget crisis loomed on the near horizon.
Yesterday the site of the former infamous “Walk on Wilshire” was home to a big party. The street was closed and lots of people set up chairs to watch World Cup soccer on a screen attached to a truck. A Friend sent over some images.
I don’t know anything about this get together – such as who organized it, etc. But one thing I do know is that it proved Wilshire can be closed for special events and then reopened.
This is what many people were saying all along as Fullerton’s Boohoo idiot brigade and the Observer nitwits clamored for permanent closure as an F-U to automobile traffic, and of course to residents and businesses in the 100 block of West Wilshire. Fortunately a modicum of intelligence prevailed and the wingnuts Zahra and Charles couldn’t get three votes to keep the street closed.
Put the bollards up, take the bollards down. So simple. So cheap, and so damned commonsensical. And of course nobody ever said that individual “parklets” couldn’t be utilized either, except that by the time City staff was on it as make-work, the clusterfuck naturally occurred.
So yesterday a few people were no doubt temporarily inconvenienced – instead of a lot more people being inconvenienced, and worse, all the time.
A week ago the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters passed along a confused post about the City Council reviewing an appeal of a Planning Commission denial of the 32 unit project at Hermosa and Harbor, such appeal occurring on June 16th.
It’s not unlike the Fullerton Observer “amateurs” to post stupid, befuddled, or erroneous stuff, but this is perplexing even to Observer observers.
It looks like an old post has been carelessly updated, but why? My first thought was did somebody like Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles want this to come back – maybe because it wasn’t officially “tabled” as an issue? This has happened before. The agenda for the June 16th meeting hasn’t been published yet, so it seems possible that somebody alerted the Kennedy Sisters that this was returning for some reason. Our first sharp-eyed commenter below point out that the issue was forecast in the 6/2/26 agenda for the next meeting to pass a resolution defending the appeal. Why? I don’t know other than this is a due diligence exercise. Maybe this is where the Sisters got the idea of a rolling issue.
It looks like mostly just another Observer gagglefuck – a garbled post carelessly published by the Sisters. Sadly, Fullerton Boohoo/Fullerton Self-righteous will no doubt exercise another “we need housing” circus to embarrass the Council majority and to take a shot at the hated NIMBYies in north Fullerton.
Fullerton’s so-called Ad Hoc Fiscal Sustainability Committee met again, and probably for the last time last Thursday. Like its predecessor, the meeting expended hours of lots of peoples’ time and accomplished nothing. Not very little. Nothing.
Hours and hours of already familiar Power Point readings.
Three things worth mentioning happened.
Miss Daisey was driven…
First, Daisy Perez, the Assistant City Manager reminded the committee that if the City were to get a dedicated “infrastructure” half-cent sales tax increase, that money could be diverted to pay for “maintenance” of police and fire department facilities. She said nothing about a commensurate reduction in the “public safety” budgets and naturally nobody on the committee asked her.
Later, when pressed, the City Manger had to explain that he needed some sort of City Attorney blessing before he could share polling questions asked by the City’s quality of life/pro tax consultant. Huh? The only people who get to know the questions are the ones who got phone solicitations? What bullshit is this? Fortunately, Joshua Ferguson was on hand to share the nature of the questions his wife got; of course they were directed to promoting a sales tax increase of some kind.
You will be taxed…sooner or later!
Later still, when everyone was fatigued, Perez tried to get the committee to vote on a laundry list of options, all of which would be passed on to the council. This is the precise swindle that occurred during the redistricting process courtesy of City Clerk Lucinda Williams – when Fullerton Booohoo was trying real hard to keep Jesus Quirk-Silva in a political job.
Chris Norby, our former City Councilman, County Supervisor and Assemblyman showed up to save the day. He shared the value of vacant properties the City owns, and threw in the airport. These collectively are worth half a billion he asserted. He didn’t remind committee members that these properties would be declared surplus, and that “affordable” housing developers would get first shot at them. He reminded the committee that sales taxes are inherently regressive, perhaps thinking anybody cared about that.
In the end a completely improper process of trying to vote on something, anything, occurred. Without following any order except prompting by staff, the committee voted 3-2 against a Tony Bushala suggestion of a 1/2 cent sales tax dedicate to infrastructure, and keeping in place an existing ordinance guaranteeing a certain percentage of funding for infrastructure.
Peace. No, piece. Another piece of your money. You have it. We want it.
Then the appointees of the liberals Shana Charles and Ahamad Zahra, Derek Smith and Jennifer Duong proposed their own idea: a one cent general sales tax. This failed 3-2, also with Bushala, Wehn and Wozab voting no.
Finally a legitimate motion was made by Eric Wehn and seconded by Bushala: investigate the possible sale of the water function to an independent water company. That proposal was finally passed 3-2 again with the liberal appointees voting no. This idea really has no place to go, except that an exploration of the Water Department’s vacant property should be definitely considered for offloading.
There seemed to be confusion about whether the committee could meet again to keep kicking the can around. No decision was made on that as far as I can tell, but I’ve seen so many Fullerton meetings dissolve into incoherence at their end that I really can’t say.
I really think that’s what a lot of last night’s council meeting regarding a proposed development at the northwest corner of Harbor Blvd. and Hermosa Drive was about.
The appeal of the Planning Commission’s denial was the issue and to their credit Dunlap, Jung and Valencia pushed back on the appeal. But the real show was put on by Ahmad Zahra and his stablemate Shana Charles.
First a little about the project. It would cram 32 dinky “townhomes” on a parcel that the City claims is 1.3 acres (it looks smaller); the zoning for the site is R-1-20 which is typical in the old horsey part of town – a minimum 20,000 square foot lot, or about half an acre. But the developer applied for permits during a period when Fullerton’s “Housing Element” was not in compliance with the State regulations; therefore he could rely on “Builder’s Remedy” a harebrained scheme by the State Legislature whereby somebody can cram a whole bunch of units on to a site and fuck you, neighbors. There just has to be mandated and restricted “low income housing” of which our friendly builder was to produce the bare minimum.
Such is our government that the project still needed to be approved by the Planning Commission, and City planning staff recommended approval lest there be spooky lawsuits. The PC bravely said nay, exercising their authority as a discretionary body. The Council did the same.
But it was a fight. Zahra and Charles did their best to defend what can only be described as an out of scale, mini-monstrosity. Five stuccoed buildings with crappy plastic windows; three stories each jammed onto the site with only way in and out. And because of, ya know, low income housing, the developer doesn’t even have to bring power to the site underground!
Zahra tried mightily to show that the PC had no objective basis for their decision given staff’s assurances; but this begs the question of how much due-diligence staff actually put into this to make a balanced presentation in the first place. Apparently there was no traffic study required and because of our wonderful Legislature, “in-fill” projects are categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act. Staff said there was no basis for a claim of public safety endangerment, a finding, if made, that could be used to reject the project. Zahra tried to undermine the neighbors and the Planning Commission’s conclusions as mere opinion, not fact.
Two of our underserved population?
Charles was just as bad with her usual dumb grin, condescending routine. We have to abide by the State’s diktats and there was nothing else that could be done. And although public opinion is just great we have no choice, yadda, yadda. The ridiculousness of voting on something about which you have no choice seems to have escaped the otiose public health professor. How come you dropped the low income level from 20% to 13%, asked the smiling academic of the developer. Higher interest rates the fellow claimed; both were play-acting. The Legislature previously reduced that requirement over a year ago and of course they both know it.
A few of Fullerton Boohooers got up to present pre-coordinated statements: the need for housing uber alles. Fresh and fragile Elijah Manassero gloated that there was no way to reject this; and we need places for people like him to live, he tenderly beseeched! Of course these folks mentioned the horrible lawsuits coming Fullerton’s way – as if that had ever concerned readers of the Fullerton Observer. The “pastor” who can’t figure out how to button his shirt was there, on cue to preach to us that a city’s character” is more than just scale and density.
Satkia Kennedy on the job…
Sitkia Kennedy could be seen in the fifth row applauding these speakers, presumably before she returned to her role of objective journalist.
Not quite forgotten…
Our old friend Elizabeth Hansberg showed up via Zoom to advocate for the project. We recall her “advocacy group” that advertises her willingness to advocate for a project; developer donations to her non-profit always welcome. She betrayed her affiliation with the comment: “we are providing the opportunity for people to move up…” Of course she gleefully entertained the council with the threat of lawsuits from her legal pals.
In typical Fullerton fashion, the end the issue was punted to May 19th, I guess.
The net result of this proposal, if approved, is only 32 out of the 13,000 new housing units demanded by the SCAG and Sacramento crowd. Only 5 would be deed restricted to low income. The units are meant to be sold at this point so the positive impact for poor renters like Zahra and Charles is virtually nil.
I’m trying to figure out why the Fullerton liberal claque was so het up on this project. I couldn’t think of a good reason except that they thought this was something that would annoy northern Fullertonions – those folks that Zahra is always complaining get all the municipal goodies while his underserved constituents get the short end of the stick.
Is this really about a perceived class distinction of north versus south? I really don’t think there’s anything more involved than that. One of the speakers said it: “The entire city needs to do their (sic) part…”
At the last Fullerton City Council meeting Ahmad Zahra, the ersatz damascene doctor, brought up the subject of the annual State of the City event. It’s a big lunch affair with lots and lots of people attending. His intent was to try to embarrass Mayor Fred Jung since the Mayor is the one gives the address, and Jung does it often whereas Zahra has never done it and never will.
Zahra called the event a publicity stunt that, given the bad state of Fullerton’s roads and finances should be scrapped. It’s all about transparency and public involvement, and other such nonsense. He still wanted an accounting and naturally so did his associate Shana Charles.
But then, lo and behold. When the two sanctimonious boobs were done, Mayor Jung, asked the City Manager how much last year’s event cost the City. The latter announced that last year’s event didn’t cost the City anything. In fact it made money!
Oops.
I didn’t say that…
Anyway, ther unnecessary review of this event is on tonight’s council meeting agenda where Zahra can whine about the council as a whole having no input; and the usual Fullerton Boohoo and Fullerton Angry nuts can stomp and shout.
You might think that a conscientious public servant like Zahra would forgo wasting staff time putting together and delivering a report on this event; and wasting his colleagues’ and the public’s time in listening to it. If you did you would be wrong. This is going nowhere. Here’s the lead in on the actual agenda:
An update on the City of Fullerton annual State of the City event, including a financial summary of the 2025 State of the City and considerations for the 2026 event. Staff anticipates utilizing a sponsorship and ticket-supported approach similar to the successful 2025 event for the 2026 State of the City and seeks City Council direction.
When staff describes the Mayor’s speechifying event as “successful” you’re not going to be able to use it to embarrass the Mayor.
Maybe Shana Charles will show up and then galumph out in a high dudgeon protest – like she did in 2023. But then she’d have to pass on a free lunch.
Backscratching is fun – with other people’s money…
This blog has introduced Mr. Derek Smith to our friends. He is the appointee of “Doctor” Ahmad Zahra to the so-called Budget Sustainability Committee. His qualifications? Well, none are apparent. But we do know that Smith is (or was) the political lobbyist for the union that organizes cannabis store employees.
Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo
We already knew that Smith’s union was bankrolling a PAC for the benefit of Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo’s scampaign in 2024 to the tune of $60,000, $4000 of which went to The Councilwoman Shana Charles Self-improvement Fund.
And now thanks to detailed reporting by Mr. Duane J. Roberts, a true citizen journalist, we know that the union in question, UFCW Local 324, was up to it’s neck in schemes to bring legal cannabis to Anaheim. Roberts’ post is a must-read, for it details the close alliance between Anaheim’s crooked cabal and the union. For several years Smith and his union worked closely with disgraced Anaheim Chamber of Commerce head Todd Ament, Anaheim fixer Jeff Flint, and the Mayor, Harry Sidhu.
Ament, Flint, and Sidhu
(graphic by Duane J. Roberts)
For the cabal the dope incentive was money, and lots of it. Money that would go to the cabal leaders, the Chamber of Commerce, and campaign funds of the later-convicted Mayor. For Derek Smith’s union, the promise of a Labor Peace Agreement (LPA) that would eventually cover even part-time workers was the goal.
Belal Dalati wanted in. And then out.
First this association of strange bedfellows tried to get the City Council to go along. Then they began the process to put the issue on the ballot, with proposals written by the cabal, and then by the lobbyist for the Long Beach dope cartel; they were submitted by a UFCW Local 324 employee, and then a local realtor and insurance salesman, Belal Dalati, respectively. Both were eventually retracted, but not without threats, according to Roberts.
Rafiei not looking so hot…
Left unreported by Roberts was the role of Melahat Rafiei, the acknowledged queen bee of OC dope lobbying, and a player deeply involved with Anaheim’s cabal. She later went to jail after she was busted by the FBI for wire fraud; Harry Sidhu did a prison stint, too for destroying evidence; Todd Ament pleaded guilty to fraud and his buddy Jeff Flint left town – for a while. Nice people, right?
While none of the Anaheim MJ activities were illegal, at least as far as can be discerned, the whole episode gives off a real bad smell; and in the middle of it was Derek Smith’s union.
Anybody who thinks Ahmad Zahra was ignorant of what was going on in Anaheim and with Rafiei (whom he recommended to at least one Fullerton businessman as a necessary contact) is pretty credulous. And his appointment of Derek Smith to the budget committee comes into sharper focus.
All that transparency can give a lad a headache…
The fact that the self-righteous clamorers who have decried the appointment of Tony Bushala to this committee have diligently ignored the appointment of Smith is telling. Bushala’s political involvement is a disqualification; Smith’s political history is assiduously ignored – just like the Fullerton Observer Sisters relentlessly ignored the Scott Markowitz conspiracy and the massive contribution by Derek Smith’s union to a pro-Jaramillo political action committee.
Both Zahra and Charles are beholden to the dope lobby, but they still need another vote to revive the 2020 marijuana ordinance approved by Jan Flory, Jesus Quirk-Silva, and Ahmad Zahra. They won’t get it this year.
