Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

Who Will Be the Next Mayor of Fullerton? (Improved with Fun Pictures!)

by 53 Comments on Who Will Be the Next Mayor of Fullerton? (Improved with Fun Pictures!)

Friends, it’s that time of year when the Fullerton City Council selects one of its number to be the voice and face of Fullerton to the community, and beyond.

Some folks say the title of Mayor is really only just a name for another voting member of the council; the person who just manages (or mismanages, as the case may be) the meetings, and signs documents approved by a council majority.

Ah resemble that remark, bah golly!

But consider this: how might the world, the nation, the State and the County have perceived Fullerton, if, as the Kelly Thomas police murder saga unfolded, Fullerton’s mayor had been other than the cantankerous southern-fried buffoon who, by all appearances treated the whole event as an annoying inconvenience on his way to a ribbon-cutting.

Doomed to succeed?

Which brings us to the December 6th vote. Last year Pat McKinley weaseled out on supporting Sharon Quirk-Silva for the number two spot, as he, at the behest of the repuglican establishment, joined Bankhead and Jones in keeping the Democrat Quirk-Silva out of the rotation.

What happens when age overtakes IQ.

Well, as they say, that was then. Under normal circumstances the Ed Royce/Dick Ackerman crowd would love to cut her out again. But this year is different all right, and the Slush Fund Gang can’t afford to alienate any more voters, especially a significant liberal-leaning crowd who may very well relish yet another reason to sign a petition, and then vote to recall the Three Blind Brontosaurii.

The fact that many of these folks also qualified a referendum on the Coyote Hills development issue will cause The Three Silent Sloths’ handlers cause to pause: when the Recall signatures qualify the Fullerton lefties will have two swings to reverse the Chevron entitlements approved by Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley.

Heh heh, I'm pretty savvy. If you don't count that Ackerwoman campaign.

Ackerman isn’t stupid (although he has recently made some horrendous underestimations of the electorate). The anti-recall campaign has made a deliberate attempt to woo Fullerton’s liberal/schools/feel-good cadre by attacking a real conservative, FSD Trustee Chris Thompson. Well, okay, maybe Ackerman isn’t smart at all: Thompson out-polled every other candidate in every Fullerton ballot in 2010, so let’s see how that works out for The Dickster.

Still, wait and observe how Quirk-Silva is quietly selected as Mayor by the same bastards that refused her the Mayor Pro Tem job just a year ago.We may even hear lame explanations about last year’s vote

How would that be for cynicism of the lowest kind?

All alone.

Upon further consideration, I believe this post should address the solitary figure of Bruce Whitaker, a principled conservative who is worth ten armies of Jonses, Bankheads, and McPensions. By virtue of his intelligence, stability, and ethics, Whitaker should be the next Mayor Pro Tem, and Mayor in 2013. If that happens I’ll unscrew my right arm and throw it across the room. The Three Silent Slugs will never let that happen. And one more great reason to Recall them.

 

 

 

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Posted onAbout Us

Thanksgiving from the Desert

by 45 Comments on Thanksgiving from the Desert

Friends, greetings from my lonely and dusty compound way, way out on Screech Owl Road – past the meth labs and the Boho Sci Arc schtickers.

Two year’s ago FFFF published a Thanksgiving message from one of our errant bloggers, the original Harpoon. It was just so doggone pithy and pleasant that I  figured it would be better to reproduce it than write my own. So here it is.

Dear Friends, Happy Thanksgiving. Some of you may wonder what an old, crusty, salt-bitten sea gherkin like the Harpoon is thankful for (some of you may not, and may not care).

I am thankful for being part of  a society in which I can hurl my outrageous barbs (i.e. my current working version of the truth) at powers-that-be, and not get locked up;

I am thankful for having a bunch of fertile words and ideas bequeathed to me by people a lot smarter than I am, who happily deigned to bestow their gifts, Bodhisattva-like on the rest of us;

I am thankful for our Friends – a rare few who are able to view the socio-political terrain, and realize that we can do better – a lot better, and who are not terrified by the thought of criticizing the Chimps in Charge.

I am thankful for all the inert Clumps in the dead, sterile center, who peer out to the fertile, incubatorial edges of their paltry weltanshauung and start to sweat yellow fear pellets; for without them we fringers would have no frame of reference ourselves.

And so, from the cold, green-gray waters of the Sea of Japan, I wish one and all of the Friends a Happy Thanksgiving.

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Posted onAbout Us

SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.

by 270 Comments on SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.
The City's eyes were badly "bloused." Again.

The OC Weekly’s Marisa Gerber has just written a detailed and painful catalog of offenses perpetrated by the Fullerton Police Department over a period of many years. It’s on the cover of this week’s edition.

No reasonable person can read this litany of arrogant terror and error, without concluding that the FPD sank deep into a Culture of Corruption under former chief and current councilmember, Pat McKinley; and that McKinley’s diseased poultry is still coming home to roost – two and a half years after his retirement.

But, as they say, where there is a will, there is way, and the anti-recall clowns will never acknowledge any of this scandal. They have far too much at stake – financially and emotionally.

Well, they can bury their heads in the sands, but the denial isn’t going to help. Their “esteemed” councilmen have dozed away, and looked the other way when all this was happening. It seems they thought their job was to attend ribbon cuttings, enjoy free drinks at Chamber of Commerce mixers, and give away millions of dollars worth of property to their campaign contributors.

And having everyone kiss your pale, withered butt means never having to say you’re sorry.

For Bankhead, Jones, and now McKinley, there has never been a thin dime’s worth of accountability.

Until now. And that’s the Recall!

 

 

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Posted onArts & Architecture

Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

by 49 Comments on Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

Friends of Fullerton’s future have read many pages on this site dedicated to cataloguing the manifest failures of Redevelopment and all the attendant boondoggles it brings with it. Blind support for these disasters is one of the reasons The Three Blind Brontosauruses are being recalled. One of the biggest disasters-in-the-making is the lamentable “Amerige Court” project, another gigantic monster to be plopped down into Fullerton, and a totally staff-created and driven mess.

Naturally Bankhead and Jones have supported this gross example of corporate welfare that we end up paying for. McKinley is bound to go along for the ride.   When he does we’ll be sure to let you know about it. Here is an update.

By Judith Kaluzny as published in The Fullerton Observer

The Amerige Court proposal is not dead yet.   The council will vote December 5, 2011, whether to extend a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) first approved February 7, 2006,  the third amended version having been approved by council March 4, 2008.

Since then, two extensions requested by developer Pelican Laing /Fullerton LLC (a Delaware corporation) were granted by staff June 2010 by Rob Zur Schmiede, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), and April 1, 2011, by Joeseph Felz, acting executive director.

Meantime, the Laing portion of the Pelican-Laing developers, had been purchased in June 2006 by a company in the mideast country of Dubai, and Laing subsequently filed for bankruptcy in February 2009.

“Amerige Court,” described as “mixed-use development with up to 124 residential units and as much as 30,000 square feet of commercial area” was to be located on the north and south parking lots in the 100 block of West Amerige.  At one time, the project was to be nine stories high on the south side of Amerige, with a five story parking structure on the north side of the street.

A Draft Environmental Impact Report was prepared in 2008 and concluded that there were “no potentially significant impacts that cannot be mitigated.”

Richard Hamm of Pelican Properties said recently, “It has been impossible to make any progress with the project since the State has attempted to end redevelopment.  Of course, the economy has not helped.

“We have four companies waiting in the wings to join us in Amerige Court. We want to get the extension to the DDA as well as a few details worked out with Redevelopment before going forward with a new partner. Amerige Court is still a great opportunity. Downtown Fullerton is still a great place (despite the recent events).

Points in the original contract included:

-Giving $5.5 million from a $6 million bond issue to Pelican Properties to build the parking garage.  The bonds were to  be paid back by the residents and businesses in the new development.  That will cause the businesses to cost $1.93 per square foot more than any other retail space downtown according to the city’s consultant, Keyser Marsten Associates, which advised the city to do “more due diligence” before they entered into this contract.

-The land Pelican will be given the by the  city was not appraised, but agreed as being worth $8 to $8.5 million.

-A guarantee of 10% profit to Pelican on the project.  Pelican can submit a new budget before escrow closes.  If that does not show they will get a 10% profit, they can withdraw from the project.  However, at that point, the redevelopment agency can volunteer to pay the required profit to Pelican.  The Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency can do this without further input from the city council/redevelopment agency.

-Tearing down the historic properties on the southeast corner of Malden and Amerige Avenues.

[The DDA and amendments are a maze of turgid language:  The Third Amendment provides for a “future amendment,” but if  “a Future Amendment is not approved by Developer and the Agency Board (city council) by April 5, 2009, or such later date as may be approved by the parties in the sole and absolute discretion of each of them, either party shall have the right to terminate the DDA… .”

[The third amended DDA also includes the following language: “However, the Entitlements have not been approved as Agency has not approved the Project or any other project for the Property.  The parties acknowledge that this Third Amendment does not constitute the third amendment that was contemplated under the Second Amendment.”]

Begun in 2001 with a “rendering” commissioned by Paul Dudley, then Director of Development, and shown to city council members in closed session, it has been said that this was a scheme to get more parking for the bars/restaurants downtown.  (In December 2002, restaurants downtown were exempted from having to provide parking or to obtain conditional use permits.)

FFFF has argued for years that this grossly subsidized monstrosity should be killed outright. As I noted, above, the extension of this agreement will become another issue in the upcoming recall campaign: a perfect example of corporate welfare of the type that has characterized massive subsidized apartment blocks in downtown Fullerton already approved by Bankhead and Jones over the years.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Suicide in Fullerton Jail Should Raise Questions

by 232 Comments on Suicide in Fullerton Jail Should Raise Questions
He checked in, but he din't check out.

Last spring Dean Francis Gochenour, 52, was arrested in Fullerton for suspicion of drunk driving and was taken to the Fullerton jail. He never left. Not alive, anyway.

In the early morning hours of April 15, 2011  Gochenour was discovered in a holding cell, dead. Death by apparent “hanging” was passed out by the cops to the media, although what he was hanging from and by what means wasn’t elaborated. Here’s the brief news clip.

Almost immediately, however, stories began to emanate from the basement of the police HQ to the effect that Gochenour had been demeaned and taunted by the arresting officer; that he had been admonished by the cop to kill himself; that the cop’s behavior had been witnessed and or overheard by a jail employee and reported to his bosses; that a superior had confronted the officer in question, whereupon the latter tried to smash his DAR to destroy evidence; but that said evidence was retrieved.

He was not like you Rotarians. I mean he was not a credible witness. And now he's dead. I guess we could do another one of those "in-house" investigations we excel at.

It would not be entirely out of character for a Fullerton cop to urge an arrestee to commit suicide, given what we’ve seen of the thuggish behavior of our police lately. Is that what happened? Exactly how Gochenour died is not clear. In April it seemed a lot less suspicious than it does now, especially since FPD spokesmen have been shown to play fast and loose with the truth.

All of which begs the questions: who was the cop involved and what is his current employment status? In Fullerton, such things are shrouded behind a nearly impenetrable curtain.

We will try to pull it back and find out.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Cicinelli LAPD Pension Safe; Too Bad Fullerton Wasn’t Safe From Cicinelli

by 118 Comments on Cicinelli LAPD Pension Safe; Too Bad Fullerton Wasn’t Safe From Cicinelli

The guy who pounded Kelly Thomas’ face to bloody jelly (right after he got done torturing him with multiple Taser shocks) won’t lose his disability pension from the LAPD. In fact, the board that oversees such things won’t even review the case. Marisa Gerber relates the story in the OC Weekly, here.

What case is that? It stems from Cicinelli’s getting all shot to hell a few weeks out of the chute back in the mid-90’s. Among other injuries, one of his eyes was shot out. At the time, the pension board granted him a lifetime disability, but of course that decision didn’t contemplate Cicinelli going back to work as a one-eyed cop, which he did in Fullerton a little while later. And apparently nobody from Fullerton bothered to inform anybody in LA of Cicinelli’s new employment status.

So Cicinelli was making $40K a year from LAPD and made about $90K from Fullerton on that hot, sultry night of July 5th, 2011. Equitable? You decide.

Speaking of getting two pensions, I now roll around to the main point of this post. Which is Pat McKinley, the double barreled pension grabber who, as chief of the Fullerton Police Department hired Cicinelli and deployed the one-eyed cop on the streets of Fullerton. It was a favor for an old LAPD crony. In so doing, he placed Cicinelli, the public, and the taxpaying citizenry at dire risk.

He also hired the rest of the FPD gallery of rogues that has made the news lately: the druggies, pickpockets, perjurers, thugs, sex offenders and killers.

McKinley still insists he is proud of all these people (except for “the two!”) and has nothing to apologize for.

See, in Pat’s weird world mistakes are never admitted, responsibility for failure is never taken, and of course, accountability is utterly absent. McKinley won’t acknowledge what everybody else already knows: during his tenure as the head of the Fullerton Police Department his leadership failure created an obvious Culture of Corruption that culminated with the death of Kelly Thomas and the subsequent attempt to hush it up.

Well, I guess since McKinley won’t man up to his own failures, we’re going to have to do it for him

 

 

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Posted onOrange County Government

Jerbal’s Back in the News!

by 213 Comments on Jerbal’s Back in the News!

After we outed him as one of the biggest hypocrites in the history of OC repuglicanism (and that’s saying a lot), it looks like my old punching bag Matthew J. Cunningham is in the news again.

According to the New Santa Ana blog, Supervisor Bill Campbell looks to be hiring Cunningham’s wife as chief of staff in a new make-work project for which the RINO 3rd District Supervisor is becoming notorious.

Campbell is mercifully (for the taxpayers) termed out at the end of next year and so a rat is apparently leaving the sinking ship. Mrs. Cunningham must need a job, and what better way to misdirect a six-figure income to one of your loyal co-parishioners than give them the job running your office? Mrs. Jerbal, like her husband has close ties to the lobbyist/political handler John Lewis, so they’ve got that going for them, too.

The fact that Mrs. Cunningham ran the Latino outreach for the bigoted and unconstitutional Proposition 8 campaign seems not to be an issue for Campbell who is known as rabidly Catholic: he is the guy who also appointed the pedophile-priest protector Monseignor John Urell to some dopey County commission.   Oh yeah, this was the same guy who Cunningham created a support group for after he bugged out of his sex-abuse case deposition and fled to Canada.

Nice folks.

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Posted onDead heads

Anti-Recall Bozos Step in Own Droppings. Again.

by 70 Comments on Anti-Recall Bozos Step in Own Droppings. Again.
Yes, it's man-dated. Someone told me so.

You would think that politicians who have been around as long as the Three Deaf Dinosaurs would at least have enough savvy not to advertise their own misfeasance in office. If you thought that, boy, would you be wrong.

On their website the other day they were blaming the Recall campaign for making an issue of their illegal utility tax that’s been hidden in our water bills. Of course they have to explain that it’s been around for a long, long time; which doesn’t make it any more legal – or ethical. See, the City has been raising $2,500,000 a year by tacking a 10% increase to the amount of your water bill even though there has never been any justification for what is supposed to pay for some sort of “overhead” provided by the City to the water utility.

This big pile of money has been siphoned directly into the General Fund where it has contributed to the salaries, stipends and pensions of Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Pat McKinley and all of McKinley’s boys and girls currently on “administrative leave.” Last spring Mayor Jones defended the ripoff  here because it would pay for police – obviously people who have absolutely nothing to do with getting that water into your bath tub. And that’s illegal.

The funniest part of the attack on the Recall is some idiot named Larry Bennett’s ridiculous challenge to water rate payers to find any evidence of the this tax on their water bill. Larry even promises to pay your bill if you can find it.

Which begs the question: how stupid can these assclowns get?

Of course the 10% utility tax can’t be found on our water bills. It never has been shown on them. And that’s another one of the reasons it’s been illegal!

 

 

 

 

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