It’s been 11 months and we still don’t have any answers, let alone accountability, over the forgery committed on behalf of the Florentine family with the apparent blessing of City staff.
For those new to this story, a fraudulent Conditional Use Permit “Master Application Form” was illegally modified to allow a tenet, Joe Florentine, to change the property rights of a property owned by somebody else.
When this story first came up, Dick Jones of Jones & Mayer, the City Attorney tried to run cover for the fraud by claiming that Florentine had standing to make changes to the property rights based on an old non-relevant case in San Francisco. What the City Attorney didn’t answer, and nobody on City staff has managed to explain to date, is why the City aided and abetted fraud and forgery?
Irrespective of the alleged ability of Florentine to request changes to his permitting, he didn’t have the right to falsify or forge a document.
115 (a) Every person who knowingly procures or offers any false or forged instrument to be filed, registered, or recorded in any public office within this state, which instrument, if genuine, might be filed, registered, or recorded under any law of this state or of the United States, is guilty of a felony.
We know that the Master Application Form was falsified, there is no question on that front. The area for the “Signature of Property Owner” was illegally replaced with “Signature of Applicant/Use Owner”. (more…)
Jan Flory’s last full meeting on council sums up pretty much everything I hate about hack politicians. When the Marijuana map and ordinance came up for a vote she expressed dismay that the ordinance had been “turned upside down” at the second reading which she’d never seen in her 14 millennia on council for all the good it did.
The issues mostly related to zoning and where legal weed shops would and wouldn’t be allowed in Fullerton. Many people didn’t want the council to change our zoning laws to allow weed into neighborhoods, requesting a farther “buffer” between homes and pot.
Before voting, Flory lamented that she understood why voters might not like having pot shops in their neighborhoods and that the council should “amend the ordinance as soon as possible”.
She then, of course, voted for the ordinance with Jesus Silva & Ahmad Zahra giving it the third vote needed to become the law of the land.
Let’s go to the video evidence:
What the ever loving hell Jan. That was literally your job – to make sure the ordinance was good & respected the wishes of citizens BEFORE voting for it. That’s how this whole “representative democracy” thing is supposed to work. Oh. Wait. I forgot. She only represented Fitzgerald, Silva and Zahra this time around as they’re the only ones who actually voted to put her on council.
As for her bluster about the ordinance being turned “upside down”, it clearly wasn’t turned upside down enough in the second reading or it would have addressed the VERY citizen concerns that Flory herself thought needed to be addressed. I can’t decide if this was stupidity or just arrogant preening. Both. Both is probably it.
Why not just vote no? Or vote to leave it to the next council? Clearly by her own words, Jan Flory thought that the new council was capable of fixing her mistake but she just had to vote because… why?
The best part is that her vote actually changes zoning and therefore adds a vested property right in the properties that she voted to allow to sell weed. It’s not an easy fix to now take away that vested right and in fact opens the city of Fullerton up to possible litigation should somebody be able to show a loss (or taking) from the government action of removing their new right to sell weed in the future.
Not only does the new council have to vote to fix Flory’s arrogant/ignorant mistake, per her own wishes, they have to do it quickly before somebody can build a strong enough case to sue.
Way to go Jan, despite all of your years bragging about your law practice you managed to open the city up to yet another potential set of lawsuits because you just had to get the last vote in before leaving council once again. After 14 years on council I would expect you’d have learned a thing or two but alas I suppose not.
It should be noted that at no time did the City Manager, City Staff or City Attorney’s Office correct Mrs. Flory in order to let her know the complications of overturning her vote. That, of course, would have required them to proactively do their jobs and that’s just not how we do things in Fullerton.
Can these two help bring some accountability to Fullerton?
On Tuesday two brand spanking new council members were sworn into office and I’d like to welcome them to the reindeer games of local politics. So far I like these two men even if I was put off by many of Jung’s endorsements in the lead up to the election. Money in politics is money in politics so his voting record will ultimately be the stick by which to measure him.
My personal opinions aside I want to be fair and transparent here – I will call you out on unprincipled or ridiculous votes & actions. Bruce Whitaker is my favorite local politician and I’ve throw an axe or two dozen his way when we disagreed on items. I’m not a party person so I don’t look the other way for political expedience or make exceptions for bad behavior. I don’t care about team sports – I care about what is and isn’t just and right for the people being represented. Be good stewards of your office and don’t suckle at the teat of party or local corruption and we’ll get along famously.
I’ve already seen Jung & Dunlap take some flak online for how the Mayor Pro-Tem vote went down but that’s partisan nonsense. (D)s can’t claim the moral high ground and whine that Zahra didn’t get a largely ceremonial title when he himself denied that title to Whitaker just this past year. You reap what you sow and we here at the Friend’s for Fullerton’s Future take a certain joy in pointing these karmic events out.
Therefore, Council members Dunlap & Jung, welcome to Fullerton’s political arena from one of the city’s most [choose your own pejorative] chronic malcontents. Cheers.
Last night Ahmad Zahra didn’t get what he wanted and today he’s crying on Facebook about it and I couldn’t be laughing harder at that petulant crybully.
First – this is Ahmad Zahra, council member from District 5, on Facebook bemoaning that policy wasn’t followed in snubbing him from the Mayor Pro-Tem seat last night:
The rules only matter when they benefit him…
Ceremonial selection of Mayor and Pro-Tem you say?
Ok. Let’s do this then. That ceremonial selection is actually outlined in the Fullerton Policy and Procedures Manual as Policy #226. In 2019 is was known as Administrative Policy #37.
It states that Pro-Tem becomes the next Mayor and the Pro-Tem is selected based on who has been on council the longest without having been Mayor.
In 2019 that means that Bruce Whitaker should have been chosen as this year’s Mayor Pro-Tem. Why didn’t that happen? Why was Jan Flory our Mayor Pro-Tem in 2020?
Oh. That’s right. Because Ahmad Zahra decided to vote for a “departure from city policy on the ceremonial selection of Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem”. Here’s the minutes from the meeting in question:
interestingly Silva voted against this game last year
And just because it needs to be hammered home lest Zahra try to weasel out of the official record, here’s the video of Zahra departing from policy to vote for Jan Flory over Whitaker just last year.
Looks like Zahra wants to eat his cake and have it too.
There needs to be a little more context here. We all knew Bruce was going to be Mayor this coming year if he won reelection. Fitzgerald was just Mayor, Silva right before her. Jan Flory promised she wasn’t running for another term on council. The ONLY reason why Bruce wasn’t Pro-Tem this year is because last year’s council majority hates Bruce for having the one thing they cannot stand – principles.
See above principle of consistency being lacking from Zahra.
Instead of following the gentleman’s agreement last year, they shanked Bruce for the sole reason of denying him the ability to put “Re-Elect Mayor Pro-Tem” on his campaign signs in the hopes of knocking him off of council. Thankfully it didn’t matter and he still won reelection.
This is a tactical game that plays out every few years because the Mayor and Pro-Tem tags can swing a few votes here and there.
For Zahra to pretend that he was slighted is laughable because he himself plays in these reindeer games. He just doesn’t like chickens coming home to roost and things not going his way.
This is a perfect example of everybody loving Majority Rule until the majority doesn’t give them what they want.
Let me remind you that in 2019 the council ALSO booted Whitaker off of the Water Board and gave it to newly minted council member Zahra – illegally and also out of spite. There was no reason to boot Whitaker mid-term but politics is petty and water board is a financially lucrative gig.
This time around Zahra wanted to be Mayor Pro-Tem because it positions him for Mayor in 2022 when he’s up for re-election. Provided the ladies from his district shouting to recall him don’t pull off their gambit first of course. There would have been a no-brainer case to vote for him IF he had upheld the agreement last year. He refused. Welcome to turnabout being fair play.
When it came time for the vote last night, Silva nominated Zahra and then Jung nominated Dunlap.
What happened next is both hilarious and sad and yet another example of why Zahra does’t deserve to be Mayor. The second Jung voted for Dunlap, Zahra knew he didn’t have the majority vote on council as there was no way Whitaker would vote for him after the way Zahra has treated him and Dunlap had already voted for himself as he wasn’t going to vote against himself to support Zahra. You can watch the video as Zahra just stares at Jung in disbelief and then abstains from the vote. Sadly right after the vote the video cuts to Whitaker talking so I can’t show you Zahra slamming his stuff down and storming out of the room but you can see him gone when the camera cuts back to the full dais with a missing Zahra.
Ignore Zahra’s preening as he is simply playing the victim hoping that nobody remembers that he once wielded & eagerly used the exact same knife to “skip” somebody in the vote for the ceremonial position of Mayor Pro-Tem.
Things are not going to be easy, financially or otherwise, for our little Hamlet of Malcontents in the coming years. Last night and today’s antics from Zahra and his fellow travelers should prepare us for what lies ahead as they blame everybody but themselves for what plays out.
You may have noticed your streets getting torn up by dudes in personal vehicles lately. That’s because Fullerton is set to become the country’s largest SmartCity in the typical Dumbest Ways Possible that we’ve come to expect from our dear leaders.
By way of example, let me share some of the best work which was done on my street:
It’s good enough for government work…
I’m not being facetious. This is literally some of the best work they’ve done in town that I’ve seen.
In one neighborhood they removed concrete to install an access box, cut it unevenly and then filled the space with… asphalt. They couldn’t even be bothered to finish it properly.
But don’t worry I’m sure we’ll get some oversight on this slipshod work the same way we got oversight with the Stairs to Nowhere. Oh. Wait. No. We were given excuses and bloviating exhortations about how much people love to exercise on the stairs so that meant quality work was out of the question.
If these contractors screw up our roads who gets held accountable? Who’s fixing the problems?
Likely nobody sadly.
But for the sake of it, indulge me in a little history of how we got here.
This goes back to 2014 with the council voting 5-0 to grant an easement to SiFi networks, a privately held company that promised to make us the most awesomest awesome SmartCity that ever awesomed. Our City Staff crowed about how awesome it would be and the project was approved and began ever so slowly. In that time we’ve gotten rid of the useless and feckless Economic Development Committee that this went through, the head of said EDC and City Manager lackey Nicole Bernard has left Fullerton, City Manager Joe Felz… well, Joe Felz’d into Sappy McTree. The head of Public Works Don Hoppe has been replaced by a non-engineer and so on down the list we can head.
The only folks, as of today, who had approval on this project that are still in office or working for the city are City Councilman Bruce Whitaker and the utterly corrupt and incompetent City Attorney’s office of Jones & Mayer. That leaves us with who is overseeing the work today because as far as I can tell, granting an easement doesn’t grant the right to destroy our roads or screw up our sidewalks.
The company doing this isn’t a fly-by-night operation either. This is a network of companies with deep pockets screwing us right now. Lets to run it down.
SiFi networks is a privately owned company that is being financed through global infrastructure venture fund Whitehelm Capital. These are the people who are themselves contracting with construction crews to tear our streets apart to put in fiberoptic lines for fast internet service.
SiFi will then sell access to those fiber lines to the re-selling company Ting (& in other cities GigabitNow). Ting is who we have the option to buy service from and they are a wholly owned subsidiary of Dish Networks through Tucows.
Our city agreed to this project, without oversight of the actual work being done apparently, despite the deep pockets looking to take us for a ride.
The selling point is that they are offering “Gigabit” internet speeds which means 1000 Mbps or, well, pretty fast, and they claim they’re cheaper than anybody else. In looking at their pricing they run $79/mo + $9/mo for their modem. In contrast, AT&T in my area is offering $60/mo + $10/mo for their modem. Install fees vary and if you do or don’t want a yearly contract seems to be the biggest talking points. There is also the issue of data caps but this won’t impact most people because AT&T offers a lot of data in their basic plan that most people won’t use. I’m a part-time gamer and I watch a TON of Tv/Movies and have never breached data caps. Spectrum’s website indicated they were more expensive which is odd b/c I pay slightly less than AT&T and haven no data caps. I’m coming in at about $20/mo cheaper than Ting is offering.
Even if you factor in AT&T’s installation fee, which I’ve never paid after haggling with the rep, they still come out cheaper than Ting.
If the pricing is HIGHER, is Ting at least a better company? Well, no there is no evidence of that. Ting has a rating of 2.5 stars on Yelp but they’re mostly a wireless cellphone re-sellser of T-Mobile lines so that has a lot to do with their nonsense. Their actual reviews on their internet service are few and far-between.
If the service provided by SiFi on our streets is any indicator of the service we can expect from Ting, I’d recommend opting out and sticking with the devil you know in AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum or whomever.
While I’d like to point to corruption and graft as the culprits for the incompetence here, I think Occam’s Razor tells us it’s just good old fashioned Fullerton City Hall incompetence.
One good thing is that as she’s leaving our council today, Jennifer Fitzgerald has finally managed to keep her word of ruining over 8-miles of road in a year. Oh. She said fix. Damn. Nevermind.
Welcome to Fullerton. Instead of working for solid solutions to tough financial problems the city is pan-handling for Holiday Decorations to make sure YOU see/feel the pain for their malfeasance now that their Hail Mary Pass of Measure S got blocked and blocked hard.
I’d feel remiss if I didn’t point out that the city is asking YOU to donate to the government so they can decorate in the most politically neutered and poll-tested way possible. We all know they won’t be putting up any religious icons for fear of offending people around religious holidays.
Of course they want YOU to be more giving…
Good luck friends, here’s hoping our new council isn’t as ridiculously and cartoonishly incompetent as councils past that led us to this point. Well, except Zahra and Silva. There’s no saving those two corrupt clowns.
Because nothing says “holidays in the time of Covid” like your city government begging you for decorations to keep the empty locked down streets… festive.
I’ve been watching the votes trickle in over the previous week and a half just giddy at how much of a pounding both Measures S & U took here in Fullerton.
To the 25,215+/- of Fullerton voters who voted to ban fireworks – kick rocks. You suck. Conversely, thank you to the 37,560+/- who voted to keep fireworks, our community groups thank you and it’ll be nice to be able to launch fireworks in our front yards since it looks like we’re headed for perpetual lockdowns.
As for Measure S.
Let us not forget Fullerton City Manager Ken Domer’s words on Measure S:
“In the event the local sales tax measure is not placed on the ballot or if it ultimately fails to gain voter approval in November, the City will continue to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible, but we will be forced to begin to make very difficult decisions regarding service levels and operations of programs in order to achieve balanced budgets over the succeeding years.”
City Hall got greedy, wasted our money to sell us on their graft and then they got slapped by 57% of voters.
I guess it’s time for City Hall to start making very difficult decisions. You know, the job we hired & pay them handsomely for as opposed to covering for dirty cops, virtue signaling for woke points and building stairs/bridges to nowhere.
I can report, live at 1:30AM on Election Night 2020, that despite all of the alcohol consumption, partying, joy and/or tears over tonight’s results – Sappy Jr. is still alive and well.
In memory of that fateful night in 2016 we salute you Sappy Jr. Here’s to 4 more years of growth.
It only took 8 years but the Trial Court has finally decided that Jay Cicinelli and Joseph Wolfe are not entitled to their jobs back at the Fullerton Police Department for beating Kelly Thomas to death.
Remember those protests a few months back about police accountability? Yeah, welcome to Fullerton. We were bitching about these issues before it was cool.
Let us not kid ourselves here – the only way these guys were able to fund their lawsuits against the city, that we taxpayers have been paying to defend against for more than half a decade, is because they were largely (if not entirely) being funded by various police unions & police legal funds.
This is the type of justice system the police want and demand in their contracts and giveaways. This is what their bought and paid for candidates promise and deliver year in and year out. That the police unions will fight for years to reinstate a violent one-eyed sociopath who never should have been hired on in the first place should be, well, eye opening (pun intended).
Despite the caterwauling from union hacks & bureaucrats, we’ll never get the best and brightest no matter how much we spend when it takes this long to get rid of the most rotten of bad apples.
Now we get to wait and see if the unions fund an appeal to drag this nonsense out for another decade at our expense. Kelly Thomas was unavailable for comment as of this writing.
Only a clearly biased person could consider this a brutal and inhumane act. It is appalling the level of prejudice Cicinelli suffered.
Remember the political campaign that got started by a bankruptcy lawyer pretending his vocation was “Fullerton Parent” and who was endorsed by a gaggle of political crooks, liars and bagmen?
Well, it appears the crooked campaign of Andrew Cho got itself in trouble by heisting images from the Friends of Coyote Hills website in order to strike an environmentally friendly posture.
The funny thing about this is the obvious attempt to cover ground lost to Cho’s opponent, Fred Jung, on the open space issue. Cho has been repeatedly hit by Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform as a puppet of overdevelopment lobbyist Jennifer Fitzgerald, our departing Mayor-for-Hire who has her fingerprints all over every apartment prison block built in Fullerton over the past 8 years.
