The Voice of OC is reporting on a plan by County Board of Supervisors Chair Janet Nguyen to create a redistricting committee of which she will be Chair, and Supervisor Bill Campbell, Vice Chair. The remaining three positions will be filled by appointment by the other Supes.
Apparently this little plan was not well-received by the three dissed supervisors – for obvious reasons. Although Brown Act issues have been raised, the real question seems to be how the Empress thought she’d ever get this ticket validated: the Census won’t be complete and published until 2011 when she won’t even be Chair any more; she is also running for re-election in 2012 and the idea of her manipulating this process to shed unwanted Latino votes from her district must have occurred to just about everybody.
Supervisors Shawn Nelson and John Moorlach proposed the redistricting model pursued in 2000 which seems to have been the only one in recent memory that avoided legal challenge, and in which supervisor’s staff members participated with the public in designing new districts.
This issue isn’t over. Next week the County Counsel Nicholas Chrisos will report back on Brown Act implications and the full Board will take up the matter again.
Wow. It’s sort of weird. I spend a few months in eastern Nevada and when I get back it seems like nothing has changed. It was way back in February that Joe did a recap on the doings of Pam Keller – and what a recap it was. We had over 130 comments, most from some pathetic Keller apologist calling him/herself 4th SD Observer.
And today I learned from a pretty reliable source that last night the Fullerton School Board renewed the Keller/Collaborative contract. You remember, the contract that permits Keller to be an FSD employee while in actuality she goes gallavanting around Fullerton, latte cup in hand, hobnobbing with other professional do-gooders, and taking credit for real philanthropy performed by others.
Anyway, I gather that the vote was 3-2, with Bev Berryman and Lynn Thornley, to their credit, dissenting. As usual Ed Royce liberals Hilda Sugarman and Ellen Ballard voted yes; and of course our old friend Minard Duncan had to go along, too. That figures. He has popped up here occasionally to inform us of how hard Pam works.
So what ever happened to the Fullerton Collaborative? You remember… Pam Keller’s non-profit with the curiously convoluted contract with the Fullerton School District that provides payment to herself , all of those nice government benefits but none of that pesky accountability.
Keller is attempting to renew her contract with the school district at the board meeting tomorrow night. The contract allows her to work as a private organization with little oversight while still collecting all the pension and benefits of a school teacher.
Anyone who takes issue with the school district acting as a financial conduit for the shenanigans of a well-connected liberal activist should show up and be heard. If you’d like to review the myriad of conflicts and liabilities that this arrangement provides, start with the Pam Keller Recap and continue to the Fullerton Collaborative archives.
The meeting is Tuesday, July 20th at 5:30PM at the district board room. The Collaborative giveaway is listed as item 2c on the agenda. Plenty of our Friends will be there!
The north part of Orange County has a notorious lack of parks and open space. And while the County of Orange spends millions on its park system annually, including vast tracts of parkland in south county, and even on the Harbor Patrol in the wealthy enclave of Newport Beach, us taxpayers up north get almost nothing. We have Craig Park and Clark Park which total about 130 acres; meanwhile the County controls around 60,000 acres of park and open space counting the new Irvine Company “gift.” Now that’s just wrong.
Former 4th District Supervisor Chris Norby kept talking about this unfairness, but he never actually accomplished anything to fix the inequity. Norby’s successor Shawn Nelson also made this topic a campaign issue. Will he be able to succeed where his predecessor tapped out? Let’s hope so. The opportunity for additional parkland, and even bike trails in utility rights-of-way are there. It may not be easy, but some of us voters expect elected folks to do the hard stuff.
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If you spend much time driving around Fullerton you become painfully aware of the sad state of the streets. The deteriorating infrastructure underneath is a disaster just waiting to happen. Some folks might characterize this as blight. I know I do. And yet when it comes to dealing with blight, the one and only mission of Redevelopment law, our agency would much rather spend millions on subsidies to commercial developers, land “write-downs,” low income housing, crummy remodels, fire sprinklers for dance clubs, transforming a useful alley into an elevated pedestrian paseo, purchasing a poisoned park, and relocating a McDonald’s for $6,000,000, etc. etc.
One of the key points of our settlement negotiations with the City over its Redevelopment project area expansion will be to require the Agency spend a significant portion of its funds on infrastructure replacement – the very “talking point” that the pro-expansion mouthpieces used at the public hearings in the first place.
One of our observant friends passed along this iridescent pearl from Rob Reiner’s under scrutinized Tax and Redistribute OC Children and Families Commission:
July 15, 2010
The Children and Families Commission of Orange County was awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). This achievement is the highest form of recognition among government finance and is given annually to promote high quality finance reporting in the public sector. More than 3,500 governments participate in this program each year.
This self-congratulatory item was no doubt scribbled by Chief Commission Wordsmith and $200 an hour toothbrush hander outer, Matthew J. Cunningham, and is typical of government accountants passing out accolades to each other.
Too bad nobody has done a real external performance audit, including investigating how exorbitant PR and lobbying contracts are being handed out to Commission member Bill Campbell’s political running buddies like Curt Pringle and Cunningham himself.
Well, not to worry. Something tells me that come 2010 Fringie Award time we’ll be recognizing the Commission with our own special brand of recognition.
I was recently asked by a fellow member of the CRA why I felt that Redevelopment Agencies were bad for the public. After my long dissertation (found throughout this blog and elsewhere), I boiled it down to the CRA’s own principles.
7. That the market economy, based upon capitalism and free enterprise, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the greatest system for creating personal freedom, a strong constitutional government, and is the most productive supplier of human need.
8. That when government interferes with the free enterprise system or attempts to control the economy by taking from one individual to bestow upon another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both.
Redevelopment TAKES (purchases at “fair market value”) property from one person and GIVES it (usually for FREE) to another under the auspices of “the public good”. On it’s face it should be apparent that this practice is inconsistent with the CRA’s principles. The public coffers should not fund private development and give one developer/investor an unfair advantage over another.
One of our own FFFF bloggers has announced his candidacy for Fullerton city council. Greg Sebourn, a professional land surveyor, pulled nomination papers at city hall on Wednesday afternoon.
Greg says he represents fresh leadership in Fullerton and will focus on core city issues such as restoring infrastructure, improving public safety and enhancing customer service at City Hall.
Here’s a little more about Greg:
Greg Sebourn is the Senior Survey Project Manager at Johnson-Frank and Associates, Inc. of Anaheim Hills. Greg has been instrumental on projects that include the subdivision of Anaheim Stadium to make room for an NFL expansion team, U.S. border properties and rights-of-way acquisition, several National Forest boundary projects, and numerous smaller municipal projects.
Additionally, Sebourn is the Facilitator of the Survey/Mapping Science Program at Santiago Canyon College, the largest program of its type in the continental United States as well as a distinguished adjunct-faculty.
Greg currently sits on the City of Fullerton’s Citizens’ Infrastructure Review Committee with broad knowledge on the challenges for Fullerton.
Visit Greg’s campaign website at www.gregsebourn.com.
Here’s some big news. Fullerton resident Bruce Whitaker just pulled papers to run for city council.
Given the current crop of candidates, it’s safe to say that Bruce is an early favorite. He’s likely to get the endorsements of both Supervisor Shawn Nelson and Assemblyman Chris Norby, along with the GOP endorsement.
Why? Because Whitaker has a long history as a successful tax fighter and a proponent of property rights and personal freedom.
And now on to the chronicles of Bruce Whitaker:
Bruce entered political activism in 1992 when he became incensed at the largest federal tax increase in U.S. history and the largest state tax increase in California’s history under Governor Pete Wilson. He became active in the city of Fullerton the following year when he led a successful effort to recall a majority of the City Council and repeal unnecessary utility taxes. That repeal has saved more than $150 million for Fullerton taxpayers to date.
After the Orange County bankruptcy, Bruce Whitaker debated against tax proponents and authored numerous guest editorials which helped defeat a bankruptcy sales tax in 1995, resulting in more than $2.2 billion in taxpayer savings.
Bruce founded the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers (FACT) in 1996, a group that successfully stopped the Gray Davis Administration from pushing an unconstitutional $12.7 billion bond offering. Later, FACT sued again to stop a $2 billion pension obligation bond which was also pushed without voter approval.
Bruce is currently the O.C. District Director for Assemblyman Chris Norby and serves as a member of the Fullerton Planning Commission.