Search Results for: Fullerton Boohoo

Lately we have been treated to a small band of “activists” at City Council meetings behaving poorly, insulting folks, catcalling and loudly showing their displeasure. This is rude behavior for grown-ups, and there is something else going on: demanding that you get your way and that oppositional forces must be bad, evil, in fact. It goes beyond politics and enters the realm of child psychology.

The latest example is an “opinion” essay appearing in the Kennedy Sisters’ Fullerton Observer. It was supposedly written by a person named Kevin Curriston, under the sensational headline “City Council steamrolls constituent views.”

As an aside, FFFF has encountered Mr. Curriston previously, although his identity was a mystery. In fact, some of us assumed he was a homeless individual rounded up by Sitkas Kennedy to support the Trail to Nowhere.

I replicate Curriston’s editorial below, wherein he attempts to justify the theme of his headline.

I attended and spoke at the Fullerton City Council meeting on December 16,  2025. On the agenda was the question of whether to adhere to the custom of a fair rotation of mayoral selection, or to continue allowing council members to nominate and elect someone by simple majority vote.

About 75 citizens showed up to speak, all but one pushing for a fair rotation of the mayor and advocating for Ahmad Zahra or the current Mayor Pro Tem, Dr. Shana Charles, both for their continued presence in community events and caring, responsive attitudes.

Fred Jung was personally ostracized and insulted every which way to Friday, and accused of not even making eye contact with his detractors when they addressed him.  It was pointed out that he wanted to retain the position of Fullerton Mayor on his resume simply for his objective of running in 2026 for Orange County Supervisor. If we have anything to do with it, and can overcome a well-bankrolled political machine, that won’t happen.

Councilman Nick Dunlap spoke at the end and said the same thing: 40 people who show up to every City Council meeting to protest do not represent the voters of Fullerton.  He did not support rotating representation of all districts in Fullerton.  It was one town, with one set of interests.

Councilwoman Jamie Valencia nominated Fred Jung, and Valencia, Nick Dunlap, and Fred Jung re-voted for Jung as Mayor, shutting out Mayor Pro Temp Shana Charles completely in favor of Dunlap as Mayor Pro Tem. This will be the 4th time he’s been mayor in 6 years.  It is not a level playing field in any way!

Fullerton City Council has become Fred Jung’s well-oiled political machine that does not care about constituent concerns or views – only about their own cronyism and career ambitions.  It was pointed out that neighboring Buena Park adheres to a mayoral rotation policy, and mayoral elections in the City Council are done in minutes.  Fullerton is attracting attention all across the county for its contentious decision-making, totally steamrolling the will of its constituents.

An editorial is all about opinion, and the opinions presented in this statement perfectly parallel those of Fullerton Boohoo, Militant Division, and can be seen in the drama, emotion, and exaggeration of a typical child. We can forget about the misstatement of facts other than to observe the inflation of numbers and time are concomitant with the infantile imagination.

Here we see the usual conflation of what someone wants with what is righteous and proper. That’s not so unusual in political presentation. But the next step is more pernicious; the assumption that what you want is what everybody wants and just as importantly, what everybody needs. We’ve seen it over and over again when the small cluster of agitators at City Council meetings profess to speak “for the people,” on issues of which the vast majority of Fullerton’s citizens and taxpayers are unaware. This is the self-centered thinking of a center-of-the-universe child, and a particularly irresponsible mindset for adults making big, expensive decisions. Yet, this is the essence of the Fullerton Childish perspective.

Curriston reminds us that Fullerton Childish is offended by Nick Dunlap’s rational observation that 40 people do not constitute “voters” and that getting elected means representing everybody. This attitude is vilified by Fullerton Childish because it often means the pet projects of their darlings, Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles are subject to at least a little scrutiny.

It doesn’t seem to occur to poor Kevin that maybe he should consider why a majority of his colleagues refuse to make Zahra Mayor. Like his immigration fraud, his battery and vandalism case, his filing a false police report against a councilmember, his going to Sacramento behind the Council’s back, his persistent and colorful recreation of the truth, and even his latest pretense of being “out of the state” for some mythical employment.

Ultimately, the mayor rotation fantasy isn’t really about fairness or democracy or any other abstraction for Fullerton Childish. It’s about the denial of the gratification that validation that your worldview provides. Whining and crying about unfairness. Truth is neither here nor there; rational examination of facts is not an option. Opposition is evil. If it can’t be found, it must be concocted.

Sometimes stuff pops up that you couldn’t possibly make up. The latest Fullerton Observer includes a piece co-authored by Curtis Gamble and Sankia Kennedy and features the headline I used, above.

To start off with I have to say I can’t think of two people less likely to come up with a potential solution for anything.

Poor Curtis Gamble is just a perpetually discombobulated fellow who takes an opportunity a couple times a month to polish his sense of self-importance at city council meetings, generally offering comments on things he knows nothing about. He presumes to advocate for the homeless, bus drivers, seniors, students, etc., etc.; people who would probably just as soon forgo his representation. Co-author Saska Kennedy is thoroughly annoying too, although she, like her older sister, Sharon, is propelled by the ideological dogma of the self-righteous and sanctimonious left.

Their “article” presumes there is a homeless crisis in Fullerton. And it offers that homeless seniors represent 20% of this crisis. Their potential solution? Use the Rancho La Paz senior mobile home park as some sort of permanent housing for the homeless, moving them into trailers as they are vacated.

I can’t conceive of a worse idea: a village of homeless people assigned property, not their own, to live in and presumably maintain. Somehow the pathologies of homelessness – schizophrenia, drug abuse, living in filth would be rectified by mobile home park living. Cooking, cleaning, job hunting, health maintenance all self-performed by the newly housed, one concludes. Of course professional do gooders from Illumination Foundation (as a for instance) will be on hand to dispense “behavioral” admonitions and the necessary modalities.

The biggest unstated obstacle, and one that Curtis and Skansia work really hard to ignore is the fact that the mobile home park has an owner. When last I heard, that fellow is a real estate and numismatist named John Saunders who has been villainized by Fullerton Boohoo for raising rents on his ground leases and who, I believe, is highly unlikely to go along with Homeless Village. Well, maybe he would if the City were to reimburse him for rents and maintenance costs and policing of the village. That would cost a fortune.

The article fails to mention that typically land, not the mobile homes are owned by a guy like Saunders. A trailer wouldn’t be available unless purchased by somebody for the homeless purpose, or just abandoned by the owner.

Then there’s the issue of joint sovereignty. The south half of Rancho La Paz is in Anaheim, not Fullerton, so there’s that.

When I was done reading this nonsense I was left wondering its purpose. Is it just gratuitous virtue signaling? A Big Idea hatched by the disoriented Curtis Gamble and advertised by the Kennedy Sisters? Hard to say. But one thing is certain. The piece projects the typical lack of pragmatism that is the hallmark of the Homeless Industrial Complex, so maybe it has a chance – if politicians can be seen to be throwing money at a problem absent results.

On Tuesday the Bushala Depot lease agreement was not voted upon. It item was continued until July 15th.

But that didn’t keep a gaggle of Zahra followers from trying to continue the narrative of subsidies and below market rate rent.

Our new friend, tender young thing Elijah Manaserro, local scholar, was there to do just that. And a few other callers in.

My favorite speaker was the itinerant pest Curtis Gamble, whose near homelessness makes him qualified to opine on real estate deals.

When public comments were done, Zahra showed his role as coordinator of the opposition. He wanted comparative market rates, he said; there won’t be any, but okay, fair enough. But then he displayed his fundamental ignorance by including agreements with The Summit Restaurant and the Boys and Girls Club – completely different properties.

The fact is that the Santa Fe Depot doesn’t have any “comps” in Orange County. The historic building is is unique and made up of several disparate areas, each of pretty small space; in other words, hard to rent out. And the Loading Dock, proposed for inclusion in a revised overall lease, is only connected to an area already leased by the Bushalas. Adaptive reuse will require a huge outlay of money to effect structural reinforcement, enclosure and interior finishes. And because there is no place for kitchen or restrooms, it is functionally useless for anybody except the Bushalas who have ten year lease extension options.

Here’s the hypocrisy part. Remember the ill-fate “boutique hotel/monster apartment,” an unsolicited proposal with no RFP, no RFQ, no RF-anything? Do you remember any of Fullerton BooHoo raising Hell about that? Me neither. I do remember that Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles voted to give con-men Johnny Lu and Larry Liu a $14,000,000 price subsidy on a parcel they upzoned themselves. Talk about short-term memory loss.

Hopefully when this item returns, staff will explain (based on their extensive expertise) the expertise Fullerton Boohoo is always praising – that the deal they negotiated is not a subsidy and that rather than losing money, the deal will bring in tax revenue to the City and to the County; and that letting the Loading Dock fall down doesn’t help anybody – even those taxpayers Zahra and Charles pretend to care so much about.

On tonight’s City Council meeting agenda you’ll see an item about a lease revision at the historic Santa Fe Depot between the City (owner) and the leasee – Bushala Brothers. Inc.

Apparently the Bushala’s have been trying to get a lease on the entire loading dock portion of the Depot for the better part of 10 years while rolling it into an updated lease for the entire building. These efforts seem to have been met with the usual obstructionism from City staff, who in the past seemed happy to stall and temporize.

But mirable dictu, the Age of Miracles isn’t past! A lease has finally been agreed, and the opportunity to see a successful adaptive reuse of the loading dock into a commercially viable space may be at hand.

Happiness all around, right?

Heavens, no! Enter Ahmad Zahra and Fullerton Boohoo. The new running dog for this dog and pony operation is a sweet young thing named Elijah Manassero who writes articles for the Fullerton Observer attacking Tony Bushala and using the phraseology of Zahra and Vivian Jaramillo. Apparently Elijah has taken to social media to proclaim his outrage over the Depot lease.

Crazy deal? Insanity? Really, innocent, young Elijah? That’s what you wanna go with? No “City taxes” are spent on this arrangement and there is no subsidy, ya poor, dumb sap.

Now we may be sure that the “well below market rate” nonsense was fed to him by Zahra or somebody else who knows even less about commercial real estate – like Skaskia Kennedy who is also parroting the idiot “subsidy” line. The fact is that there is no other potential tenant with any interest in the loading dock and never has been.

A tax-paying tenant on the loading dock would increase sales taxes to the City. Having no tenant contributes nothing, a fact that has escaped poor young Elijah and the younger Kennedy Sister.

Over thirty years ago the Bushalas were the only non-subsidy demanding respondent to an RFP by the City of Fullerton to lease and restore the Santa Fe Depot, a fact reflected in the lease value – then and now. The restoration was successfully performed and the building is now on the National Register of Historic Places – an undeniable and rare success story for Fullerton Redevelopment.

More recently, the Bushala’s have donated tens of thousands of dollars in labor and material to help volunteers perform stabilization and repair efforts on the loading dock roof structure that the owner – the Fullerton taxpayers – haven’t had to spend a dime on. More malfeasance, naive Elijah?

It’s way past time to put the loading dock platform to productive use – use that is profitable to the taxpayers pliable young Elijah and Fullerton Boohoo pretend to care so much about.

And tonight’s the time to finally do it.

Last night the Fullerton City Council voted down a desperate attempt by “Drs.” Charles and Zahra to rescind a recently approved policy that excludes non-government publications on City premises – except for a spot in the Library.

As FFFF noted the other day the whole thing was a ginned-up reason to force another vote and to mobilize Fullerton Boohoo. The transparent pretext of “new information” fooled nobody, since it was obviously just cover for Shameless Charles to get right with her constituency and at the same time to subject the council majority to another round of uninformed harangues by Zahra’s mindless minions.

Somehow a content neutral policy of excluding news outlets from the City Hall lobby was construed as an all-out assault on the free press and freedom of speech, yadda yadda. The Fullerton Observers were outraged, of course.

At the end, the inevitable wind-up speeches were completely predictable. Charles went into a long and winding circumlocution meant to separate her from her previous voice in support of the policy.

Zahra, as usual, outdid himself in his insufferable, twattish way, nattering about freedom and admonishing staff and the City Attorney that they are paid by all Fullerton, not just the council majority, and that being legal doesn’t make something right. The irony of this bullshit was lost on Fullerton Boohoo, but not on me. This is the same little miscreant who voted time and time again to pursue a lawsuit by the City against FFFF, Joshua Ferguson, and David Curlee. Zahra’s lawsuit against FFFF was an attempt to punish people expressing a First Amendment protected right. The City lost that lawsuit, costing the people of Fullerton, the folks Zahra pretends to care so much about, upwards of a million dollars. That’s a lot of asphalt repair for your district, “Dr.” Zahra.

Zahra blamed FFFF for being behind an intricate plot to get the Observer out of City Hall, a compliment really, although whether deserved remains to be seen. The new paper FFFF publication, the Fullerton Tribune (I’ve seen the gallery proof), can’t be dispensed there, either.

The vote to rescind the policy failed 2-3 with Valencia, Jung, and Dunlap voting no.

At the end of the interminable yakking, Jung moved to “table” the issue, a parliamentary tactic of using a positive majority vote that makes it impossible for Charles and Zahra to resurrect the thing through some fabricated “new information” in two weeks or beyond. Hopefully, on future votes Jung will remember to do this the first time around, or better yet, make it clear that 2 council people can only agendize new items, not something they lost.

The motion to table passed 3-2, Charles and Zahra dissenting, evidence that still want to bring it up again.

That’s the way it looks. FFFF’s attorney Kelly Aviles sent word to the City that Friends for Fullerton’s Future was planning a periodical publication and wanted to dispense it on City property – City Hall, the Fullerton Library, the Community Center. You may recall our post.

Our lawyer has not heard anything in the past four and a half weeks. There is an obvious stall tactic, of course. This means one of two things. Could it be because the City doesn’t know how to respond? Or, maybe the City wants to ignore the request just hoping somehow it will go away.

We do know that there is no love lost between FFFF and Fullerton’s astonishingly still employed City Attorney, the I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Firm of Jones and Mayer. These cut rate pettifoggers, hand job lawyers, and low percentile law school grads don’t like us because of our myriad posts outlining their incompetence, corruption, and self-dealing. They even tried to sue FFFF and a couple of its writers a few years back. Their loss must still hurt their misplaced professional pride.

We also know that the upper echelons of the City also look askance at our disrespectful but honest chronicling of their misdeeds over the past 17 years. There’s a long list of corrupt cops, boobs, drunk driving city managers, incompetents and ne’er do wells whom we have raked over the coals, including several of the current generation.

Obviously, the immigration and marriage fraud Ahmad Zahra doesn’t like us because we are anti-Muslim homophobes, which hilariously corresponds exactly with his exercise in self branding. Whether his pal in the “progressive” ideology charade, Shana Charles is opposed to an FFFF presence in City Hall is unknown.

What about Nick Dunlap and Fred Jung? We have been sort of nice to them when they do good things; also not so nice when they cave in to Fullerton’s boohoo phalanx. Are they trying to blackball us? I don’t know and I don’t know if Jamie Valencia has even heard of our humble blog.

Whatever the dynamics, we’re not giving up. If a squalid rag like the Fullerton Observer, with its innuendo, errant information, sanctimonious and blatant politicking can be disseminated on public property, so can our proposed chronicle.