FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
UPDATE: Make that 29 days…and counting…
It’s now been 16 days since I first noticed, and there are still no events listed on the Fullerton Collaborative’s on-line calendar for 2010. See?
Hey! Hello? Anybody home over there? Any collaboration going on at all?
Some man/woman calling him/herself 4th SD Observer started giving me and this blog a rasher o’ crap on a Pam Keller post yesterday; you know, we’re conspiratorialist wackos, yadda, yadda, yadda. This technique is common in blog circles: you try to color your political opponents as paranoid, nutsy, weird, tin foil-hatted, cross-dressing Nazis – whatever. And of course their objective is not only to marginalize you, but to divert attention from your point.
In response I was inspired to do a Pam Keller recap.
And just so my “true colors” are not seen to be in anyway unclear, here they are: Pam Keller is a hypocritical, shallow, self-serving, irresponsible public servant (and employee) whose manifest conflicts of interest make her unable to serve her constituents honestly, and who seems to be incapable of demanding accountability on the part of herself or her underlings.
There! I feel ever so much better! A veritable catharsis.
Now let’s take a peek at some of the Keller record; and I’ll keep it short(er) by just looking at stuff that has been written about her on what “admin” likes to call “our humble blog.”
Here are some items for your consideration:
1. When she ran for office in 2006 Keller promised that Fullerton residents would dictate the direction of development in town. And yet within two years Keller had voted to approve the gargantuan, staff/developer driven Amerige Court and Jefferson Commons monstrosities that involved huge get-rich-quick entitlements for their sponsors and that would stick the rest of us with the environmental impacts. Only the recession intervened.
2. When she ran for office for in 2006 Keller promised not to take money from developers. Instead she solicited developer’s contributions to her Collaborative, revenue that supported her employment. And the developers were proposing the Jefferson Commons and Amerige Court projects. Hypocrisy? Much?
3. In August of 2007, not even in office a year, Keller joined the now infamous Steve Sheldon (Jefferson Commons) $1000 per person drinkies-boat-ride-dinner fundraiser for Sharon Quirk. Also on board were the Pelican/Laing hucksters greasing the axles of their Amerige Court investment. Did Pam pay her way, or was it a gift from an importuning developer? Too easy. No prize for answering correctly.
4. Even though St. Jude’s Medical Center is a member and contributor to the Fullerton Collaborative of which Keller is the Executive director, Keller, as a city councilmember voted in December 2007 to approve their development entitlements for its massive project west of Harbor Boulevard. Conflict? Much?
5. In August and September of 2008 Keller supported keeping the public in the dark about the fact that she and her council colleagues were negotiating a retroactive pension spike for City employees. She publicly castigated Shawn Nelson for disclosing the fact that the topic was being deliberately concealed from the public.
6. In October 2008 Keller spent over $1200 in public funds for bills run up at a fancy hotel while attending a League of Cities conference in Long Beach – about 25 miles from her house.
7. In June 2009 Keller enlisted members of the OCCCO to publicly promote the fraudulent Redevelopment expansion. They sure owed her a favor since her Collaborative had funneled over $25,000 their way in 2007 for “community organizing.”
8. In June/July 2009 Keller voted for the bogus Redevelopment expansion with its evident failure to indicate any blight. The findings were a lie. Of course the expansion area had been redrawn to exclude a property Keller owns so she could vote on it. How’s that for fancy footwork?
9. Also in June 2009 Keller supported the relocation of a McDonald’s franchise about 150 feet to the corner across the street from Fullerton High – to tune of 6 million bucks. The childhood obesity issue was embarrassing since one of the Collaborative’s mission is to fight it, not facilitate it. Keller only backtracked when it became clear that the jig was up. Later that summer she proclaimed herself a “fiscal conservative.”
10. In July Keller proposed a City of Fullerton blog – without any bloggers, of course. In other words a City propaganda vehicle that would disseminate filtered information and necessarily involve city employees in censoring the unpleasantries often associated with participatory democracy on the internet.
11. In August and September 2009 our investigation into the Fullerton Collaborative and its doings discovered that the vast majority of Fullerton Collaborative expenses went to pay for Keller herself; that her hapless fellow boardmembers were woefully ignorant of her both her fund raising sources and her activities; and furthermore, that since she was considered an FSD teacher and public employee, she got to maintain her benefits thereof, but was cut loose from any District supervision to pursue her dream of philanthropy and self-promotion.
12. In October 2009 as a city council person she voted to postpone debt payments to the City from…her employer, the Fullerton School District. Sharing smiles with her boss who was sitting in the front row.
13. In December she voted to approve the fiasco-in-the-making Richman housing project scam – another staff/developer driven monstrosity (see #1, above) that even fails to address Fullerton’s most pressing housing needs (if you happen to be persuaded by such SCAG priorities).
14. In January 2010 it became apparent that for $50,000+ you can’t even hire an Executive Director that will take the time to update her organization’s on-line calendar events. Move along folks, nothing to see here!
15. In February 2010 we learned that even though Keller is a treated as teacher (for her own benefit) not only is she freed from the drudgery of the classroom, but she has apparently failed to account for her time away from FSD on political junkets, etc., as all teachers are required to do. Of course this means the accrual of unused sick/personal day time. It turns out that some real teachers resent it. How odd. Naturally FSD is clueless. Naughty!
Oh, well. That’s enough for now. No doubt more dubious Keller behavior will surface in the coming months, and as it does we will surely share it with you; and just as surely Keller’s Posse of Political Whatevers will make looking the other way into a full time job.
For the first time on record, public employee union membership now outnumbers private sector union membership. The impact of this ascendancy is glaringly evident in California, creating a destructive and unsustainable drain that threatens the financial future of our state.
Tune in to the Martha Montelongo show on Saturday from 10-11 am as Mark Bucher joins Martha to discuss California’s Economic Crisis, the causes, and a Citizen Power Initiative to shift power back to the citizens, away from the Public Employee Unions that dominate the State Government at every level.
The Register’s Jennifer Muir reported on 4th District Supe fundraising yesterday and pretty quickly got onto the topic of a salient campaign expense in Lorri Galloway’s forms: $850 to Taormina Properties – the guy who was supposedly providing the 3rd Distict resident Galloway with a plausible 4th District address.
This item has already caused speculation as to whether Galloway was trying to fob off rent for her fake address in the Colony District as a campaign expense. Not so says Galloway. The $850 was for campaign space rental that just happened to be in the same building as her “residence”! She declined to tell Ms. Muir how much she paid in rent for her alleged living space.
Well that’s sort of embarrassing – more amateur campaign follies, and all due to her political ambition and office-lust that has caused her to dummy up a fake residence in our district.
Another interesting fact from the campaign finance reporting documents is that her landlord, Bill Taormina, has given Galloway the $1700 limit though his company “Clean City.” And so we immediately start to wonder whether Galloway is paying full market rental on her Taormina-provided campaign space, and, of course how much she is paying for her Taormina-provided newly new address in Anaheim’s “Five Points” area, farther west out along the #42 OCTA bus route.
We caught some flak awhile back for our posts on the subject of old geezers getting all touchy-feely with the tender young Miss Fullertons at Chamber of Commerce mixers, here and here. Some of our readers thought the practice was harmless or trivial.
Whatever one’s perspective, the images were pretty fun. Remember?
Naturally when the Miss Fullerton contestants went on display at the council meeting this past Tuesday we thought it was a likely source of entertainment. We were right: The proceedings did not disappoint.
Enjoy our debonair mayor in action. Quite frankly he was almost dumbfounded.
I just came across this interview on the “Johnson for America Blog” involving OC Sheriff candidate, former Lt. Bill Hunt. Check it out. I am principally interested in this Q & A exchange on the subject of marijuana:
Josiah Schmidt: As an experienced law enforcement official, what is your opinion on the possibility that California might legalize marijuana in the next election?
Bill Hunt: It is the job of the sheriff to support and uphold the laws of the state. As it stands now, medical marijuana is legal in this state by a vote of the people. It is not the job of the sheriff to try to circumvent the will of the people by collaborating with the federal government. If marijuana is legalized I will treat it just like any other legal activity such as the use of alcohol. Responsible alcohol consumption is not a violation of the law. However, use by minors, driving under the influence, etc., are violations of law and they are enforced.
Wow. A comprehensive, straightforward, honest answer. Liberty, state’s rights, common sense, and no bullshit about waging the counterproductive and bank-breaking War on Drugs – or any other empty chest thumping slogans. Hmm.
Well, okay. It’s just talk. But I like what I’m hearing. I like it a lot.
As a salaried teacher, Pam Keller is required to turn in a form to her boss whenever she is absent from work at the Fullerton School District. But unlike every other teacher, Pam has no boss and doesn’t answer to anybody, even the Superintendent.
Since we know that Pam was out for a dozen-or-so days over the last few years attending various civic events relating to her councilperson duties, we decided to ask the school district to produce those absence forms that Pam turned in.
The response from Assistant Superintendent Mark Douglas was nothing but a big pile of mush. He claims that the district looked for the forms, although he never acknowledges that he couldn’t find them. But he didn’t send them to us, so it’s reasonable to assume that Pam never turned them in.
Notice how Douglas tries to pass the buck along to the Fullerton Collaborative, as if a private organization is responsible for enforcing the school district’s rules on it’s own teachers. He never bothers to explain how Pam’s 60% employment is relevant or why Pam’s relationship with the Collaborative would give her a special exemption from the rules.
So now we know that Pam did not use her sick/personal days while she was out. She got paid even though she wasn’t at work and her sick time continues to accrue indefinitely. Teachers have been known to build up an entire year of sick time before they quit, leaving taxpayers on the hook for salary, pension and benefits for days never worked.
Some day, long after the Collaborative’s relationship with the school district is gone, Pam Keller will retire as a teacher. She will cash out all of those unused sick days at the expense of the taxpayer. We end up paying twice for all of her silly junkets, and the celebration of unaccountability continues.
Dear Friends, we have just received this poem from a life-long Fullerton resident who goes by the web-handle of “Bushido Poet.” Apparently BP is a ninth-level haiku master. So when he haikus, we listen:
Rain patters my roof
Cold winds rattle the window
A braying donkey
As Christian noted here, tonight the Fullerton City Council will address the issue of how somebody gets to be mayor. It’s Item #7. Ho-hum. Seems some Fullertonians just can’t seem to bend their collective mind around the fact that Pam Keller got passed over for mayor. Boohoo.
The topic of mayoral “rotation” has been kicked around since last September when the Yellowing Observer sensed trouble was a comin’ for their gal. They were right.
Here at FFFF we’ve been saying the same thing all along. The person who deserves to be mayor is the one that can earn the confidence and support of two other colleagues – one way or the other. Keller couldn’t do that. Too bad for her. Politics? Shame, shame, shame!
So why is the issue on the agenda now? Must be because Keller wants it there. Hard to imagine anybody else wanting to whip this dead mule anymore.
One of the interesting things about this item, and one that may fall under the heading of unintended consequences, is that the City Clerk staff called around and found out that of the twenty-eight cities in OC that do not have an elected mayor only one has a mechanism for ensuring everybody gets to be mayor. One. That comes out to less than 4%, and that gives the lie to Sharon Kennedy’s weepy assertion that Fullerton was somehow different from other cities that share the mayor job. Fullerton is in fact exactly like all of the other cities in OC (except one, apparently). But of course we already knew that.
The final wrinkle in the issue comes with the City Clerk raising the possibility of an elected mayor in Fullerton, and how much it might cost. Who asked for that? How will that ensure mayoral rotation – or is it simply an alternative? Election only happen every other year so it seems like an odd idea to say the least.
Anyway, if you want to watch Pam’s Political Whatevers get up and make chimps of themselves again be sure to tune in tonight. Or better yet, go in person.
Last Saturday the hubby and I dropped in on the Maverick Theater to see their production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a theatrical adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel.
Now I’m not much of a theater goer, I had never been to a local Fullerton production, and I have never written a critique of a stage production, so I apologize ahead of time, and you can take this review for what it’s worth.
The Maverick Theater is in the back of a pretty unprepossessing industrial/warehouse building at 110 East Walnut Avenue, and you’ve got to give the Maverick folks a lot of credit – the single scene stage is about the size of my living room, and requires a deft choreography by the director and the cast. The venue lends itself to an extremely intimate relation between performers and the audience – the sort of proximity that lends itself to close study of the actors – for good or ill.
The story itself is the (pretty well known) dark comedy about the battle of wills between the conman Randall P. McMurphy, who has gotten himself committed to avoid a jail work detail, and the control freak-spinster-evil bitch-monster, Nurse Rached, who plays the nuts in the mental ward off each other for her own perverse satisfaction.
The leads are engaging actors; both Brennan Thomas as McMurphy and Julie Patzer as Nurse Rached were able to capture and hold audience attention, although Brennan’s choice of a Southern-sounding accent was a strange affectation in a story that takes place in the Pacific Northwest. I got the strong impression that a lot of Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke had been injected into the performance, particularly in the scene in which McMurphy chastises his fellows for feeding off of him. Still, Thomas’ rollicking performance was satisfactorily charming and ribald.
The part of Chief Bromden, the Indian narrator in the Kesey book, was played by Enrique Munoz. It seemed like one of the toughest roles in the play, and Munoz essayed it with energy, but ultimately in what I thought was an overly hand-wringing and lachrymal manner that seems to miss something of the Native American character: the overtly disturbed and wounded-child of Bromden’s introspective monologues didn’t seem to translate well into the outward character’s relationship with McMurphy in the Second Act.
The performances of the supporting actors was uneven. David Chorley did a wonderful job portraying the shy and stuttering Billy Babbit; Scott Keister as Frank Scanlon, pulled off an uncanny rendition of Christopher Lloyd’s character “Taber” in the film version. But some of the other parts were performed somewhat awkwardly or overly mannered. The ward attendants just didn’t seem to be able to get into the comic spirit of their parts while the sexually conflicted Dale Harding, as played by Stan Morrow, seemed too much like an over-the-top homosexual caricature.
Although it seemed a bit long, the productions was pretty entertaining and is worth seeing. I’m glad we went. The show runs through February 21.