Friends For Fullerton's Future

October 23, 2017Bad Cops

$3900 Mini Freezer

Another day, and another reason to question the fiscal insanity at the City of Fullerton. The Police Department paid over $3900 for this freezer which is a mere 3.9 cubic feet in size. The typical residential refrigerator-freezer holds anywhere from 18 to 25 cubic feet, so this unit is far smaller than it appears.

The police will be quick to say how essential this is to preserve forensic evidence like DNA. I can’t fault them for buying a unit with temperature alarms, but you know what’s funny? Medical grade freezers used by pharmacies, similar in size and features, cost anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 the price, maybe even less.

Wasteful spending is nothing new around here, but this serves as a great opportunity to look at the City’s flawed procurement policies.

The freezer was not purchased by the City’s Purchasing Agent. The Police Department doesn’t think the City’s procurement rules apply to them, so they bypass City Hall in most cases, and order whatever they want themselves.

“Reasonable effort shall be made to obtain three or more competitive bids for procurement of goods or services.” This sounds like a good policy except that it allows a City employee to solicit bids for their preferred piece of equipment, and preferred manufacturer, no matter how unnecessary or overpriced.

They didn’t get bids for a small freezer sufficient to store forensic evidence. They got bids for this specific Follett FZR4P-00-00 freezer, which was already leaps and bounds more expensive than comparable options from other manufacturers. Basically, we acquired the Mercedes-Benz of freezers, but that’s all fine and dandy because the Police Department got three bids as specified in the procurement policy.

There’s no excuse to overpay because somebody is too lazy to research alternatives perfectly acceptable in a similar work environment, and yet, the City of Fullerton does this over and over and over again.

October 21, 2017October 21, 2017Bruce Whitaker

Dedication

by Deadeye12 Comments

Apartments at Grace Ministry. White glove advice to politicians: keep your hands clean.

October 19, 2017Downtown Fullerton

The Quick Brown Fox

by The Worm22 Comments

Governor Jerry Brown paid a visit to downtown Fullerton on Wednesday, where it looks like he took a tour of the still-unfinished Fullerton Fox Theater with a rabble of current and former local officials in tow. Surely he was impressed.

OK, maybe not.

But why would Jerry Brown fly down to Fullerton to look inside some flopped redevelopment project?

One could guess that battleground Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva invited Brown to pitch some sort of state subsidy to rescue the project; a thinly veiled attempt to buy voters in one district with the rest of the state’s resources. You can tell an opportunity is at hand by the way the local bush league politicos are salivating all over Brown’s loafers. Hopefully someone had a towel handy.

But all of that is just fine. Why shouldn’t residents of Escondido, Bakersfield and Elk Grove pay for decades of Fullerton’s redevelopment screw ups? Mr. Brown, if there’s money to burn on a movie theater, maybe you can fix our decrepit roads and crumbling bridges, too?

October 19, 2017Bad Cops

Our Wallets Are Getting Tased

by David Curlee24 Comments

Axon, formerly known as Taser International, is the manufacturer of tasers and body cameras worn by officers of the Fullerton Police Department.

In 2014, Felz and Hughes went before the City Council to beg for $650,534 over a five-year period to pay for body cameras from Taser International. The actual cost will far exceed that amount, but that’s unfortunately typical of the false assurances made by those two. You can read the agenda letter here where Dan Hughes did his best impression of a salesman for Taser International. There was never any competitive bidding process for those body cameras, which is obscene given the large price tag.

Fast forward to this past June. Gary Sirin of the Fullerton Police Department was sent to the Axon Accelerate ~~Conference~~ Fleece-A-Thon in Scottsdale, AZ. We paid $899 for him to attend the conference, $580.87 for lodging at the Westin, and it appears another $363.19 for travel expenses. I presume he was also on the clock and being paid for his time.

So what actually took place at this conference? Axon did a write up themselves that talks about demonstrating new products and strategies to prevent disclosure of body camera footage to the public. Once again, an insulting waste of City funds.

The Police Department apparently never got the memo about Fullerton having a fiscal crisis, or else they just don’t care.

I think it’s the latter, but in any event, these ridiculous conferences all over the United States and Canada on the City dime need to stop.

October 18, 2017Chronic Failure

Lemmon Head

by David Curlee35 Comments

Wouldn’t it be nice if every City employee consistently set the bar for professionalism?

Michael Lemmon, of the Fullerton Fire Department, thought it was perfectly okay to purchase these inappropriate mugs using taxpayer money on his City-issued VISA card.

A couple months later, Michael Lemmon decided the Fire Department needed more coffee mugs, so he purchased these — again on the taxpayer’s dime:

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October 17, 2017Behind Closed Doors

Pay The Lady: Nepotism At Its Worst

by David Curlee27 Comments

Today’s ethical lapse comes to us courtesy of the Fullerton Fire Department. See those shirts pictured above? Fire Captain Brian Seymour ordered nine of them for some kind of “Peer Support”.

Once the use tax is factored in, we paid about $40 per shirt.

Check out the reconciliation report. One can clearly see the purchaser was Brian Seymour.

Below, we see the invoice from the vendor, Linksoul, where the salesperson was Mary Seymour. Wait a minute, that must be a coincidence. No City employee would be foolish enough to use taxpayer money to purchase unnecessary clothing from a relative’s clothing business, right?

Mary Seymour is the Fire Captain’s wife. Linksoul is a clothing company started by her brother. A couple minutes with Google was enough to locate this article from Carlsbad Magazine with a quote about nepotism that couldn’t be more ironic under the circumstances.

Hinman, W. (2014, March & April). The Man Makes The Clothes. Carlsbad Magazine, 38-43.

So while the City of Fullerton prepares to be crushed under the weight of CalPERS pension obligations, we have people like Brian Seymour not just wasting our money — he’s sending cash to his wife’s family business.

Brian Seymour made $294,761 last year in pay and benefits. Why didn’t he pay for these shirts with his own money?

Did anyone make him reimburse the City? Whose idea were these shirts, anyway? Perhaps most important is why didn’t it occur to Brian Seymour that sending money to the family business was improper, and likely a violation of City policy and/or State Law?

Thanks to a certain FFD employee for bringing this to our attention. You know who you are.

October 16, 2017Behind Closed Doors

Bad Neighbor!

by David Curlee21 Comments

Would you give neighbors access to your bank account?

No? That would probably come as a shock to some at City Hall where (at least) three City of Brea employees have been issued VISA procurement cards belonging to the City of Fullerton.

Fullerton and Brea have a shared Fire Department command staff. The Fire Chief, Deputy Chiefs, Division Chiefs, Battalion Chiefs, and an EMS manager perform services for both cities, even though they remain employees of the City where they came from. Those from Brea have been given the Fullerton VISA cards. Now, I can hear some people uttering phrases like “so what,” and “who cares,” and “what’s the problem?” I can help you with that.

Fullerton Fire Station 3 on Acacia Ave was the recipient of five La-Z-Boy recliners, on the City VISA card. The purchaser? Chris Guerrero, a Brea employee. The supervisor approving the purchase? Kathy Schaefer, another Brea employee. And where did the money come from? Fullerton.

The receipt raises another question because Engine 3, based at this fire station, only has a crew of three. So why purchase five recliners?

I’d bet money the extra recliners are for the CARE Ambulance employees based at Station 3. Nothing in the housing agreement between the City and CARE Ambulance talks about furnishings, so the recliners appear to be a gift.

A gift from Brea employees using Fullerton’s money.

October 12, 2017October 12, 2017Bruce Whitaker

Bruce Whitaker’s Cash Cow

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy21 Comments

The other evening the Fullerton City Council discussed the issue of letting bar owners cram more of their top-shelf patrons into downtown Fullerton night clubs, a move that the bar owners ludicrously claim will actually help with all that mayhem that occurs on a typical week-end evening. As a tangent, the idea of taxing the generators of all the trouble came up.

Here is our esteemed Mayor, Bruce Whitaker, calmly explaining why some sort of public revenue generating scheme would a bad idea.

This is so disingenuous in several aspects that it’s hard to know where to start. The idea that the private business interests are the best at providing some sort of “management” at the lowest cost is absurd given the fact that the taxpayers are already providing vastly subsidized security and maintenance in the downtown war zone. It is the o-so trustworthy bar owners (that Whitaker claims have the biggest stake in a smoothly operating downtown) who benefit from public services they aren’t paying for.

Whitaker knows very well that the open air saloon known as Downtown Fullerton costs the taxpayers more than $1,500,000 per year. It’s a classic money pit. The irony is rich. The idea that the city government might milk DTF is absolutely absurd. The fact is that Whitaker’s bar-owner campaign contributors are making money on the backs of the rest of us – and Whitaker – despite his rhetoric – knows this damn well.

The real point is that once again Whitaker and his spineless council colleagues are going to bat for their saloon owning pals, people who have stolen public sidewalks, habitually violated the City’s noise ordinances, whose patrons wreak havoc on our streets and on themselves every night. Whitaker and the City Council have not only turned looking the other way into a full-time job, they have gone out of their way to prop up and publicly subsidize the booze peddlers they enabled in the first place.

And as usual, the rest of us pick up the bar tab.

October 11, 2017Chronic Failure

Faux Cost Reductions

by David Curlee9 Comments

The City Council was warned earlier this year that (long overdue) changes at CalPERS to tackle pension debts would spell fiscal disaster for Fullerton. This problem is very much real and will be quite painful in the years to come.

What isn’t real was the feigned appearance of City Hall trying to cut expenses. Truth be told, nobody at the City seems to care.

Remember the Hillcrest Park ‘Pine Forest Stairs’ ceremony, which lasted maybe 30 minutes, and was attended by forty or fifty people?

The balloons you see above cost the taxpayers $776.51. Were they necessary? Of course not.

Meanwhile, at other locations across town, the never-ending waste from Parks and Recreation continues unabated. $350 for two hours of face painting and a clown to blow up balloons.

Another $450 down the drain for a game of Human Foosball.

These aren’t unusual expenditures — this stuff goes on all the time.

So this is the cue for [new City Manager] Ken Domer to step up and make this nonsense go away. It’s also a cue for the City Council to hold him accountable in that regard.

October 8, 2017October 8, 2017Bad Cops

FPD Making Movie Magic

by Mr. Peabody13 Comments

The cops actually paid money for a big, stupid McGruff the Crime Dog helmet, which they used to produce this terrible video. I have no idea where the trench coat came from, nor do I want to know.

The film has reached 36 views on YouTube since it was published in July.

I’d be happier of the Fullerton police got out of the moronic video business, quit the relentless PR campaign, and just stuck to honest public service.