Shana Charles – Friends For Fullerton's Future

July 24, 2026July 24, 2026Ahmad Zahra

No Tax Increase in 2026

On Tuesday the City Council, on a 3-2 vote rejected a proposed half cent per dollar sales tax increase to be placed on the November ballot. The revenue was supposed to go to street repair (75%) and the rest to “infrastructure” which, of course, could mean almost anything.

For reasons only explained by Fullerton’s institutional lack of ability to get on to something and get it done – one way or another – the thing was agendized for the last possible meeting to get in on the ballot.

The public speakers were generally ignorant of any details and as full of useless commentary as usual. Some orange hair dyed geezer gabbled on about how sales tax used to be 4% and was now 7.75% in Fullerton – a damning indictment of incompetent leadership. This poor old dolt is obviously uninterested in why the sales tax has increased to pay the enormous salaries and pensions of public employees. He also decided to compare Fullerton’s streets with new cities in south Orange County.

Otiose Satkia Kennedy on the job…citizen journalist!

Sinkhole Kennedy of the Fullerton Observer Sisters team who pretends to be a journalist got up to speak. I have no idea what she said.

A slumpy Kitty Jaramillo showed up and stood proud of her advocacy for marijuana dispensaries, an advocacy that earned her the great soubriquet “Cannabis Kitty.” She still hasn’t come clean about what she knew when team Jaramillo created the phoney and perjurious scampaign of Scott Markowitz.

No one really knew how to deal with the issue intelligently, but one thing was obvious: the nay voters – “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra, Nick Dunlap, and Jamie Valencia – all made reference to “building trust” before a forwarding a tax increase. This is funny. The reference, of course, was to the misallocation of millions of bucks, causing the reserve funds to diminish by the same amount. It was really just accounting errors by staff that shouldn’t have happened, but did, and for which the City got some bad local press. The council had no real responsibility for the goof, big as it was, and certainly had less responsibility for it than for the boondoggles like the Boutique Hotel and the Trail to Nowhere that it routinely approves.

Zahra’s sudden lack of trust in his own City apparatus to implement and audit the proceeds from the sales tax increase was completely disingenuous. After almost 8 years of approving many unbalanced budgets, had Zahra realized his Come to Jesus Moment? Of course not. None of his long oration rang true, except as it was true to his form: dissimulating petulance personified. He wanted a 1 cent tax back in 2020, but now the faith of the taxpayers has been shaken. All bullshit. The fact is he still wanted a 1 cent general sales tax but knew he couldn’t get the votes to put it on the ballot. His argument that this proposal might harm future sales tax proposals was sheer nonsense.

Fortunately, Zahra’s career in political theater will over in four months, and he can go back to whatever scam he did to earn his crust.

The yes voters on the question were Charles and Jung. The former was a big drumbeater for ballotizing the tax, described the practical need, and she was assured by the “safeguards” built in. A sideways mention about Zahra letting personalities get in the way of exigency was met with a Zahra denial that nobody can have taken seriously.

Mayor Fred Jung said little, except that now, at this point he was willing to support any kind of tax, a sort of depressing, defeatist statement.

Anyway, the thing failed, and that’s that. At least for now.

July 22, 2026July 22, 2026Ahmad Zahra

Tuesday’s TEFRA Tank

by Mr. Peabody16 Comments

The scheme to rubber stamp a deal that would have cost the City and local agencies a million bucks a year in property tax revnue was voted down 3-2 last night.

On Sunday I shared the news of the agenda item returning to the council after being continued in June. Let me reiterate.

TEFRA stands for Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, and authorization permits a little-known statewide housing agency to issue bonds that will provide $180,000,000 for an unknown non-profit entity to buy and remodel two huge apartment complexes over by Cal State Fullerton. The projects will subsequently be restricted to low and medium income renters.

Of course the kickers were that the projects were going to be eventually removed from the property tax rolls by the County Assessor and that the 395 now-restricted units would not even count toward the 13,000 new unit quota demanded by the State of California based on numbers cooked up in their social engineering lab by SCAG – the Southern California Associations of Governments.

The whole thing was obviously being presented by a completely biased staff led by the ever-egregious Sunaya Thomas. All you had to do was pick up on the tenor of the staff report.

Well, naturally the two socialists on the council were big supporters, as predicted. It was all about subsidizing the so-called “missing middle” a comparatively new term concocted by sociologists to identify a new group of underserved (subsidized) people like teachers and nurses and Shana Charles’ pals, the impoverished Associate Professors at CSUF. Charles bemoaned the latter’s rough life in the slums and tent cities. Okay, I made that up but you get the picture.

The lack of logic from Charles – and her fellow traveler the Dodgy Doctor from Damascus, Ahmad Zahra – peddled crap so illogical I would be remiss if I didn’t share it.

Charles claimed that this plan would remove existing overcrowding in the existing apartments. She didn’t say how; presumably locked in lower rents would mean less crowding as fewer residents were needed to make the monthly nut. Huh? What would keep future tenants from from reducing whatever the cost is by jamming into apartment units? She didn’t think about the outcome of her assertion: if the crowding were lessened, where the hell would those people go? The street? Her position was that the already badly bungled could suck up the property tax loss.

“Dr.” Zahra made an even stupider claim: that these subsidized public housing projects would boost the sales taxes, the local economy and hence the city budget! What the everlasting fuck? Did this idiot want us to believe that none of the current residents in the “market rate” apartments contribute to the Fullerton economy?

A very-much awake Chris Norby in a contemplative mood…

Fortunately, wiser heads chimed in. Earlier, former Councilman Chris Norby showed up to lay it out to the Council. The projects will provide no property tax but demand all of the usual services, plus more; and that the so-called “preservation” of units described by staff was nonsense. But of course the tender young Marxist Elijah Manassero was there to promote government subsidized housing, possibly hoping to move out of his dad’s house someday.

Nobody bothered to ask if these complexes were already effectively affordable, and were already being used by folks who work and go shopping in the area. Staff didn’t say, another indicator of the lack of professional objectivity from our under-compensated employees.

Nick Dunlap, to his credit, demonstrated the appropriate annoyance at the nonsense, skewering the weepy idiocy presented by Zahra and Charles. He immediately moved a substitute motion to can the idea right after a motion to approve was made by Zahra and Charles. It was seconded by Jamie Valencia, and the in the vote, Mayor Fred Jung provided the deciding vote to pull the plug.

I would hope that this is the last time we’ll see this sort of thing, but the old adage “it’s never over ’till staff says it is” is always a Fullerton factor.

July 15, 2026July 15, 2026About Us

Fullerton Throws Itself a Pity Party

by The Fullerton Harpoon25 Comments

Last night the Fullerton City Council held a special meeting. They called it a budget workshop, but it sure turned into a lachrymose affair. The weepy speechifying seemed more than a little rehearsed.

The meeting itself was more or less a rehash of previous meetings. Of course it should have been scheduled for July 7th but that would have interfered with the “community” budget sessions that week which staff claimed had 30 attendees; the survey that went out elicited about 70 responses. 100 out of 150,000 people. They had to admit that statistically, the responses didn’t mean much.

In an almost miraculous turn of events, staff cut the earlier projected deficit all the way down to $3.8 million. How, you ask? By eliminated vacant positions and jockeying some funds around.

Staff presented three scenarios: A, B, and C, in least to most draconian order, all draconian, of course. Option C basically kept the reserve funds around $16,000,000 by not using them in the next three years. None of the options involved laying anybody off or negotiating pay cuts with the unions. Keep that in mind, because the weepy handwringing that followed would make you think personal catastrophes had occurred.

Department by department got up to sing the blues to a receptive council. Goddamn, you’d think we were in the Mississippi Delta. The upshot was that nary a single department head had the grit to proclaim they’d get it done no matter what. No, that would be bad form.

I learned a couple of interesting facts. A police corporal – a corporal, mind you – costs $300,000 per year; and an Associate Planner is currently subsidized by the General Fund to the tune of $70,000 a year. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the latter, the amount is shocking. It either means that Planning fees would not be sufficiently recovering costs, or that someone was projected to be costing the public an awful lot for general, non-billable time in City Hall.

I would be remiss indeed if I didn’t mention the good offices of consultant Grant Thornton, who, by means of a change order, presented a completely useless report whose “conclusions” were a summary of perfectly obvious statements. It was maddening to watch the consultant read off the Power Point slides, verbatim. I wonder how much that cost.

Public comments were highlighted by an extremely angry woman named Jody Vallejo, Chris Norby (who again touted the services of the Sheriff’s Department and the sale of surplus property), and a call in from the funny little boy-man Dominic Moonbeam

Won’t look you in the eye while you’re trashing him…

Then to the Council. Mayor Fred Jung read an odd and uncharacteristically long oration in which he took personal responsibility for the City’s budget situation and yet defended some of his more dubious votes and noted that Placentia’s privatizing their paramedics did them no good since they too, were having a budget crisis, a very strange and illogical statement. He offered that the unanticipated ICE intrusion into Fullerton was somehow responsible for some contribution to Fullerton’s financial woes, but gave nothing to support that claim. Overall, I couldn’t really figure out what in the world he was trying to communicate, although if I heard rightly he did seem to suggest at one point that a general sales tax was needed.

Shana Charles and Ahmad Zahra blathered on and on. I had to leave off to get a couple of frosty beverages. I did get back in time to watch “Dr.” Zahra compete with Jung to take responsibility for the situation, and that was pretty entertaining.

Fortunately, Jamie Valencia had little say other than to point out the relation between budget problems and municipal credit ratings; she emotionally and awkwardly read a prepared statement about the crisis, but reminded attendees that she’s only been around for a year and a half.

Nick Dunlap concluded the speechifying with a soliloquy that included the claim that somebody in the Sheriff Department confided to him that contracting with Fullerton for police services wouldn’t work and that the City would owe the Federal government an untold fortune if the Fullerton Airport were redeveloped. I think both these claims need to be substantiated.

As usual everybody sang the praises of “economic development,” the talismanic chant of those who are either extremely ignorant, extremely cynical, or extremely desperate. Just because it’s been an unproven bureaucratic activity in the past is no reason to doubt its efficacy in the future; it must be protected, even nurtured! No one said anything about proving that economic development even pays for itself. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Needless to say, everyone also sang the praises of “police and fire” the ruthless and untouchable combination of unions that makes or breaks candidates and whose member suck up 70% of the General Fund.

The three-hour weep-fest ended in the usual way a morass of confusion out of which the City Manager, Eddie Manfo is supposed to make a final agenda item that will lead to an approval of the budget, now two weeks late. He pleaded for some direction about how to come back but got none. Oh, well. Eddie’s services cost us at least $400,000, a year, even more than a police corporal, so he ought to be able figure out something plausible.

In the end Manfro asked if it would be okay if the budget decision were made in August. Nobody said no. Then they all stood up and went home.

July 9, 2026July 9, 2026Ahmad Zahra

Still Taking out the Trash

by The Fullerton Harpoon24 Comments

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.

July 8, 2026July 8, 2026Boohooism

Will There Be a District 3 Challenger For Shana Charles?

by The Fullerton Harpoon24 Comments

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.

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.

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?

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.

I could go on, but really why bother?

June 24, 2026June 24, 2026Ahmad Zahra

Hey, Where’s Our Charter?

by The Desert Rat8 Comments

Today, one of our commenters, “Union Avenue,” wondered what happened to the idea of Fullerton becoming a Charter City.

13 months ago the Fullerton City Council voted 3-2 to start studying the idea of Charter City status for Fullerton, a move away from what it is now – a General Law City.

Then something almost odd happened. The issue disappeared completely. No discussion. Nothing.

This isn’t the first time in Fullerton something just vanished. We can all remember the $1,000,000 so-called Core and Corridors Specific Plan vaporized completely without a rearward glance.

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.

June 22, 2026June 22, 2026A Manfro All Seasons

The Dog Ate My Homework

by The Fullerton Harpoon44 Comments

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.”

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.

June 19, 2026June 19, 2026A Step in the Right Direction

Wilshire Avenue Hosts Party

by Mr. Peabody46 Comments

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.

June 11, 2026June 11, 2026Ahmad Zahra

Say What, Observers?

by The Fullerton Harpoon12 Comments

REVISED 9:18AM

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.

Except that the appeal hearing already took place back on May 5th.

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.

May 17, 2026May 17, 2026About Us

Ad Hoc Tuah Part…Aw, Who Cares?

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

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.

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.

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.