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Category: The Observer
The Fullerton Observer is a “progressive” publication based in the City of Fullerton. It is edited and published by Sharon Kennedy. The Observer is often criticized for the subtle interweaving of editorial content within news coverage. It doesn’t cost anything so you get what you pay for.
A Friend just forwarded an article in the Yellowing Fullerton Observer about the City’s latest foray into something called economic development – an effort to create more tax revenue, somewhere, somehow, sometime. The good folk in City Hall are alarmed at the looming budget deficit they forecast in the next few years. And they know full well that another attempt at a sales tax like the ill-fated Measure S promoted by Ahmad Zahra and Jesus Quirk-Silva would be a shaky proposition.
According to the Observer the City hired an entity called Kosmont Companies to assay Fullerton’s future and determine where tax generating opportunities may lay. At the June 20th meeting of the City Council a report by Kosmont was submitted for general perusal.
Exhausting all options…
I note that Kosmont Companies is an operation whose sole raison d’etre these days is to work for Redevelopment Successor agencies and municipalities trying to gin up revenue to support the bureaucratic establishment. According to the staff report Kosmont was employed by “the City” in February 2023; since no agenda report exists for this contract, it must have been executed out of the public eye by our esteemed City Manager, Eric Levitt. I’ll address the report itself and the Council’s reaction in another post.
I often wonder why anybody thinks local government have any business promoting these types of endeavors. Government employees know little about business operations, nothing about the concept enterprise; they know defined benefit pensions, their union agreements and petty, make-work bureaucratic stuff. These same chuckleheads just up-zoned and entitled a massive apartment project on land they sold to the developer for 10% of its new value. As far as the unknown amount paid to the “consultant” I wonder if even that expense will be recouped by their own work product.
Just as bad, the economic development concept is created and run, for and by, the same people who stand to benefit from it – it it were to even work at all. And of course there is never any accountability for public resources expended in the pursuit of this talisman.
An alert Friend recently advised me to visit the web pages of the Fullerton Observer. There, according to this person, I could find an “open letter” written by our new councilwoman Shana Charles and addressed to Mayor Fred Jung.
Apparently Ms. Charles stood up and hauled herself out of the State of the City speech given by Jung and subsequently felt the need to share her reasons with the public. Maybe she thought nobody saw her leave, or cared.
Now going to the Fullerton Observer is not a task I undertake very willingly, but I was interested to see what sort of silly drama was taking place. Here’s a link to the aforementioned open letter.
Looking down from above…
The missive explains that she walked out of the lunch in protest of some sort of verbal mistreatment of Councilman Ahmad Zahra and follows with a recitation of all the wonderful things Zahra has done for District 5’s “underserved” folk, yadda, yadda, yadda, and reminds her readers that his brand is the only LGBTQ Muslim, and he deserves respect!
I get the vibe that that the whole stunt was pre-planned and that the dress rehearsal was probably staged in Zahra’s living room.
In any case, the preachy petulance shown by this woman is telling. She admonishes Jung to rise above his personal “vendetta,” obviously uninterested in publicly exploring her assertion and “urges” Jung to apologize to the poor, injured Zahra. “If you wish to continue as Mayor” she sternly intones, Jung must put aside his own interest, an ironic admonition given the ceaseless self-promotion performed by Zahra.
That’s not very good, is it?
I don’t why or how Ms. Charles got her schnoz all bent out of shape, or if she was even really offended at all; and it really doesn’t matter. The fact is that those who have followed the self-serving “public service” of the serial prevaricator Zahra know what sort of creature he is and will find it hard to imagine that he is even capable of being offended.
Narcissists lie. Their entire performative existence is all about self-aggrandizement and shoring up lack of real accomplishment by spinning constant yarns about their achievements and abilities. And so I present a clinical case: District 5 Councilman Ahmad Zahra.
The Fullerton Observer/Heathy Community Mafia Forum took place last week and Zahra found another occasion to keep spinning the same myriad lies that he has told so often he may actually have come to believe some of them.
Here are a few to chew on:
Lie #1: Zahra repeated his origin story that he’s lived in the District 5 for the last 21 years.
TRUTH: Zahra’s voter registration clearly shows he has only lived in the District for the last 16. The supposition being if you tell the lie often enough, even you begin to believe your own BS.
TRUTH: Zahra had the crutch of masking his Hispanic street cred in 2018 because he has his Hispanic partner who he opportunistically paraded in front of Hispanic District 5 residents. Without the benefit of his plus one to hide behind, he is now resorted to fabricating a deep understanding of complex issues. Parking issues? Ahmad created parking issues when he mysteriously voted to extend RV parking so nonoperational trailers and motorhomes highjacked streets in District 5.
Lie #2: “I share many experiences of our residents from parking issues, to rent, to housing affordability.”
TRUTH: Zahra is just a typical limousine liberal without the limousine. Your political life is tied to patronizing, top-down government. You are an bald-faced opportunist trying to scam people with your “caring” not you accomplishments of which there aren’t any.
Lie #3: “We have a shelter with good services right here in Fullerton.”
TRUTH: Zahra sold residents on the Navigation Center, which was funded and built for Fullerton homeless. That shelter has only 3 beds dedicated to homeless right now and none of them are from Fullerton. Zahra has done nothing to help Fullerton homeless or the homeless situation in Fullerton. There is a huge encampment of homeless under the 91 freeway at Euclid that has been there for weeks on in and Zahra did nothing to get it cleaned up because he cares so much about homeless.
Lie #4: “We created a safe parking program for residents who are sleeping in their cars.”
TRUTH: The program cost over $150,000 and only a handful of cars participated in the safe parking program because of the security restrictions around it. It was by all accounts an unmitigated disaster and a giant waste of taxpayer money. But a year and a half after it was mercifully ended by the remaining members of the Council, Zahra appears at this forum taking false credit for its imaginary success.
Lie #5: “Making sure our housing element has affordable housing.”
TRUTH: Does Zahra mean the housing element that is so late in development and approval that the City of Fullerton under your watch Ahmad is getting sued over it? Zahra is taking credit for aiding in Fullerton again wasting taxpayer dollars on defending or being a plaintiff in another dumb lawsuit.
Lie #6: “I’ve been working on traffic safety since the beginning.”
TRUTH: The beginning of what? The beginning of your tumultuous and ineffective Council career? The beginning of time? Since the birth of Christ? Considering more people have died crossing Orangethorpe and Lemon during his four year term, perhaps he means beginning after this forum.
Lie #7: “I installed a crossing guard.”
TRUTH: Hold on Skippy! The Fullerton School District pays for and authorizes school crossing guards. It has nothing to do with the City of Fullerton and even less to do with Zahra. But he’ll take false credit for it. The morons who believe Zahra’s lies will believe anything nonsense he says. But others, smarter, will show their contempt for his paltry efforts at the polls.
Lie #8: “We need to take pride in our parks and reclaim our parks.”
TRUTH: Is that right? Pride in Union Pacific Park in the heart of your district, Ahmad? The park that has remained closed for his entire Council tenure? The park that you tried to give away to a private event planner with no parking solutions, until the majority of Council stopped your terrible giveaway of public parkland.
Lie #9: “We need to increase staffing levels.”
TRUTH: Zahra sat idly by and supported the incompetent City Manager Ken Domer, who cut the Parks and Recreation staff to levels unseen in Fullerton’s history. Zahra supported the now former City Manager as he gutted the parks system and here you are taking credit for caring.
Lie #10: “On my two years on the water district, I was the person who advocated the most to create treatment plans.”
TRUTH: No, Zahra received $4000 a month pay for play appointment via Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory to get appointed to the district; and his also submitted completely plagiarized water articles to the Fullerton Observer and falsely put his name in the byline, which FFFF exposed. During Zahra’s brief time on the Orange County Water District, he did not advocate for a treatment plant. But he did try (and failed miserably) to grab a leadership position on the water district Board of Directors – alienating the entire Board.
Lie #11: Regarding parking issues in Fullerton, “I have been working with Community Development to not negatively impact neighborhoods.”
TRUTH: Zahra and his quitter Planning Commissioner appointee, Elizabeth Hansburg, have underparked every single development that they have approved.To add insult to injury, Zahra gave away street parking to homeless from other states to park their broken down RVs on neighborhood streets. Real champion of the people Ahmad.
Lie #12: Ahmad asserts himself as the reinvented fighter for weed enforcement. That somehow he is a pro-regulation candidate.
TRUTH: Zahra voted for a retail cannibas ordinance that a miniscule measurable buffer zone from homes and schools and has done nothing to get rid of illegal dispensaries, all or most of which are in his district (wonder why?). He keeps telling his gullible supporters that he fights the good fight when in reality he is in the pocket of the weed lobby.
Lie #13: “Driving food to people in my own car.”
TRUTH: Zahra had some community service to work off as part of his criminal plea deal. Zahra makes his court requirement a part of his hollow altruism brand.
There are so many more lies. Ahmad lies so effortlessly, he is one thing for sure: a sociopath.
And one final observation that does not require a TRUTH rebuttal. Look at Zahra’s facial expressions each and every time the Spanish language translator interrupts him to translate his words to constituents in his community since he does not speak Spanish. Distain. Utter distain. What a hypocrite! He doesn’t care of his community. He cares about himself.
So I’m watching the council meeting on Tuesday and at one point listened in disbelief as Ahmad Zahra lectured his colleagues about their unethical activity. I don’t know what he thought he could get people to believe was unethical, but that’s not the point.
The point is that this petulant, preening, prissy popinjay would have the nerve to refer to somebody elseas unethical, is quite remarkable.
We have been following the career of Mr. Zahra on this blog and the only thing he seems to be any good at is self-promotion to the gullible – in the same sort of way Pam Keller used to before being exposed by FFFF in 2010
Well, okay, being a prima donna and a camera hound isn’t exactly unethical – just annoying. But then there was the instance we caught him publishing under his own name water articles in the incurious Fullerton Observer that were actually written by some Water District staffer. He even got former Councilwoman Jan Flory to promote his bona fides as a water expert (or something) under the cover of that lie. Zahra may think this plagiarism and prevarication are just the prerogative of an elected, but boy is he wrong.
Let’s not forget his convenient claim that he was a “fan” of settling the City’s vindictive, expensive and humiliating lawsuit against FFFF & Co. No, that’s a lie, too. Along with Quirk-Silva he dug in his heels because he wanted to avoid personal humiliation by Joshua Ferguson and FFFF. What the Hell. It wasn’t his money that was wasted in the huge settlement.
And then there’s the case of the Disappearing Battery and Vandalism Case, in which Zahra was tuned up by his own cops and charged by the District Attorney. The case vanished and Zahra made a public declamation of his alleged “exoneration.” But word soon leaked out that he wasn’t exonerated at all; but, rather that he pled guilty, did some sort of community service, and had his record expunged. What’s the truth? I’m not sure, but I know one thing: if the case against Zahra were truly dropped he would have shared some evidence of that.
No, Ahmad Zahra is not one to cast stones of aspersion about unethical behavior at anybody. His glass house won’t stand it. Spouting liberal clichés and pretending to care about anything except yourself will only work for so long. 2022 is an election year for Zahra. And if he thinks pouting and pontificating and drumming up Astroturf support at council meetings by women pretending they can’t speak English will keep him on the city council, he has another think coming.
Here at FFFF we like to praise our City Council when they do something smart; when they don’t we smack them on the snout with a rolled-up copy of the yellowing Fullerton Observer.
Movin’ on up…
Well, Lo and Behold! On Tuesday, last, the Council voted 3-2 to shitcan a horrible scam cooked up by California’s houseocrats to reward developers and speculators by taking over market rate housing at The Aspect apartment project and control rents – for people who make between $102,000 and $123,000. Yes, you read that rightly, Friends. According to our experts, if you make more than that, by definition, your housing is “market rate.” The perniciousness of this scam cannot be overemphasized. A new term has been cooked up to describe these unfortunate six-figure po’ folks: the Missing Middle.
The way this scheme works is that the City cuts a deal with the California Statewide Community Development Authority – a perfectly opaque agency, to be sure. The CSCDA floats a bond, the proceeds of which will buy out the existing owner, rewards up-front the agents and speculators who put the rancid deal together; management will be left in the hands of other parasites who are in on the deal, too. Did I mention that the sale price may well exceed market appraisal? Well, why not?
A little luxury for the “workforce.”
The funniest part of this may have been the revelation that the complex has a 98% occupancy rate – an astounding number – people who can ALREADY afford to live there! And these good folks will be the recipients of the small lowering of rents – or be forced to move out if they don’t have a long-term lease..
A reasonable person may well wonder why ANY of this is necessary, and the answer from the government Wohnungen uber alles crowd will be so crammed with feel-good bullshit that you know right away it’s a scam.
One of the problems is that because the apartment project is now owned by the government the property owner (CSCDA) pays no property tax; in order to sweeten the deal on The Aspect, the promoters promised a “Host City Fee,” essentially an annual tribute to the City. Meanwhile other entities are just shit-out-of-luck.
The enormity of this nonsense is pretty significant; all one has to do is look to Anaheim – a pay to play town where the City has spent gargantuan amounts buying up big apartment projects and rewarding the lobbyists like Curt Pringle, who skim right off the top of this sort of crap.
Well, finally, back to council meeting. Councilmembers Whitaker, Dunlap and Jung were adamantly opposed to this, to their credit. Not surprisingly, Zahra and Quirk-Silva who petitioned to put this item on the agenda were all-in for it, babbling phrases like “outside the box” and “innovative thinking” and brushing aside concerns about unknown details full of devils.
Thanks to Jung, Dunlap and Whitaker, and of course shame on Zahra and Quirk-Silva who were very clearly in the pocket of whichever lobbyist was promoting this idiocy.
Now that the City of Fullerton’s retaliatory lawsuit against FFFF bloggers Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee has finally done its inevitable Zeppelin Hindenburg act, some folks who promoted and nurtured the despicable assault on freedom are already trying to rewrite their participation.
Don’t get too close. They bite…
Kimberly Barlow, Esquiress of the lamentable law firm of Jones, Mayer and Gecko is saying she’s just “happy the City got its documents back” another disingenuous swipe at Ferguson and Curlee who never deprived Barlow of anything; her “happiness” is costing us $750,000, at least , but she forgot to tell the reporter this inconvenient fact.
Then there’s Sharon Kennedy, the (former, supposedly) proprietor of the Fullerton Observer. In a comment string at their blog, Kennedy is now denying her involvement defaming our bloggers and pretending that her involvement was strictly objective. Unfortunately for her, the facts suggesst a slimy collaboration with the City and Jones, Mayer and Gecko. Her “expert” who claimed that she hired him, produced an opinion that was a joint statement to the Observer and an official Declaration to the Court in the case. How that happened and who, if anybody remunerated this self-styled expert is unknown – so far, but it looks suspicious as all Hell. Commenters are questioning Kennedy, but she isn’t answering. And naturally, the expert conveniently backed up the long-since debunked statement of the City’s own “expert.”
Kennedy can claim innocence all she wants, but her track record of venom toward this blog and really toward anybody else whose honesty threatens the well-being of government employees is well-known, and the malice might be pretty easy to prove in court if anybody cared to hold her accountable.
Well, the rats can scurry off the SS Jones, Mayer and Gecko as quick as their little legs will hurry them along. But the facts are incontrovertible and somebody, and soon, is going to have to pay the proverbial piper – just like the taxpayers are going to have to pay for the horrible and intentional malice of City Hall and its lawyers.
I get quite a lot of pushback from people around town for picking on District 5 Council member Ahmad Zahra. Leaving out the partisan hacks, the biggest pushback I get is from people who, naively, genuinely believe that he puts in the work and cares about their interests. The single biggest issue of contention from these fine well meaning folk is Fullerton’s water. Constantly we hear about how much Zahra cares about the quality of our water. After all, his caring was the key reason people bemoaned his not being re-appointed to the Orange County Water District (OCWD).
The evidence of his caring most commonly referenced are usually the articles he wrote for the Fullerton Observer on water. Such as HERE and HERE and HERE.
But what if I told you that he only cares so long as somebody else is doing the heavy lifting and/or thinking for him?
The truth is that Ahmad Zahra, like many politicians, wants you to believe that he does the homework because he cares about you, while in reality he’s nothing more than a puppet.
Here are those three Fullerton Observer articles “by” Ahmad Zahra side-by-side with the original counterparts as written by a spokeshole for the OCWD:
Recently said spokeshole retired from OCWD which means you can expect the quality of Zahra’s “writing” to change as well.
Why do I care about this ghostwriting?
First of all it’s because he’s pretending that this is his work as evidenced by the “By Ahmad Zahra” byline over at Press Release Central, the Fullerton Observer.
Second, it’s because it shows who Zahra was really working for while over at OCWD. His job as Fullerton’s Representative at OCWD was to represent Fullerton’s interests – the interests of we residents – but somehow he decided that instead he would represent the interests of OCWD going so far as to pass off their PR as his own ideas and work.
Like most dishonest puppets in government he forgot the very role he promised the people he would do while chasing the gravy that was his $40k+/year stipend from OCWD.
I didn’t expect anything else from this peacocking faux-pontificator but many people around town took him seriously that he was serious and that’s why this matters.
The best defense for Zahra here is that he had somebody rewrite OCWD’s work just enough to not be straight up ghost-writing. Even he knew that he had to make the PR look a little less PR-ey to get passed the “eagle eyes” over at the Observer who only publish City Hall’s propaganda without question.
Perhaps one of the saddest things is people actually believe that Zahra isn’t your typical politician because he checked all the right boxes and said all the right things. He claims he is so different and he really cares, but at the end of the day, he’s just as much the same bought and paid for crony who needs a PR rep to write his own words for him.
I don’t read the Fullerton Observer because I find little value in their brand of blasé government cheerleading masquerading as serious “local” journalism. However, that doesn’t mean that I can always escape their content, after all they were the rag-tag group of City Hall Sycophants who hired a consultant to help the city smear me and this very blog with ludicrous claims of “hacking”.
More recently however it was brought to my attention that they ran a story titled “Weighing the Costs of Police Officers on Campus” and it’s a good example of where the Observer fails at local journalism.
The piece is a pretty run of the mill “school to prison pipeline” story with Fullerton data dropped into what feels like a form letter. It’s got local numbers and some local meeting information but it does what the Observer often does and it just… misses. And it misses where it counts – locally.
To summarize, it’s about School Resource Officers – or Fullerton cops on campus – and what role they have and possibly shouldn’t have in student discipline. Seems like a good idea for a story, I’m probably even in agreement with the writer on quite a few things.
But how in the ever loving hell are you going to write a story about SROs in Fullerton schools and completely omit the story of former Fullerton Police Officer AND SRO Jose Paez?
That’s the dude who used his department issued Body Worn Camera (BWC) to film up a 17 year old’s skirt. He also, based on the audit of his own BWC, had sexually explicit material of students on his (maybe department issued?) cellphone. We’ve never been given an explanation of this issue or a reason to believe anything has changed at FPD to stop another Paez from perving on our children.
It’s literally the single biggest example of why SROs, locally, need oversight and to be questioned.
In case somebody at the Observer finds this story, Paez’s case is #19NM12214 over at OC Courts.
See the issue?
An entire piece on School Resource Officers that omits the best LOCAL example of the complete lack of transparency and oversight in the very program being discussed.
It’s not a shock though. The Observer has long been unwilling to point real criticisms or questions in the direction of City Hall. For such a shocking story, that we broke mind you, they’ve only ever mentioned Paez precisely twice on their site; once to regurgitate the FPD press release and once to mention in passing that the Fullerton school board avoided the topic.
Hell, the Daily Titan has covered this story more than the Observer which speaks volumes.
People ask me quite often why I’m so critical of government and while there are a few answers to that question, one answer would certainly be because somebody has to be critical when the fourth estate is more interested in acting like the fifth column.
*The following is an editorial provided to Friends for Fullerton’s Future by Former CA Assemblyman and Fullerton resident Chris Norby.*
“City Allows Outdoor Dining in Defiance of State Health Order” blares the front page headline of the Fullerton Observer. The article bemoans the lack of police response in chasing off outdoor diners and closing local restaurants whose only crime is feeding people. Strange sentiments from a “progressive publication”?
California state government is a democracy whose powers are divided among the legislative, executive and judicial branches. The “Regional Stay-At-Home Order” referred to by the Observer is the arbitrary edict of one man –Gavin Newsom– that has not been passed by the legislature. The Fullerton Police Department should not enforce it. It should not shut down hundreds of local businesses and throw thousands out of work.
Emergency powers granted the Governor are of limited scope, when there’s no time for legislative action. This pandemic has been with us now for 10 months, yet none of his 58 emergency edicts have been approved by the legislature, which has had plenty of time to act. On December 8, L.A. County Superior Court Judge ruled against that county’s outdoor dining ban, as there was no “risk-benefit analysis” showing any connection with Covid-19 spread. Newsom himself doesn’t think so either, as his crowded unmasked dinner at the French Laundry showed.
There are many places in the world where the police enforce one-man rule. Does the Observer really want Fullerton to be one of them?
–Chris Norby / Fullerton
*This is being published without comment with the only change being to add a link to the mentioned Observer story for reference*
Jesse La Tour over at the Fullerton Observer saw our post and went and asked Ahmad Zahra for a response to the pending charges against him for battery and vandalism. Check out his response:
When asked for a statement from the Observer, Zahra wrote via e-mail, “I deny each and every allegation and am innocent of the charges. I am confident that the truth will come out and expect to be fully exonerated.”
Notice how he doesn’t bother to actually explain anything or offer any defense. This is a typical strategy for politicians who expect you to forget about something while they wheel and deal to make the charges against them disappear down the memoryhole.
The problem here is that this isn’t a he-said/she-said problem – this is an actual arrest by a Fullerton Police Officer and charges filed by the District Attorney.
For Zahra to be innocent of the charges it means that the arresting officer, one Officer Brayley, falsified a police report and the District Attorney filed false charges.
Zahra’s implied allegations are very serious from a sitting Fullerton City Council member and deserve to be investigated. Do we have rogue officers arresting innocent people in Fullerton? Is our District Attorney filing charges which contradict the truth?
We deserve to know.
In the words of Fullerton City Council member Ahmad Zahra himself, as captured by The Fullerton Rag:
“I want you to know that YOUR City, YOUR Chief and YOUR Police Department are committed to accountability, and transparency, and the highest safety standards.”
Let’s see some accountability. Let’s see some transparency. Let’s make sure our officers aren’t arresting innocent people and smearing members of our city. We call on Fullerton PD to release the body camera footage immediately.
