UPDATE: Here’s a post from last winter, published again to remind the Friends that Fullerton’s decision-makers promised to put the term limits issue on the next available ballot. Of course that opportunity came and went with the 72nd Assembly Special Election primary. It could still be done in January 2010 if the Special Election itself is required. In any case there is a General Election primary election next June. So let’s all remember!
In dramatic fashion our friends on the Fullerton City Council decided on January 6th that the voters of Fullerton should decide whether a twelve-year term limit for council members is right for Fullerton.
Pam Keller joined campaign promise keepers Shawn Nelson and Sharon Quirk in placing the issue on the first available ballot, which should be in June, 2010. Predictably, antediluvian councilmen Don Bankhead and Dick Jones opposed the motion believing that you can never be around too long, be too hidebound, too boring, and too inert to serve the public.
As usual, the good government types (i.e. we know what’s good for you so sit down and shut up) like Jan Flory were on hand to oppose the idea, knowing as they do that the longer you are in office the more likely you are to identify with public employees instead of constituents. These folks pretend to defend the public’s right to choose who their elected representatives are even though they don’t seem to trust the public to do much of anything else without government intervention.
We strongly support term limits. We believe that public choice will be enhanced by term limits because the well-financed incumbents will be forced to give way to new representation that might actually give people of real talent a chance to participate in governance, people who now largely acquiesce to the inevitability of incumbency. Fortunately, a majority of the council seem to agree.
The outstanding legal issue is whether the limits can be applied to previous years in office. The final wording of the plebiscite will have to address this. Let’s hope it works out so we can end the Age of Dinosaurs in Fullerton.
That’s the way Redevelopment likes to choose its favored developers. A kabuki-like pantomime is undertaken by issuing an RFP (Request for Proposals). In the end the process presents the decision makers with a choice that is essentially no choice. To illustrate the point, Loyal Friends, we go back in time almost ten years to examine how the “Save The Fox” movement got off to a rousing start.
Let's hope we don't end up going around in circles...
In 1999 after catching the wave of the Save The Fox movement, the City issued an RFP for private developers to take over the job of restoring the Fox and developing the adjoining area. The City had committed to build a parking structure and hand over other developer goodies. Proposals were received in August. In October the Agency was presented with the lucky winner, Staff’s choice – “Berkman/Chaffee” a local restaurant owner and a politically-connected lawyer turned low-income housing credits entrepreneur. Paul Berkman was there to provide credibility to run a “dinner theater” and Doug (Bud) Chaffee’s job was to look like a land developer. The only problem, as it soon transpired, was that Berkman refused to promise a dinner theater, only movies. And Chaffee had never “developed” anything but heavily subsidized housing.
That isn't very good, is it?
To complicate matters a second proposer named Dana Morris of Morris productions, who believed himself to be in the running, actually showed up at the meeting desiring that the elected officials, not staff, decide who might get the gig. His idea was to create an performing and fine arts academy on the site that would, in turn, generate all sorts of ancillary business opportunities downtown and not compete with existing businesses.
To the acute embarrassment of staff, Morris managed to organize a slew of supporters, including a backer who promised to help finance the venture. They asked for more time to prove their bona fides.
On cue, some of Fullerton’s usual lefty suspects got up to promote Berkman/Chaffee although their proposal was dubious, at best, and despite the fact that neither partner had any experience doing what they claimed they were going to do. There were strong undertones of religious bigotry pulling their adherents along, for it had become known that that Morris was affiliated with BIOLA, and in some peoples’ minds that was anathema.
Nuh-uh. Not in our city!
To add hypocrisy to the mix, people who had never shown a dime’s worth of concern when the City acquired property in downtown Fullerton were suddenly horrified by the thought of a non-profit foundation paying no property tax!
The council finally voted 4-1 (Flory dissenting, naturally) to continue the item so that Morris could clarify certain financial points in his proposal. In the intervening time, as Morris later told us, he was treated with such overt contempt and continuing hostility by Redevelopment Director Gary Chaplupsky that he finally abandoned his proposal as simply not worth the aggravation. We have only his word for what happened, but given the Redevelopment Agency staff’s propensity for prevarication over the years, we are inclined to accept it. And so a plausible concept for the Fox was lost because the staff did its level-best to thwart a reasonable proposal and award the deal to their favored team – the team that could be counted on to play ball.
Gee, Paul, I don't remember this being so hard...
And now Patient Friends, we finally return to our title. At the hearing in October, 1999 it slipped out that of the eight original proposals only two were even deemed worthy of consideration; and the City Council was never informed that one of the other six actually came from the janitor at the Hub Cafe! Of the two “finalists” it was clear that Morris never stood a chance, thus effectively limiting the Agency’s choices to none. This “planning and activity” as our faithful reader “Jack B. Nimble” characterizes it was nothing but a sham, a fact that later became evident when the Berkman/Chaffee partnership permitted its agreement with the City to lapse, and was never heard from again. And so a feeble concept had gained traction even though (excluding Morris) there was not one credible respondent to the proposal. But in government circles, that’s all it takes to gain momentum!
Loyal and Patient Friends, our long narrative of the City Lights SRO is coming to a sordid climax, and a merciful denouement. We have witnessed incompetence, vindictiveness, cultural vandalism and bureaucratic usurpation of authority, But we’re still not finished. The SRO project appeared dead. The elected representatives had killed it. Democracy at work! But as long-time city-watchers know, the project is only dead when staff says it’s dead, and none of the architects of this disaster – City Manger Jim Armstrong, Planning Director Paul Dudley, or their puppet, Redevelopment Director Gary Chalupsky, wanted it dead. Because that would be an admission of what everybody else already knew – they were largely incompetent.
What The Hell Are Those Guys Smoking?
We left off with Dick Jones at a March, 1997 meeting waxing voluble about drug users and their nefarious ways. Nuh-uh, not in my city! Unfortunately, Jones discovered that getting the foot into the mouth is a whole heckuva lot easier than extracting it.
Need some barbeque sauce with that?
Jones was not acute enough to pick up on clues that the City Manager, Flory and Bankhead were not going to let this die. He should have been clued in during the March meeting by the Agency attorney, who, at the insistence of Flory, Bankhead, and a clueless Julie Sa, gave a legal opinion in public stating that Mithawalla could have a case against the Agency. Here’s where the story gets a bit murky, culpability-wise, and who orchestrated what, so rather than accuse anybody we’ll just let you – the Friends of Fullerton – draw your own conclusions.
A civil rights lawsuit was adventitiously filed against Jones and the City by some guy nobody knew, claiming that the targets of Jones’ tirade were protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act; Mithawalla was waiting in the wings to go after the City for breach of contract – although clearly no contract had been established. With enough proper coaxing from people who wanted this project to live, Dick Jones, the Big Man with The Big Mouth suddenly experienced a case of shrinkage.
It Gets Soft When You Add Water...
A new hearing was held in May 1997. The stage was re-set to take up the SRO project one more time. It didn’t matter that the Council majority had already spoken. The City Staff, the Redevelopment Attorney, Flory and Bankhead were determined to have the last word in order to remind everyone who really runs the City of Fullerton.
Loyal Friends, when we left off our last post the City’s chosen SRO “developer,” Caleb Nelson” was gone: whether he left voluntarily or was shoved aside is a moot point. He left behind an unstarted project, a history of City bungling, and an embarrassing hole in the cityscape. Sometime in 1996 Redevelopment Director Gary Chalupsky discovered a replacement. Apparently on his own authority he chose Agit Mithawalla to take over the project. No public hearing, no RFP, no prequalifications, no City Council approval. Behind closed doors a new deal was hatching.
And the City Council had changed. And changed again in the fall of 1996. Jan Flory was now on the Council since 1994, trying to rewrite Recall history and a sure bet to cover up any staff misfeasance. But the newly minted councilman Dick Jones was on the dais. He had run as the voice of conservatism in Fullerton and it was known that his pals in the Chamber were dead set against an SRO across the street. Public housing – the horror!
Across the street from us? No freakin' Way, Man
When the final agreements with Mithawalla finally reached the Council for approval in March 1997 a showdown was prepared by irate citizens who opposed the SRO project for one reason or another. Some cited inflated construction costs; some objected to deal for financial reasons; other attacked Mithawalla’s record of shoddy building in LA. When the vote came down the agreement was voted down 3-2. Bankhead and Flory, predictably, backed up the staff mess completely; Chris Norby rallied Jones and Julie Sa to oppose. Dick Jones gave the very first of his corn pone diatribes, in which he hurled invective against the project, its likely denizens, and the methadone clinic next door.
When Councilmen Attack!
He was Big. He was Brave. He would soon come to regret giving voice to his peculiar worldview…
Gentle Friends of Fullerton, we left off our sad narrative with one Caleb Nelson, fly-by-night promoter, in possession of a multi-million dollar City subsidized “affordable” housing project on Commonwealth Avenue; a project that he had as much ability to undertake as a ling cod. Our “expert” City staff had chosen this dubious individual to build a multi-million dollar “SRO’ although they must have known he didn’t have the wherewithal to build a birdhouse. They had rejected a reknowned architect; they had helped destroy an historic building; and they were just getting warmed up.
We're the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency. We Know What We're Doing
As this venture entered its third year (1995) the Redevelopment staff had finally seen enough. Director Gary Chalupsky, who ostensibly joined the city in 1992 as an independent agent of change, but who, by this time, had lost most of his rigid members, acted. Caleb Nelson was shown the door, and in his place Chalupsky unearthed a low-income housing developer from LA by the name of Agit Mithawala.
Aw c'mon. You didn't expect accountability, did you?
The only difficulty was that Mr. Chalupsky had been given no authority to re-assign the development rights conferred upon Caleb Nelson to anybody. He did it all by himself. And he had to get the City Council help him cover his tracks…
Geez, what happened to the footprints?
By this time a politcal revolution had come and gone in Fullerton. Molly McClanahan and Buck Catlin were long gone, replaced by Jan Flory and, in 1996, F. Richard Jones. Fullerton was about to witness one of the most inglorious retreats in its history. Stay tuned for more…
Almost ten years ago the Morgan Group developers contributed this gem to downtown Fullerton’s inventory of beautiful buildings. For some reason Fullerton’s leaders thought the idea of another faux-Renaissance palazzo built of wood studs, stucco, and styrofoam details was just what the doctor ordered.
Well maybe the doctor did order it. Sometime check out the contributions made by partners of the Morgan group to Dick Jones’ 2000 city council campaign. Hmmm.
Well, we got more high-density, crappy architecture, more traffic on an already deficient intersection, the aesthetic engulfment of the beautiful and historic church next door, etc., etc.
A picture is better than a thousand words
What did The Morgan Group get? Free land, plus a gift of a public street (the 100 E. block of Whiting – an original street from the 1886 town site grid) and who knows what else. Who approved this disgrace? Let’s have a looksee:
Don Bankhead (current Councilmember)
Dick Jones (current Councilmember)
Jan Flory (former Councilmember)
Chris Norby (former Councilmember and current County Supervisor)
Julie Sa (twice elected former unintelligible Councilmember, current whereabouts unknown)
