Friends For Fullerton's Future

After several months of radio silence, the UP Trail has finally emerged from its bureaucratic cocoon. The City Council is scheduled to vote on approving the construction contract at Tuesday’s meeting. Contradictory to Edgar Rosales promise to the Parks Commission, the City Council never approved the final plans before the bid, and never authorized a public bid, either. Just ran out of time. They’re approving the plans and specifications the same time as the contract award. How’s that for ass backery?

And the Council is being asked to “invest” another $300,000 of Fullerton money into The Lost Trail, as predicted by FFFF over the past few years. That’s now $630,000 of City dough, a sum never previously agreed to by anybody. Seriously, is anybody in charge?

The staff report casually informs us: “The City requires additional funds to complete the project due to a change in the project scope in which Park Dwelling Fund (Fund 39) has available funds.” Conveniently there is no description of the change in scope. Not a single word to justify plowing another 300 grand into this disaster. Not a single damn word. More transparency.

Speaking of costs, here’s the project budget and bid results:

Please note that the low bidder’s bid is exactly the “Engineer’s Estimate” for construction, a likelihood so remote without serious massaging that we have to wonder about KASA Construction. Also, if we toss out the low and high bids, the median bid amount is $2,286,000, $440,000 over the years-old City estimate – more cause for concern. There is a cluster of bids between $2,246,000 and $2,500,000. Even with the KASA bid.

Even with the new transfer of yet another $300,000 from the Park Dwelling Fund to cover costs that were not given the council in 2023, can anyone seriously believe it will be the last request for this?

Tellingly, no one from the City staff has ever bothered to share ongoing annual maintenance costs for this debacle, either. They don’t know and don’t care.

Who knows why The Trail to Nowhere was not included in the 2025-2026 CIP because most of it will be done (hopefully) during that fiscal year. Oh, well. There is still no explanation of why there is nothing in the CIP plan for the UP Park renovation previously promised by Jung, Whitaker, and Dunlap in August 2023, and which was supposed to precede the trail, a fact now conveniently forgotten by everybody except FFFF. 20 month ago is ancient history in Fullerton. Hindsight is 20/20.

FFFF has diligently followed the Trail of Tears since its Astroturf cheerleaders started braying about “nice things” for south Fullerton. Where will these people be when the trail is unused, unsafe and falls into the same disrepair as so much of Fullerton’s infrastructure? Not on the trail itself, of course.

If you want to see how our crack Parks Department handles landscape maintenance check out the abysmal plantings around the wood stairs in Hillcrest Park sometime.

The Trail to Nowhere begins at Highland Avenue since it doesn’t connect to Phase 1. There is no public accommodation except people walking or riding a bike on the Highland sidewalk. It dies in the virtually abandoned back corner parking lot at Independence Park where nobody wants to go. There is no connectivity to anything else. There never will be. The thing runs through an area of junkyards, used tire stores, an asphalt plant, auto repair places and a coating plant. Homeless call it home. So do the junkies.

For a quarter mile it runs alongside the Santa Fe Main Line.

FFFF has already noted the complete failure to meet the State’s milestones in the agreement. That contract called for plant establishment to be included in the October 2025 completion. That won’t happen. The bid sheet for the project includes a 90 day plant establishment requirement, meaning the landscaping would have to be done by the end of July to meet the deadline. Fortunately for the City, nobody at the State seems to care about its agreement.

Worst of all, maybe is the fact that the City minions and their Council bosses can’t seem to understand the idea of a wider, comprehensive plan for this strip of industrially zoned land and that maybe this right-of-way could have used for something useful. Their narrative is that somehow this trail all by itself will turn the area into something other than it is. That’s just moronic.

But the guiding principle here is not effectiveness, efficiency, stewardship, or even basic common sense. No, it’s about spending other people’s money and who gives a damn if it fails? Will any City staff members be around to accept their roles in this fiasco? Of course not. Will the people who wore down a weak Council into approving this mess be around to claim responsibility for their role?

Of course not. This Fullerton rolling contraption has no rear view mirror.

Fullerton’s garbage collection may seem like a pedestrian subject to you and me, but it’s a lucrative franchise for guys in the business of picking up our “solid waste” and hauling it to the land fill, or to the nearest materials recycling facilities (MRF).

The history of garbage collection is pretty dull, but it’s informative. A local family-owned company, MG Disposal, had the contract for decades under “evergreen” terms, apparently.

They got the gig when Eisenhower was President, in 1955. MG was eventually bought out, successively by Taormina Industries and then Republic Services, a mammoth solid waste collection company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The latter took place around 2009 when a new agreement was created with the City. Still, the relationship lineage was still there. In essence the City has been doing business with related, successive entities for 70 years.

Anyhow, the existing contract was signed 16 years ago if you’re counting. There have been three amendments to the agreement, but the service itself hasn’t been put out to bid to see if anybody else can do it better, cheaper, more effectively, etc. It seems unlikely that Republic can be underbid, but why not see?

Government agencies have the unfortunate habit of extending contracts in the out years because putting things out to bid takes effort, and the incumbent contractor is familiar, comfortable, and has likely developed a symbiotic relationship with both government employees and their political overlords. And the one thing you don’t want to screw up is garbage collection. That’s ruined promising careers in municipal government and in politics.

What is the right amount of time to keep evergreen deal going? I don’t know. But 70 years seems like an awfully long time; even the past 16 seems like a long time if you feel like giving Republic a brand new start in 2009.

I think it’s about time to rattle this franchise cage and see who out there might be willing to respond to a bid solicitation. It may nor result in a change, but it’s just due diligence toward the people of Fullerton who pay for the service.

An alert Friend directed my attention to the online version of the Fullerton Observer in which Sanskia, the younger Kennedy sister, is informing people that they will have a second chance to weight in on the City Council’s April 1st decision to severely restrict where non-governmental publications can be disseminated on City property.

A second chance? How come? Let’s let Skasia tell us in her own words:

“During a council meeting on April 15, Mayor Protem (sic) Dr. Shana Charles and Councilmember Dr. Ahmad Zahra expressed their discontent with the decision, asserting that the council had not been presented with all necessary information before making such a significant ruling. Both officials indicated their intention to rescind the policy at the upcoming meeting scheduled for May 6.“

Hmm. The implication here is that these two have decided to re-agendize the matter on May 6th. A person with a little bit of common sense might well wonder how a council minority could resurrect an issue previously decided by a majority of the council. Well, of course they shouldn’t be able to; the policy of permitting two members to agendize an issue presupposes that it is a new item, not one previously decided by the City Council. Otherwise a minority could keep dredging up decided issues, ad infintum. A baboon could grasp this.

But no. You see “necessary information” of some sort has popped up, according to Zahra and Charles, not previously presented by the staff or the City Attorney. This alleged insufficiency is their pretext for stirring the whole thing up again.

Why does this seem familiar?

Because Zahra and Charles pulled the same horseshit on the Trail to Nowhere at the end of 2023 when they claimed that new revelations by the State required more public hearings. The City Manager, Eric Levitt, with the blessing of City Attorney Dick Jones permitted the issue to be put on the agenda. At the end of 2024 Charles trotted out the “new information” schtick to keep the Wank on Wilshire on life support until Vivian Jaramillo (hopefully) could get on the council and keep it going.

The main point seems to be about about giving Charles an excuse to change her vote. She will have to try to explain what “new information” has caused her to change her vote, and that might be unintentionally funny. But that wouldn’t be the only outcome.

If the issue is agendized for the meeting on May 6th by Levitt, the Council majority will be subjected to the usual hours long harangues from Fullerton Boohoo and the Kennedy Sisters. They, finally, may even be caused to wonder about the future of CM Eric Levitt and Dick Jones of the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm.”

But probably not, Fullerton being Fullerton.

Anyhow, we’ll know for sure May 1st when the May 6th meeting agenda is published,

Oscar Valadez ran against “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra for Fullerton’s 5th District council job in 2022. He came within a few hundred votes of winning, thanks to the suspicious candidacy of “Tony Castro” whose job was to siphon Latino votes from Valadez. Zahra also spent over $100,000 to keep his little $1000 a month job. What a rotten investment.

Well, Valadez is running again for the same seat in 2026 and his chances look pretty good to me. He’s not letting the proverbial grass grow under his feet, and is holding a kickoff party Thursday evening at The Charleston place on Commonwealth Avenue. Here’s the notice:

It seems pretty early to be doing this sort of thing, but we may be sure that his likely opponent Zahra is already busy shaking down contributions like he did last time, especially from his friends in the legalized dope lobby.

2026 won’t be a repeat of 2022, no matter how many fake candidates Zahra and the Dem Party Central vomit up. In 2022 voters hadn’t yet found out that Zahra, the immigrant gay man had orchestrated a fraudulent and illegal marriage of convenience in the 90s to an American to stay in the USA and pursue some sort of movie-making career. We can be sure they will be informed all about it, along with Zahra’s other myriad misdeeds.

Valadez will also be running with the title “Fullerton Planning Commission,” an impressive sounding job.

Early yesterday morning Fullerton police had some sort of run in with what is characterized as an unhinged guy in Lemon Park. After some sort of scuffle the guy croaked. Hmm.

Here’s the notification by the Fullerton Police Department, replete with the usual self-serving lingo.

Now why am I reminded of the Kelly Thomas incident?

Erratic behavior, additional officers (to assist in investigation?!), uncooperative male, more officers needed to restrain, oops cop “violently bit” on the arm by suspect causing injuries (note the use of the plural), paramedics arrive, guy pronounced dead at “local hospital.”

Something about this whole episode seems surreal. A guy holding a “smoldering” cardboard box? More superhuman strength, of course suggesting the ol’ PCP, meth, whatever. We are informed that the suspect began to “show signs of a medical emergency” which makes me wonder about what sorts of “restraint” were used.

Of course at the end of this literary masterpiece we are reminded that the ever-vigilant District Attorney Todd Spitzer will conduct an “independent investigation” that will be nothing more than a condemnation of crazy homeless dudes and a clean bill of health for the FPD.

Friends will recall that back on March 1st Fullerton Engineer noted how the “90%” drawings of the Trail to Nowhere had been rubberstamped by the Parks Commission in early January. Right now Fullerton is at least 10 months past the State’s grant deadline for completed design, but who cares, right?

It’s not like Wade Crowfoot – the head of the State Natural Resources Agency that awarded the grant – is paying any attention at all. If he is he obviously has no intention of holding the City to its contractual milestones, spelled out below.

Parenthetically, we also learned from Edgar Rosales that soils testing had been done last August and required minimal remediation. Yay! The only trouble is that the City in its application for the grant lied, claiming the project was “shovel ready” and that testing had been performed. But let’s not let any of this disturb the confident nap of Mr. Crowfoot.

The completed plans were supposed to go to plan check and then final plans to the City Council for approval. That hasn’t happened yet. And the agenda forecast shows nothing about it for May 6th. May 13th is a budget session. The job still has to be bid and awarded. The completion deadline is October, and that includes plant establishment (see schedule, above).

So what gives?

The Dismal Trail does show up on a map in the capital projects “design” phase on the City’s website:

Here’s the description that goes with the map:

Of course the “planned start date” (not the contractual one) shows a start of seven weeks ago. Oops.

But, hey, wait a minute. The City has just promulgated a draft of its proposed Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) for the next 5 years, and guess what? No trail to be seen.

Next year the City is planning on spending $250,000 of Park Dwelling fees on three projects: $50K on Misc. Maintenance on Park Facilities – a misuse of Park Dwelling Fees, by the way; $100,000 on the Bastanchury Greenbelt; and another $100K on the Valley View Hillcrest Park kiddie playground. There is nothing shown in the out years at all.

There is no mention of the Trail to Nowhere at all. Zip. Nada. How come? I don’t know.

I also notice that the UP Park Reconstruction is shown on the website CIP map.

Starting at the end of August? Oh, c’mon, who’s kidding whom? There’s no mention of this project in the CIP forecast, either.

It looks to me like the Park Dwelling Fees will be tapped out next year. This could be because the gargantuan “Hub” project was granted a delay paying their upfront fees because, well, because who the Hell knows? Ask a City Councilperson when you get a chance.

With Fullerton it’s hard to know what going on because of constant conflicting information between and even from individual departments, out-of-date web pages, and the like.

There’s something cooking here and it doesn’t smell very appetizing.

On Tuesday April 15th, George A. Bushala took to the council chamber podium to again confront Councilman “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra about previous claims made by the Dubious Damascene Doctor.

In this case, Bushala reminded everyone that Zahra had previously claimed he had been “exonerated” in the assault and battery case against “Monica F.” he was charged with by the District Attorney in 2020. He made this claim from the council dais itself.

Naturally, Zahra has never provided the public with a shred of evidence of this so called exoneration, something that should be simple to do, since if it were true he would certainly have some notification of such by the DA.

Now we know two things about these sorts of legal proceedings. First, law enforcement may drop a case, but it never exculpates anybody, primarily because it can’t do such a thing. Second we also know that first time offenders can plead guilty and have their records whitewashed.

Mr. Bushala is perfectly right in challenging Zahra to prove his exoneration if such a thing ever really happened (or at the very least show proof that the case was dropped). Failing that Fullerton residents are justified in concluding that Zahra was not exonerated, or even cleared of charges, but instead pleaded guilty to get his record sealed.

I get the feeling that for Mr. Bushala the enmity that Zahra has shown his family is not going to fly anymore without considerable pushback. There is still a lot Zahra needs to answer for, and since the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters are perfectly willing to take him at his duplicitous word, questions will continue to be raised about his fitness for office.

On March 21, 2025, John Kiger, a 75-year-old retired pool man, husband, grandfather, surfer, former local resident, and father of former Fullerton City Councilman Travis Kiger, was surfing at the famous Southern California surf spot, Trestles. After getting out of the water, he spotted a wanted criminal. The suspect, 35-year-old Moses Paulisin, was armed and on the run for the attempted murder of a Orange County Deputy Sheriff.

A manhunt for Paulisin was well-underway by all Southern California law enforcement agencies. Kiger bravely approached the suspect to confirm his identity and he subsequently notified authorities and awaited their arrival.

Kiger was later awarded a certificate of courage by the City of San Clemente for his exceptional assistance to the sheriff’s department in apprehending the attempted murder suspect and securing his arrest.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Z5kA2uciiqA?si=yxY9J1oNeXW5I2eW