The Fullerton Recall Archives - Page 12 of 18 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 16, 2012Behind Closed Doors

New Water Tax: 6.7%? Not a Freakin’ Chance!

Apparently the much-anticipated Joe Felz Water Study is in, and it says that the illegal 10% water tax is…drum roll, please…illegal. But get this: rather than an honest study, the consultants were clearly told to gin up as much plausible reason to keep as much of the 10% as they could. The result? It’s only 6.7%. Yay!

The only problem is that to reach 6.7%, the consultant cooked up the idea that the Water Fund owed the City rent on land where water reservoirs are located! According to Ad Hoc Water Committee member Greg Sebourn, the total annual rent was figured at $1,374,000 – well-over half of the existing tax.

Of course this scam raises all sorts of new issues, as scams generally do. Such as: the reservoir in Hillcrest Park supports a play field on its deck. Does the City rent this back from the Water Fund? Bet not! The reservoir up at the top of Euclid is situated in a cactus patch patrolled by goats. What’s the rental or development value of a nature park? I dunno, but it’s not much. Has the Water Fund been paying for maintenance on these properties that should have been the responsibility of the General Fund? Bet so.

Then of course there’s the issue of whether the waterworks itself paid for fee title to any of these properties in the first place, a way back when. I wonder if the consultant even bothered to check. Bet not.

And there’s the embarrassing fact that there is no arm’s length relationship between the people that impose the rent and the people that pay it. The City Council can demand any amount of rent they want – then agree to pay it. Why not? The proceeds go to pay their own pensions! Now, that’s not very good, is it?

In any case, the public may find it a bit confusing and unseemly that at the eleventh hour the bureaucrats and their hand-picked consultant are burning the near-midnight oil to drum up ways to charge as much for water as they can that they can keep siphoning money into the General Fund.

jones-gone-wild1 — Will you please shut up.

Will the city Council buy into this load? Well, of course they will. The vote will be 4-1, and it will be up to the citizens and voters to rectify the scam at the ballot box.

Our job is to continue to expose the fraud for what it is.

March 15, 2012March 15, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

City Council Candidate Jane Rands Identifies Corruption

by admin51 Comments

Kudos to Recall candidate Jane Rands for correctly identifying repuglican bagman and fixer Dick Ackerman as the motive force behind the St. Anton Partners project’s meteoric rise from number six to number one. The Three Bald Tires clearly intend to reward the leader of the anti-recall team with a juicy multi-million dollar subsidy for his client.

Is this a quid pro quo? Of course it is. The Three Dithering Dinosaurs have been handing out freebies to their supporters and campaign contributors for years.

You see, in Fullerton the Culture of Corruption extends beyond the walls of police headquarters.

March 15, 2012March 15, 2012Chronic Failure

The Blank Screen

by admin50 Comments

Here is City Councilman Don Bankhead, who wants to propose changes to the recommended City position on High Speed Rail. For a while he seems to think he knows what he’s talking about.

Oops. Now we’ll never know what Bankhead thought was necessary to delete before his screen went dark.

March 9, 2012March 9, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Here’s Your Line Up

by The Fullerton Harpoon145 Comments

At 5:00 PM today the filing period to run in the Fullerton Recall Election came to a close. These are your candidates:

F “Dick” Jones:

Travis Kiger
Glenn Georgieff
Roberta Reid
Dorothy Birsic
Matthew Hakim

Don Bankhead:

Greg Sebourn
Paula Williams
Jane Rands
Rick Alvarez

Pat McKinley:

Barry Levinson
Doug Chaffee
Matthew Rowe
Sean Paden

As a public service, FFFF will be providing detailed, insightful, and colorful descriptions of these candidates to help you Friends reach an informed decision on June 5th.

March 7, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

Jane Rands Files For Bankhead’s Job

by Mr. Peabody136 Comments

Well, somebody has to do Bankhead’s job since he has adamantly refused to do it himself – for almost 25 years.

Bankosaurus — The impeding cold streak was an omen of things to come.

Today, Jane Rands, former State Assembly candidate under the Green Party banner, has filed papers to replace council Precambrian holdover, Don Bankhead.

Jane appears to be somebody who is smart and believes in accountability, and would make an immeasurably better city council person than Bankhead – who has been targeted for Recall because of his dismal leadership failure.

FFFF looks forward to sharing more information about Jane and her platform in the coming days.

March 5, 2012Dead heads

We Get Mail: Take Him Out of The Ball Game…

by admin282 Comments

Here’s an irate e-mail we received from a Golden Hills Little League parent explaining that despite his political troubles, Fullerton FPD Culture of Corruption architect Pat McPension just couldn’t be denied his place as a speaker at opening day ceremonies. Strings were pulled, leverage was exerted.

But what’s this?

MCKinley3 — Something better came along...

Subject: McKinley – Little League Opening Day

I contacted you last week informing you that McKinley had strong armed Golden Hill Little League via Parks & rec’s John Clements to speak at GHLL’s Opening Day this past weekend. Despite the league’s concerns given recent news re: Mr. McKinley and the fact that this is a children’s event, they were informed in no uncertain terms that as Mr. McKinley sat on committe responsible for assigning fields to youth programs, not letting him speak would be a bad idea. With their backs against the wall GHLL, a non-profit youth baseball league, decided to allow McKinley a few words.

And the dude NO-SHOWED…

So after strongarming GHLL and indirectly threatening to look unfavorably on their requests for city fields in the future, McKinley didn’t even show…or have the courtesy to have his people call GHLL to let them know. He was a no call/no show.

Lovely.

Message to Golden Hills Little League organizers: no good deed goes unpunished.

March 5, 2012March 5, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Joe Felz Sighs

by Joe Sipowicz80 Comments

Felz_Joe_2011_sml — Why can't they leave me alone?

Poor, put upon Fullerton City Manger Joe Felz is getting frustrated. And so he sighs to a reporter.

He’s frustrated that people are holding him accountable for his promises. Last year he stalled the Howard Jarvis Tax folks by clamming that the illegal 10% water tax would be addressed by March; well, March is here and it ain’t. In the meantime the City has collected $200,000 per month and continues to hide the tax from the water rate payers.

Here is an article in the Register all about how gosh darn tough it is for Felz to : 1) tell the truth; 2) do the right thing; 3) obey the law.

victoria-falls-zimbabwe-africa — It'll cost you...

The truth is that the illegal tax has nothing to do with with the water rate study; it is a stand alone issue that should have been fixed at least 15 years ago. And the fix is easy. The Water Fund already pays the General Fund for work done other city departments for work done on its behalf. The 10% tax is an outright scam that needs to be killed.

March 5, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Ackerman Trying to Sell His Lemons, But No One Wants Lemonade.

by Grover Cleveland26 Comments

I have it on good authority that anti-recall team captain Dick Ackerman has been diligently hounding OC Register personnel to start flogging the wonderful deeds accomplished by the Three Rotten Eggs, Dick Jones, Don Bankhead, and Pat McPension.

Will it work? It’s hard to see how. Two of the three are career public employees with massive inflation-linked pensions; Jones was the drum-beater for the abortive pension spike of 2008 only stopped by Shawn Nelson; Jones and Bankhead have approved of an illegal 10% water tax every year for 15 years; and all three have been reliable water bearers for whatever idiocy was put in front of them by the city bureaucracy.

Ackerman has millions of reasons to fight the recall of the gents who are in the process of handing his client a deal worth millions in government subsidies, but the editorialists at the Register have no reason to promote these clowns.

True, Ackerman is drinking buddies with a couple of the Register social columnists – the same ones that went out of their way to pass on the smears of Ackerman against Chris Norby, and to promote the useless, carpetbagging Ackerwoman.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Ackerman’s efforts to promote the unpromotable, gains traction.

March 4, 2012March 4, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

A New Generation of Leadership for Fullerton

by admin103 Comments

With the deadline for filing papers to run in the Recall election approaching – it’s at the end of the week – it seems like an opportune moment to invite our Friends to suggest names of people they would like to see run for the seats held by the Tyrannic Triad, Jones, Bankhead and McKinley.

During the past eight months we’ve seen lots of people step up and take leadership roles, challenging the Old Regime for its incompetence, corruption and detachment from the very people they were elected to serve.

The issues have centered around the serial criminal behavior by members of the Fullerton police department that culminated in the beating death of Kelly Thomas; the illegal grifting of a 10% water tax; and the land development giveaways handed out to campaign contributors.

There is no doubt in my mind that there are dozens of folks in these protests that would do an immeasurably better job governing our City than the The Three Fissured Fossils up there on the dais now.

So share your ideas. Maybe we can talk some of these good people into running.

March 2, 2012March 2, 2012Behind Closed Doors

So Who (Besides Bruce Whitaker) Hasn’t Seen The Video?

by Joe Sipowicz262 Comments

Here’s an article by the pathetic Lou Ponsi in the OC Register about a guy named John Huelsman, an ex-cop, who unluckily happens to be the step-father of Jay Cicinelli, the Fullerton policeman charged with the beating death of schizophrenic homeless man Kelly Thomas, last July.

This man popped up at the last council meeting nattering the same nonsense about what an angel his step-boy is, so this isn’t really news. What is news is this guy’s claim that he has been able to review the City-owned video that captured the Thomas killing.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Huelsman is actually telling the truth. This begs the question – who hasn’t seen the video? We know that our elected representative, Bruce Whitaker is being illegally denied the opportunity to see it. But, really: the freakin’ step-father of the accused gets to watch it? Really? And a Fullerton council member may not?

So who let this guy watch the video? Was it the FPD? Was it the District Attorney? Such questions seem not to have occurred to the incurious idiot Lou Ponsi whom we can all count upon to miss the real story while peddling pro-cop bullshit.

Somebody better explain soon why some clown from who knows where can watch the video, when the people’s elected representative can’t.