Other People’s Money – The Silly F

It’s axiomatic that when government agencies get money from some external source they often display a casual attitude toward spending it intelligently. Thus we get boondoggles like the infamous Trail to Nowhere, paid for mostly by a State grant.

The latest example of this is an $800,000 grant handed to Fullerton by Caltrans meant to improve transit centers. Here’s the staff report intro:

BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
The City received funding to enhance and beautify areas in and around the Fullerton
Transportation Center (FTC) through a competitive grant application process. The City
used the grant to work with a consultant to establish a downtown brand and wayfinding
program to assist mass transit users navigate the downtown area and improve
visitation. The FTC is one of the higher ridership stations in the region serving over
400,000 riders annually. The project would capitalize on visitors using both Amtrak and
Metrolink services.

At the last council meeting Community and Economic Development Director Sunayana Thomas and ED underling, Taylor Samuelson presented the fruits of all their labor so far in their effort to expend the Caltrans largesse.

And what they came up with is mostly just comical. And unnecessary.

It seems that our staff thinks the the most important way to “enhance” the FTC is by installing news signs. But of course “signs” is far too simple a concept, which instead is called “wayfinding,” a term implying that people are just too stupid to know where they’re going while “navigating.” But of course we know this whole thing is just make work for our crack “economic development” team who don’t develop anything except our pension obligation to them.

Of course a sign is inextricably tied to the notion of “branding,” an advertising phrase co-opted by bureaucrats pretending they have something to sell. And boy do they think they can “capitalize” on visitors. Why branding downtown Fullerton has anything to do with Caltrans is beyond me, but I leave that to greater minds to ponder.

Here are some branding ideas displayed at the council meeting.

Legendary music history? Local charm? A carnation? Botanical attributes? Modern and timeless theme? WT everlasting F? We paid somebody for this nonsense?

And, of course, new signs, repeating the theme, just in case you didn’t get it the first time.

Naturally, the “brand” looks outdated even before it’s installed on the signage, and we can be sure that in less than ten years the reigning economic development experts will be calling for a new brand, the old being so embarrassing. But in the meantime, fear not. The signs will be printed on “retroflective” vinyl attached to rigid aluminum panels.

The funniest idea of all is the notion of a “gantry” sign spanning Harbor Boulevard, welcoming people to downtown Fullerton.

Superfluous gantry sign

Of course there already is a sign on the old UP bridge doing just that a few hundred feet to the south:

And how much is this nonsense going to cost the taxpayers of California? Check out the budget:

That’s $322,000, give or take, if you count thirty-one grand for some sort of mural. That’s a whopping 40% of the entire grant that is supposed to freshen up the Fullerton Transportation Center.

When you see this sort of circle wank, you really have to wonder if there is anybody providing any sort of adult supervision in City Hall when you look at footling crap like this.

I Think I’ve Seen This Movie

It’s real expensive, but it sure is short…

When thinking about the Trail to Nowhere it seemed to me that I had seen this same sort of thing before. Then it struck me. Of course.

An expensive and unnecessary project that dragged out for years, and that was supposed to be paid for with other people’s money, “free money” as it is known in City Hall, I recalled.

It may have been expensive, but it sure was unnecessary…

I remembered because I wrote about it, here. The second elevator towers at the Fullerton train station, a project so ridiculously over-engineered, so expensive, so reliant on phony ridership projections and so expensive and mismanaged that it ended up raiding Fullerton’s own Capital Budget to the tune of $600,000. In the end no one knows how much was actually spent on that boondoggle when everything was said and done. But one good thing that came out of it was teaching me to appreciate how things are done in Fullerton, and how there isn’t one cent’s worth of accountability on the part of anybody.

If the Trail to Nowhere actually ever gets built but is way over budget, unused, unmaintained and falls into decrepitude, who will stand up to take responsibility? Not the City Council who approved it without question. Not City staff – the chief architects of this disaster in-waiting are already gone – nor will the City Manager, who will be gone as soon as his pension formula tops him out. None of the people stirred up to insult and harangue the City Council will be in evidence and the proprietors of the Fullerton Observer, if they are still around annoying people, will not be searching for those accountable. No one else will be, either.

Maybe the less said, the better…

Remember the multi-million dollar Poison Park intergenerational fiasco? Has anybody ever taken responsibility for that poster child of bureaucratic incompetence and political indifference? Of course not. That would be a horrible precedent. Fullerton.

High Speed Rubbish. Mate.

I came across this video gem the other day. Look and sound familiar? The Australian TV show Utopia, goes after high speed rail as never making economic sense. But economic sense ought not to get in the way of progress, and the idea of intercity transit going real, real fast is irresistible to some, including the army of consultants, engineers, union construction workers and land grabbers who make bank on the concept.

California’s HSR Authority has been a sink hole for billions and billions of dollars, escalating costs, tortuous delays, etc., etc. And yet it gasps on, staggering along thanks to its own bureaucratic inertia – an idea sold to the voters over 15 years ago and with little hope of opening the easiest segment before 2030.

Meantime, this titanic boondoggle is scoping the all-important line from Anaheim to Los Angeles where the line currently under construction in the Central Valley may never reach in this century. Cutting through this urban landscape, including Fullerton, will cost a fortune, of course, and the HSR won’t be able to go much faster than existing train service. What would it mean for us if this dopey authority cut a swath through Fullerton? It won’t be good, that’s for sure.

But who cares? In California it’s not efficacy that matters. It’s the grand gesture, and in this case the laughable assertion that California will be appreciably better off by spending hundreds of billions of dollars to buy a few train trips per year.