Friends For Fullerton's Future

Yesterday U.S. District Judge Fernando Aelle-Rocha hit cannabis lobbyist Melahat Rafiei with a six month jail sentence and a $10,000 fine for fraud. In reality she had already pleaded guilty to trying to bribe two Irvine councilmembers to help her client – somebody in the local marijuana cartel. This seems like a light penalty for what she admitted.

Her adherents (she has some thanks to her years of disingenuous self-promotion in Democrat politics) claim that her ratting out some of Anaheim’s crooks should have meant no jail time at all.

What will this mean for the dope lobby in Fullerton? Hard to say. We know that the business has insinuated itself into Fullerton. Ahmad Zahra appointed one of its political spokesholes, Derek Smith to the Fiscal Sustainability Ad Hoc Committee. And the Dutiful Doctor from Damascus has been an active and open drum-beater for the marijuana dispensary cause for years. He actually recommended Rafiei as a lobbyist to at least one commercial property owner that I know. How many others have there been?

We also know that Zahra and the dope lobby worked real hard to elect Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo (above) last fall. Had Jaramillo won we would have MJ stores in Fullerton, possibly 100 feet from your house.

People have been speculating about Zahra’s ties to the local Marijuana Trust. How beholden is he? Ditto Sheena Charles, whose husband, Andre, got a tidy $4,000 from the marijuana worker union’s PAC, “Working Families for Jaramillo.”

The Fullerton Observer and their followers have been vocal about the political influence of Tony Bushala, but have been completely silent about the long reach of the MJ cartel into Fullerton politics. I don’t wonder why.

As the saying goes about the sooner or later discovery by the blind pig.

In this instance the issue was the lack of the actual solid waste RFP document in Tuesday’s presentation to the Fullerton City Council. Tender Elijah popped up during public comments to note this omission, and he was right to do so.

Maybe innocent Elijah came across this on his own – it’s pretty blatant. Or maybe he got it from my FFFF colleague Disillusioned Ex-hippy, who wrote this on Monday:

“Item 21 is the start of something big. Fullerton’s trash service contract is coming up in June, 2027 and staff wants to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP). The RFP solicitation document itself remains a mystery to the public because it isn’t attached to the agenda. Sorry.“

This sort of thing makes everybody look bad. The City staffer who got up to explain how come the actual document was not attached to the staff report gave the lamest of lame explanations: the ad hoc committee looked at it.

The bare fact that this actually happened bespeaks a culture in which the bureaucracy assumes the council won’t read anything more complicated than a Denny’s menu and will rely on staff to tell them what to do. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The sad fact is that most electeds are more interested in photo ops than in doing any real work. And reading documents you are voting on takes effort.

Then there’s the FU to the public, deliberate opacity through design or indifference. I think it’s the culture issue, again; a culture that is created by inertia, where sort of okay is good enough. Hopefully we will get a new City Manager who understands this. But don’t hold your breath.

The August 19th Fullerton City Council meeting has a few sort of interesting items.

First, we have the Closed Session topic of Fullerton joining the class action lawsuit against ICE behavior on our streets.

This is interesting because it aligns with the “transparency” protest cooked up by the Kennedy Sisters long before the agenda was even published. Obviously Zahra and Charles leaked confidential attorney-client information from the City Attorney as to why this should be discussed first behind a closed door, as Harpoon insinuated in the linked post, above.

Anyhow, whatever happens behind this closed door will soon be leaked by Zahra and Charles to Fullerton Boohoo, some of whom will show up to blow three minutes (each) of everybody’s time with the usual rhetoric. But now the rhetoric will be about the lack of transparency of Jung, Valencia, and Dunlap.

Consent Calendar Item 12 is so poorly written it’s impossible to understand. Are “Downtown Parking Program Funds” just dumped into the General Fund (10) and then doled out to the appropriate downtown projects? The agenda report gives no separate accounting. If those funds are buried in the General Fund, why? Why aren’t they just placed in their own enterprise fund to begin with? Are downtown parking revenues being used to pay General Fund responsibilities? Typical opacity. Don’t expect anybody on the City Council to inquire, and don’t expect Young Elijah Manassero to demand transparency with his special brand of tender earnestness

Consent Calendar Item #14 deals with the usual pea-under-the-walnut shell budgeting for “Phase 2” work on the dismal disaster formally known as the UP Park – The Poison Park in FFFF jargon. The slow and incredibly expensive death march has begun with no mention of why the park was fenced off decades ago. The staff report just says “the park closed approximately 20 years ago” as if the park just decided to close itself. The City closed the park with zero fanfare because it was a complete fiasco from the beginning, a multi-million dollar monument to six-figure bureaucratic failure; a thing something nobody outside City Hall asked for or wanted.

The really bad part about this item is how the Council is being asked to transfer another $300,000 to the project. Why? More mission cost creep, of course.

Item 21 is the start of something big. Fullerton’s trash service contract is coming up in June, 2027 and staff wants to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP). The RFP solicitation document itself remains a mystery to the public because it isn’t attached to the agenda. Sorry.

These contracts with trash haulers involve huge amounts of money over the term of agreements. Hundreds of millions. Republic Services is our current “vendor,” grandfathered in from the old MG Disposal operation, if you go back far enough. Republic’s foot in the door may not help in obtaining future contract. It recently underwent a work stoppage by Teamsters workers in solidarity with Republic employees in…Boston. We were the ones affected.

Another Republic problem, apparently, has been their continued unwillingness to come to terms with the City about stuff required by a state mandate, as described in the staff report.

Oops. Making the City look bad to the pointy heads in Sacramento is no way to endear yourself to city staff. The inclusion of this episode in the staff report can’t be good news for the good folks at Republic.

Republic has, no doubt, been busy greasing the Fullerton council axle recently, and no doubt others will soon follow.

FFFF has been notified that a complaint against serial prevaricator and immigration fraud Ahmad Zahra has been lodged with the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).

Although I don’t have a copy of the complaint yet, the gist of it is that for years Zahra has been identifying the Capital One Bank in the City of Industry as a “payee” for all sorts of non-related campaign expenses. These include travel(?), web service and office expenses.

I decided to check out Mr. Zahra’s campaign expenses just for the first half of 2025. He listed only two payees:

Sure enough, there’s Capital One Bank. $2329, under the heading of OFC – Office Expenses. Office expenses? So where, exactly is Zahra’s campaign office? In his little apartment by the freeway? Someplace else? That’s a lot of paper clips and staples.

Comically, Zahra’s campaign “office expenses” brought him in exactly $0 in the first two quarters of this year, a fairly damning indictment of his business acumen, at best. Zero.

So I went back a few years for fun. Here’s an entry from 2020:

Sure enough, here’s Zahra using Capital One, City of Industry as a payee for IT expenses. Here are some more:

The Bank is listed as payee for IT expenses, and meeting attendance? Huh?

When he was running for re-election in 2022 Zahra was really casting his campaign bread on the waters. But a lot of the water was murky. One example listed the bank as payee for civic donations! To whom? What for? Who Knows? Big secret.

All of Zahra’s other Capital One “expenses” in 2022 were split among various FPPC codes, including more expensive travel, hiding the true nature of these expenses, and who he really paid.

A cynical person might conclude that Zahra has been deliberately hiding his real campaign financial activity for almost seven years. But why? Have any of these payments gone to personally support Zahra himself? Maybe the FPPC can find out.

And maybe Young Elijah Manassero, the young ethics crusader will dig deep into this mess.

And by the way, who is “Tammi McIntyre” who is signing off on this as Zahra’s treasurer and why on earth is she submitting this junk to the City Clerk? Is Tammi McIntyre in on something, um, untoward? Could be.

By the way AI coughed up this when I inquired about Capital One Bank, City of Industry:

AI says: Capital One has a presence in the City of Industry, California, specifically for auto loan payments. The address for mailing auto loan payments is: Capital One Auto Finance, P.O. Box 60511, City of Industry, CA 91716.

Last week I put up a post based on a realtor’s post about how Fullerton had been declared the safest suburban city in Orange County and Southern California. The guy’s name is Alex Yu, and because he didn’t cite any source except a national survey of some kind, his declarations weren’t taken seriously by me or some of our commenters.

I am now happy to fill in some of the information. How? Because the City of Fullerton put out a self-serving and self-congratulatory press release.

It turns out the “survey” was done by SmartAsset and was based on per capita crime rates, traffic deaths, and reported excessive boozing. The list of cities is so wide and so varied, and missing so many undeniably safe suburbs in OC – Villa Park, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, etc., just to name a few, that we may assume, I think, that getting on the list was not an entirely objective process. Were safe suburbs weeded out solely due to their subjectively chosen proximity to a “major city?”

I notice that SmartAsset is some sort of financial advising operation, not a serious scientific survey company. This is evident by who’s not on the list. The article announcing the survey was written by a certified financial planner, so there’s that.

Here’s the text of the City’s press release:

The City of Fullerton has been recognized in a national study conducted by SmartAsset, which ranked the 360 safest suburbs in America located within 15 to 45 minutes of major cities.

The study evaluated suburbs using five safety-related metrics: violent crime rate, property crime rate (sourced from FBI data), as well as drug poisoning mortality, vehicular mortality, and excessive drinking rates (from County Health Rankings). According to the America’s Safest Suburbs – 2025 report, Fullerton was ranked #49 overall, making it the highest-ranking city in both Orange County and Southern California included in the national list.

“Fullerton is honored to be recognized as one of the safest suburbs in America — a reflection of the unwavering commitment of our public safety teams and the strong partnership we share with our residents and local businesses,” said Mayor Fred Jung. “Public safety is a community effort. This recognition belongs to everyone who contributes to making our neighborhood a welcoming, secure, and thriving place to call home.”

Police Chief Jon Radus added, “Our department is committed to proactive crime prevention and building trust with our residents. This ranking affirms the partnership we have with our community in keeping Fullerton safe.”

The study highlights Fullerton’s exemplary performance in multiple categories related to safety and public health, reinforcing its position as one of the region’s most livable communities.

Everybody wants to live (and sell houses) in a safe city, and nobody can really blame officialdom for taking an opportunity to make themselves look good, but c’mon guys. Let’s lay off the self-lathered soft soap and focus on doing your jobs with efficacy and accountability.

I am posting a communication from a guy named Dr. Steve Chapin regarding the arboretum over next to the CSUF campus. According to Chapin the Arboretum grounds are suffering from lack of attention and parking, which used to be free, will now cost an astonishing twelve bucks on week-ends.

From the Fullerton Arboretum Advocates  Facebook page:

Dear members of the “Fullerton Arboretum Advocates” Facebook page. I have not posted here since my last post on March 6, 2023. (See below).

I had not visited the Fullerton Arboretum since around that time when CSUF took FULL control and renamed it the CSUF Arboretum and started charging $4 per hour for parking at the Arboretum lot on weekdays. Today, Friday August 8th, I visited the Arboretum for the first time in over 2 years. What I saw saddened me and confirmed the concerns I expressed previously on this page.

There was hardly anyone there on a beautiful sunny Friday afternoon with only 8 cars in the almost empty parking lot. (See Pic) Starting August 25th CSUF will begin charging a $12 parking fee (*now informed it starts at $6 and will increase to $12) on the weekends for all the campus lots including the Arboretum lot. Because of the weekday $4 per hour parking fee at the Arboretum lot that began in 2022 using the Park Mobile app, the Arboretum is now mostly visited on the weekends and is often crowded then.

Earlier this year I spoke with Dr. Shana Charles the Fullerton Councilmember for District 3 about the Arboretum, she happily noted: “Parking is still FREE at the Arboretum on the weekends!” This will no longer be the case starting August 25th. Expect attendance at the Arboretum to continue to fall and its many benefits to the Fullerton community as a commons for people to visit and enjoy free of any fees on the weekend to expire. How sad for the people of Fullerton that this once great civic source of relaxation, recreation, education and family enjoyment will now be monetized and underutilized by its citizens.

The Arboretum was not looking as nice or as well kept as I remember it. Besides a lack of visitors, the extensive lawn next to Dr. Clark’s house was brown and mostly dead. Many of the surrounding citrus trees looked under water stress with curled up leaves. I have 10 citrus trees in my yard, so I know what healthy watered trees look like.

I was told that the Arboretum’s long time director had retired in January and that the position had been posted but then removed by CSUF and had not been filled. This could explain the sad shape of the grounds. I asked if Dr. Clark’s House (Heritage House) had been reopened for visitors or the many schoolchildren field trips I use to see there and was told no. The only good news I have to report is that Arboretum land was not taken for the massive expansion and building of student housing that is being added to the campus. It does tower above the Arboretum grounds though. (See pic).

I just wanted to alert the people here who are still Fullerton Arboretum Advocates to what I saw and learned today after visiting the Fullerton Arboretum after a 2 year absence.

Sincerely,

Dr. Steve Chapin

The plan here seems pretty obvious: let the Arboretum go to the dogs, declare it an unsafe nuisance and build more massive dormitories for the eager young CSUF students. $12 to park on a week-end? That’s tantamount to robbery. The City has no control over the university that can do any damn thing it wants, although I seem to recall an Arboretum Joint Powers Authority with a commission, or some such thing. I don’t know if it even exists anymore.

I do love the reference to Shana Charles, happy warrior for public health when it’s not even at stake. This is different. A real open space with trees, plants, water, n’ stuff could very well be at risk from her employer. Let’s see what the good doctor does.

So says Fullerton’s tender young, Elijah Manassero.

That’s pretty good. Even from way up here in Doggy Heaven I can see signs of a disturbed young human. Sort of reminds me of my earthly days when my mistresses nasty offspring used to lock me in a hot car just for fun.

I don’t think they turned out well, either. Man, I was glad to get out of that house even if it meant croaking.

Why do the Kennedy Sisters feel compelled to create their own news and froth themselves and their handful of followers into self-righteous fury over some made up crisis? The answer isn’t good. It’s political grandstanding and journalistic incompetence.

The latest is their Fullerton Observer article demanding that the Fullerton City Council hold a public hearing on the matter of whether or not Fullerton should join a lawsuit against the the Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their “illegal” activities. The alternative, they suggest is an effort to decide this matter in the Council’s “Closed Session” since it pertains to legal activity and is thus exempted under the Brown Act.

The only trouble is that nobody has proposed discussing this matter behind closed doors. The agenda for the next meeting hasn’t even been created and won’t be published until a week from today. Whether or not the matter will even be on the agenda at all for the August 19th meeting is guesswork. Gee, I wonder who sold them this story.

But that’s not a deterrent to the enterprising sisters who once again are trying to whip up the usual suspects into attacking the council majority. They even created a dopey “open letter” making their speculation about a Closed Session decision look like a real effort that they have somehow uncovered. No sources are described, of course, following the Fullerton Observer’s usual trajectory of absent journalistic integrity.

Naturally, this whole thing is another attempt to go after Mayor Fred Jung in particular who is singled out:

“Event organizers invited Mayor Jung – but he failed to attend.”

Bad Jung. Bad, bad Jung! Looks like no effort was made to talk to Jung, or if it did, it was omitted from the screed.

The result of this will be another conga line of the usual speakers that we already know. And maybe some new faces drawn from the ranks of Fullerton’s liberal churches. This is probably why the ever-pious and election fraudster, Diane Vena, sent an email about this subject to the Servite friar, Dennis Kriz.

FFFF received this social media snippet today and I thought it was worth sharing.

It’s hard to read, but the gist of it is that Fullerton has made a list of 47 safest suburbs in California. Mr. Alex Yu, a realtor, doesn’t name the source of his wonderful news, but refers to a “national safety report.”

Mr. Yu declares that Fullerton is named the the safest city in Orange County, and in fact, all of Southern California!

This is an OPPORTUNITY for someone, presumably Mr. Yu.

In July, former La Habra councilman Tim Shaw announced he was running for the OC 4th District Supervisor job. Again.

Way back in 2018, Shaw ran for this seat and lost in a close election to the miserable, corrupt, and now ostensibly senile octogenarian, Doug “Bud” Chaffee. Chafee is termed out in 2026.

But 2026 is not 2018. North Orange County is more demonstrably Democrat, and other than getting into, and losing a General Election to a Democrat, I can’t see much hope for Shaw. In the past he has run for things as an allegedly moderate Republican, but even that seems like a lost cause. This is particularly true since he resigned his La Habra gig so he could stay on the OC Board of Education that has recently become the playground of Trumpy lunatics. That association and his voting record there might help fundraising from a far-right corner – such as $2000 he already got from Howard Ahmanson, but it’s going to make his candidacy a tough sell to the general public.

Right now Fullerton’s Fred Jung and Connor Traut have a lot of cash on hand, where as Shaw has comparatively – under $20,000, but it’s still very early with the primary almost a year away.

I think Shaw’s candidacy is bad news for Fred Jung who, as a pragmatic centrist, needs conservative support. Traut is running as the inevitable leftist Democrat with all the usual institutional support. But that means very little, to which Vivian Jaramillo can attest.