UPDATE: The MWD Board will take up this matter at its meeting on Sept 15.
The Metropolitan Water District, one of the shadowiest and least transparent agencies in California is contemplating raising its employees pension benefits. The Register opines about it here and makes reference to an original story by Teri Sforza here .
With bad news about how its own pension plan has been rocked by huge CalPERS investment losses, and with financially teetering state and municipal governments it seems like a poor time for the MWD to be grabbing for more tax-payer backed gravy to benefit a giant gaggle of water bureaucrats. Plus, the MWD just passed along a water commodity rate to its members that we are all paying for.
Fullerton is original member of the MWD and has been represented for a long time, some say way too long, by a fellow named Jim Blake – as we wrote about here .
UPDATE: The MWD is scheduled to take up this matter at its meeting on September 15.
Jim has been on the MWD Board for so long that almost nobody can remember when he went on back in the 80s (1980s, that is). The people who originally appointed him are all long gone. But Jim has well-managed his continual reappointment without anybody else getting a shot at the job. Well, now he’s got an issue that may just spell trouble for his lengthy tenure.
Blake has always been a big pro-staff drum-beater, and its hard to imagine that if, left to his own devises, he wouldn’t go for the pension jack. If he goes for it now, the people who appointed him may discover that it is they who are ultimately responsible for the actions of their appointees. Under ordinary circumstances this might not bother Fullerton’s own pension spiking gang too much. But 2010 is an election year, and we feel certain that this the pension increase will become an issue if it goes through. The city council needs to know that this continued fiscal recklessness will not be tolerated.
Green?
We’ve been sharing information (when we find it) with our Friends about the unusual – well, unique, really – relationship between the Fullerton Collaborative and the Fullerton School District. Fullerton City Council woman Pam Keller is the Executive Director of the former, but remains an employee of the latter. We’ve coined a term for the process – “contracting-in.” It’s such a rare strategy that we’ve never actually seen it in use before.
Many of our Loyal Readers’ eyebrows have been caused to arch by the possibility that Pam Keller might have been soliciting donations for The Collaborative that actually went to pay FSD for her own services. And those eyebrows got even closer to hairlines when speculation began that Pam may have been soliciting donations from interests that had business before the City of Fullerton.
Today we share the 2009-2010 agreement between the Collaborative and the FSD – agreed upon by the Board of Trustees unanimously and without discussion as a “consent calendar” item.
Notice the asterisk in item #1 of the Collaborative’s responsibilities. It leaves open the possibility that the District may give the Executive Director a raise – and stick the Collaborative with the bill! Now we ask you – what kind of an organization would agree to an open-ended codicil like that in a contract? We’ll help out: one in which the Executive Director (who is also a board member), is the direct beneficiary, that’s who!
We also note in the 2009-10 FSD budget documents a throw away line stating that the Collaborative kicked in extra money to the FSD. It’s noted in that little box at the bottom of the document (below). Now why would the Collaborative do that? What kind of “charity” gives additional money back to a contractor? Possibly a charity whose fund-raiser’s efforts are so successful that a surplus exists which could be kicked back to the District to pay for that raise described in item #1 of the agreement. Of course we’re just speculating here.
But, none of these speculations would be so thought provoking if the Collaborative’s mission weren’t so fuzzy, and if it had major expenses other than the cost of hiring a government employee to be its Executive Director/fund-raiser. But the mission is so loose as to be practically meaningless, and the cost of the Executive Director consumed most of its budget in 2007.
All of this really ties back to the fundraising issue and who actually gives money to the Collborative. But it’s perfectly clear now that the funds – donations, fees, whatever – that go into the Collaborative, go to pay Keller – via the FSD; the question of additional “revenue” given to the FSD by the Collaborative opens up a new issue for people who contribute to this endeavor and who might start wondering why the Collaborative can’t be run by its own employee, or better yet, by volunteer labor.
Fullerton trash in green bins is gold to hundreds if not thousands of recyclers throughout North OC. People who are in the marginal business of recycling are now flocking to neighborhoods throughout Fullerton Monday- Friday. Depending on the day of the week that your trash is picked up you may notice people competing to score the goods from the green bin. It’s no coincidence that it’s green is it?
So who does the recyclable stuff belong to? Good question. Someone “inadvertently” forgot to label the bin Property of MG Disposal or Property of the City of Fullerton, and the recyclers believe that they are doing business as usual.
Most people understood that if everyone helped (recycled) by sorting our trash, then the hauling rates would be lowered (or at least not raised) and would save us a little money on our trash bill. But now that we are all sorting the “goods” for the recyclers on trash day it has become an added bonus for those in the shopping cart recycling business.
Is a crime being committed? Is anybody cited for it? Who makes up the loss for MG Disposal?
Did the city and MG Disposal leave out an important clause in the contract? Or is it just easier for everybody to look the other way?
Click Here to View the Letter Mentioned in the OC Register
We were constantly told how wonderful the 1:1 Laptop program has been for the education of Fullerton school children, but something just didn’t smell right to us. Sure enough, we find out that many parents are finally saying “NO”. Resistance to the autocratic technology program has grown drastically in the last 6 months. After having a taste of the laptop program, parents at Golden Hill Elementary strongly rejected the continuance of the program at their school.
A report from the school district shows that Golden Hill parents failed to meet the 90% “willingness” threshold that is required for the laptop program to be continued. Despite ominous threats of moving children to an inferior school if the parents did not respond the survey “correctly”, only 51% of parents volunteered to participate in the program. The threshold was put in place after the ACLU sued the school district for violating children’s Constitutional right to a free education several years ago. Many parents at both Hermosa Drive and Nicholas Jr. High rejected the program as well, but the school district found enough money to subsidize parts of the program anyway.
After years of congratulating themselves for this high-tech boondoggle, the stupefied school board could only muster up support to continue the program at a single school. That’s not good, and it’s only going to get worse now that the parents are catching on.
How much longer can the district afford to keep shoveling money into the laptop pit as teachers are laid off and struggling parents stop paying their bills?
What will parents do when they find out how unsafe these Internet-ready laptops really are?
Stay tuned…
One of the biggest selling points of Redevelopment is that it’s supposed to make things look better. Especially buildings. As its legal justification, Redevelopment is supposed to eradicate blight. In Fullerton most of what Redevelopment coughs up seems to look more and more like blight every time we look at it.
Our pages have been strewn with examples of cheap, crappy, banal, and cheesy buildings underwritten by Redevelopment, whose design has been guided by the shaky hand of Redevelopment bureaucrats who have micro-managed downtown Fullerton into an open air museum of aesthetic horrors.
But today, let’s focus on one our biggest pet peeves: Redevelopment’s penchant for brick veneer – one of an angry God’s most certain punishments visited upon humankind.
The “Trider Building” on the SW corner of Pomona and Commonwealth showcases the cheapest of all the brick veneers – what the professional masons call “lick and stick.” This crap was applied to a black mastic background and began to pop off almost immediately. Recently somebody was employed to fill in the joints with mortar, presumably to arrest the pop-off effect, but they only got a few feet off the ground before they stopped. The result looks even worse than ever except that at least now there is an undeniable comic effect not calculated in the original design.
Here’s an example where a grouted veneer runs headlong into what appears to be another lick-and-stick. Neither one looks good. Juxtaposed the effect of cheapness is intensified.
For years the Redevelopment and Development Services Departments not only tolerated, but actually foisted brick veneer on the rest of us – presumably because old buildings are made of brick and brick veneer is made of brick, and Fullerton is all about preserving old things. The whole idea of regurgitating old building themes in fake materials was, and still is, the order of the day. And so the idea of original and creative design has been intentionally jettisoned for the architectural garbage that litters downtown Fullerton.
Coming up soon: The Horrors of Styrofoam.
We’ve been tracking the doings of Fullerton City Council member Pam Keller lately, with particular interest in her job as Executive Director of something called the Fullerton Collaborative, an outfit with fairly fuzzy goals whose biggest expense in 2007 was Pam Keller herself.
We’ve gotten a little bit of blow back from some Keller supporters who just don’t seem to understand the problem we’re having with a City Council member who might just be voting on projects whose applicants are also contributors to her Collaborative, and hence, pay for her services.
To help illustrate our point we helpfully provide an example. On their website, the Collaborative lists St. Jude’s Medical Center as a member here . Well, members pay dues, and those dues go to the revenue that pays for an Executive Director. Now let’s say (for the sake of argument) that St. Jude’s had some important business before the City of Fullerton. Oh. Wait. No need to suppose.
In December of 2007 the Fullerton City Council voted to approve a general plan amendment, a zone change, permits, and associated CEQA documents that permitted St. Jude’s to expand on the west side of Harbor Blvd – adding a massive new medical building and a gargantuan parking structure here . The vote was 5-0 (check out pages 5 & 6) – meaning that Keller voted to approve a huge project in an already heavily congested area proposed by a key member of her Collaborative, a member whose contributions that year went into the kitty that paid Keller’s salary. We see that as a huge conflict of interest – even if her relationship might somehow be legalized by the fact that she was really an FSD employee in disguise. The fact that the approval didn’t hang upon Keller’s vote offers us little comfort. What if it had – as in the case of the recent Redevelopment expansion?
If this same type of behavior had taken place with private developers, well, you can see the problems that would arise. Oh. Wait. St. Jude’s is a private developer.
A couple of weeks ago a girlFriend forwarded an e-mail she received from County Clerk candidate Chris Norby – who also happens to be our termed-out 4th District County Supervisor. The e-mail and the website to which it directed us, made a big deal about all the money Norby had accumulated in his quest to “preserve our vital records.” We wrote about it here and here and here .
Although we understand the importance of the moolah, we have to say that we were struck by the unseemliness of this pitch. Could it really backfire?
The only reason Norby can command a fundraising advantage over his competitors is because he is a sitting county supervisor, a job that permits him to exert more than a little fundraising leverage on the squadron of lobbyists and interests that normally pour money into County political campaigns. The idea that Norby would get support from lobbyists for any other purpose is ridiculous. No lobbyists care who the County Clerk is and have no incentive to invest in one. And in any case nobody believes that Norby is better qualified to be a County Clerk than some guy picked at random walking down Main Street.
Seen in this light, suddenly the money advantage starts to look a lot like a political fire sale, a sale in which the proceeds will continually diminish as Norby’s second term winds down and lobbyists perceive that their “investments” in him have passed the point of diminishing returns.
Government shouldn’t be for sale – at least not seen to be for sale. At the very least the appearances of probity should be observed.
It’s always nice to know who is who. And when somebody gets up in public to opine on a subject, it’s particularly useful to know what relationship exists between the speaker and somebody – like a staff member, or a city council member- who is promoting a specific item on a public agency agenda.
While we are always promoting the importance of what is said rather than who said it, there’s no denying the fact that having people get up and speak, no matter how stupid or uniformed they are, helps sway councilmanic opinion; and when the council persons aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree to begin with, it’s just that much more effective.
Here’s a story: somebody named Lee Chalker showed up at the hearing for the Redevelopment expansion hearing and spoke in favor of the expansion. She even got her name in a Barbara Giasone article on the subject here . Now, none of us had ever heard of Lee Chalker before despite her having lived in Fullerton for 35 years. We wonder if she really knew what she was talking about since her stated concerns about bad roads and drainage suggest current deficiencies in the Engineering Department rather than Redevelopment issues.
A little research on Lee Chalker reveals a member of a church called “University Praise” that is affiliated with an organization called OCCCO. What is that? The “Orange County Congregational Community Organization” – a group with a fairly nebulous remit, but that seems to organize its efforts around helping poor folks organize to get things from the government.
What’s really interesting about OCCCO is that in 2007 it was a major beneficiary of Pam Keller’s “Fullerton Collaborative.” In fact, the Collaborative forked over $25,600 to OCCCO for something called “community organizing.” Well, that makes sense, we suppose, since a “Community Organization” should have something to do with community organizing. What they did for the $26K is less important than the connection with Pam Keller herself, who was able to vote on the Redevelopment expansion only after City staff redrew the boundaries around a piece of property that Keller has some sort of interest in. And of course she voted in the affirmative.
We also note that in the Collaborative’s facebook page here we find that Chalker was being installed as a new board member in the Collaborative at just about the same time.
So did Collaborative Executive Director Pam Keller mobilize a gaggle of her pals in the Collaborative and/or the OCCCO to attend the meeting and shill for the illegal Redevelopment expansion? Who knows? Sure looks like it.
The larger point here is to understand the interrelated nature of all sorts of groups in Fullerton who actually have a very small number of aggregate members, but who can be relied upon to show up periodically at hearings to promote some cause or other near and dear to the heart of some bureaucrat or councilmember. Their numbers give moral support to councilmembers who either lack conviction or are afraid of standing alone.
Is there anything wrong with this sort of mobilization of support? No. But when some of the members of these claques have financial interests at stake (which happens all the time, too) it gets a little dicey. People who want to understand what’s going on are well advised to figure out who these people are and why they are there. In the end it is the content of what they say that counts. But it’s fun to know who the players are. And if you happen to see a procession of people march to the podium to sing the praises of this or that project, you can bet that they were asked to be there. And you have to wonder: if applauders are dragooned into service to help promote some scheme or other, just how good or necessary is it really?
Need a program to tell the players? We’re working on it.
Our city attorney just lost what is hopefully the final round in Fullerton’s red light camera case. A superior court judge denied the city’s request to re-hear the appeal of People vs. Franco, which was originally lost when the city attorney failed to show up at court last.
If you’ve been following along, you know that the red light cameras were a disaster from the very beginning. Fullerton’s contracted city attorney at Jones and Mayer allowed our city council to sign an obviously illegal contract for red light cameras to be installed throughout Fullerton. Thousands upon thousands of illegal tickets were given out until one recipient finally stood up and challenged the contract in court. Last year a judge found that Fullerton’s deal with the bankrupt Nestor Traffic Systems illegally gave the operator an incentive to boost ticket issuance by the cameras.
The most painful part of this story is that we kept getting those expensive legal bills throughout the entire red light camera circus, all the while being encouraged to continue fighting for this lost cause.
Someone close to this case wrote in to suggest that the city should sue Jones & Mayer for malpractice. If that’s an option, we certainly won’t hear about it from Richard D. Jones himself. How much longer will Fullerton pay for this bad advice? Will anyone be held accountable for this series of screw-ups? When was the last time that our contract with J&M was reviewed? It’s time for the council to admit that they were led astray and publicly address these issues with our city attorney.