FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Today, Joe Felz’ attorney, Bob Hickey, attended a pre-trial hearing at North Court. FFFF’s trusted courtroom observer was there to hear a plea of “not guilty” entered on Felz’ behalf.
Those wishing to follow the docket may do so at http://www.occourts.org. Select “Online Case Access” then “Criminal and Traffic Case Access”. His case number is 17NM03367.
This could get interesting!
Our former City Manager, Joe Burt Felz, the guy who couldn’t keep his minivan on Glenwood Avenue in the early morning hours of November 9th, is scheduled to go to court for arraignment on April 3rd. That’s Monday.
You may remember the Wild Ride incident, in which motorist Felz, after a night of election partying, jumped a curb, ran over a tree, and tried to drive away. After a few months of procrastination, DA finally charged Felz with a couple of misdemeanors. The obvious problem to anyone paying attention is that there is no physical evidence of inebriation, leaving charges that could be easily batted away by the dimmest of defense attorneys.
So when asked to enter a plea, what will Felz’s high powered attorney do? Guilty is problematic, personally, for Felz. and his ever-dimming reputation. Not Guilty could mean the embarrassment of a trial at some point, no matter how implausible that event seems – a trial in which video evidence is bound to surface; but it would have the salubrious effect of delaying PRA requests under the bogus argument that that legal proceedings are underway. Then there is the nolo contendere plea, which seems to offer the benefit of making the thing go away, possibly with some sort of fine and suspended sentence without having to utter the word guilty.
If the hearing is held as scheduled we will be alerting the Friends as to the outcome.
For several months FFFF has been stymied in our attempts to find out who talked to whom in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 when former City Manager Joe Felz drove off Glenwood Avenue, ran over a tree, and tried to motor off. Although he was stopped by the cops and smelled of liquor, calls were made and Felz got off scott free. For a while.
We want to know who had a hand in this dereliction of duty on the part of a police department that has become psychologically addicted to MADD DUI award ceremonies at council meetings. We want to know the role of former Chief Dan Hughes who admitted to communication with councilmembers; of then-mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald who claims to have no responsive documents although she has admitted to getting a call at 3 AM of the morning in question; of the ever-egregious Watch Commander on November 9th, Andrew Goodrich, whose frequent indifference to competent police work has been well-documented on these pages; of one Sergeant Corbett, who showed up at the scene and gave Felz the Breathalyzer pass so that no irrefutable evidence of Felz’s inebriation exists.
Over the months we have been stonewalled by the excuse of phony police investigations, phony personnel investigations, by ridiculous reading of the law, and by the outright prevarications of Fitzgerald.
Now we’re going to try to get to the bottom of this: to find out who was behind the Felz Free Ride and the obvious creation of a double standard for drunk drivers in Fullerton. We have been advised brusquely by City Attorney employee and sex law specialist Gregory Palmer, Esq. that we have recourse. So we have engaged the services of an attorney, Kelly Aviles, to help us find out what the people in City Hall don’t want us to know.
Aviles is a California Public Records Act specialist who serves as litigation counsel for Californians Aware, an organization that helps journalists in the fight for government transparency. Aviles has represented several major news organizations in lawsuits to turn over unlawfully withheld public records.
Here is the first communication with City Attorney, Richard Jones. It probably won’t be the last.
Will all this lead to a lawsuit? That depends on whether the City Attorney decides to obey the law; and perhaps on whether there are three councilmembers with any integrity.
When you were a kid your parents most likely told you what parents have been telling their children for thousands of years: if you don’t take care of your toys you won’t have any toys to take care of.
Too bad such admonitions are often lost on the custodians of public property. How often have you seen property owned by you and me left without proper maintenance or even abused by it’s supposed caretakers? It happens all the time, and with impunity. But how often have you seen a government actually refused resources because they can’t take care of what they already have? That’s right. I can’t remember a single instance, either.
Which brings me to the point of this post.
FFFF has already opined on the ridiculous waste of money, $4.6 million and counting, being poured into two new elevator towers at the Fullerton Depot – right next to the existing elevator bridge. Why? Because some other government agency was willing to blow the money.
It’s bad enough the new elevators are unnecessary; they are also in the wrong location since so many commuters will use the Harbor Boulevard underpass to get where they want to go – to the bridge that gets them to the huge parking structure west of Harbor.
But the most unkindest cut of all is the brutal fact that the existing bridge is a disgrace to the entire City. The glass elevators have been etched with so much tagging that they are becoming opaque; the paint, where it hasn’t peeled off, is discolored and oxidized; and the steel stair steps are rusted through. The deformed stair treads have been patched here and there with caulking, and that, too, is decaying.
So next time somebody like Jan Flory or Jennifer Fitzgerald sneeringly defends of the “experts” in City Hall, please point them in the direction of the Fullerton Transportation Center; and remind them that thanks to the ever-generous taxpayers nobody in City Hall has to worry about breaking their toys. New ones will always be handed out.
It’s back! Thanks to our tireless activist Joshua Ferguson, who snapped this picture up during a recent visit to City Hall this morning:
College Town originally came up before the Planning Commission on February 10, 2016. Opposition was so strong to the plan the opposition’s “Our Town Not College Town” signs started springing up faster than mushrooms and the Planning Commission meeting was packed with angry residents opposed to the proposal (full disclosure: I played a significant part in organizing the opposition to that plan). In the end, five members of the Planning Commission agreed that adding 10,000 residents while diverting even more traffic to Chapman by closing a portion of Nutwood was a ridiculously ill conceived the idea and the proposal was tabled.
So what is the new and presumably improved plan for College Town? Your guess is as good as mine, but the early picture isn’t encouraging.
See that website on the picture? The one that says www.collegetownfullerton.com? Go ahead and click the link. Here’s a screen capture of what you found when you checked as of todays’ date:
According to Google’s English/ Japanese translator the phrase above translates to “Chat lady’s job contents and rewards.” Your guess is as good as mine what that actually means, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean “so tell us what you think about College Town.”
So how did this happen? Apparently, the City registered collegetownfullerton.com back in 2011, but they apparently allowed the domain name to lapse, allowing Chat lady here to swoop in an take over the domain around September 15, 2016.
A little personal anecdote: back in the 2012-2013 timeframe, the City complied with the notice requirement by sending out notice for around a dozen meetings with a smaller number of invitees (just 2 or so blocks at a time would be notified of each meeting) rather than inviting everyone in the affected area to one single meeting. The “informational” meetings would then be set up in the Chapman Park clubhouse, and they would set up for a full house, even though only a few people would actually show up, which the City used to create the impression that opposition to the concept was non-existent.
As infuriating as that strategy was, I had to at least admire its ingenuity. Personally I would have preferred that the City and Cal State Fullerton actually listened to residents before trying to shove their little sandwich down our throats a second time, but it is at least comforting to see that the Ernst Blofeld-level strategist behind the original campaign has been replaced by Dr. Evil. Off to a heck of a start.
Sometimes you get to see someone become unglued right before your very eyes. It’s never a pretty sight.
Today, in response to what must have appeared to the OC 3rd District Supervisor as bad publicity, Todd Spitzer unleashed a press release attacking his former employee, Christine Richters, who is suing the County for wrongful termination by Spitzer.
FFFF posted about the subject, here.
The press release was sent with a personal message directly to FFFF, which means that Spitzer, or somebody on his 3rd District staff is spending public resources monitoring and communicating with a 4th District blog.
This is weird. Bizarre.
Issuing a press release attacking the plaintiff the very day after the official County spokesperson declined comment because of pending litigation, shows that the wheels have fallen off Spitzer’s clown car.
And now, take a moment to review the actual press release:
Are you smelling the same stink I am? If the job of executive assistant to Spitzer was so demanding, and if it required “basic computer skills” that Ms. Richters lacked, then why was she ever hired by Spitzer in the first place, and why was she kept around for over three years? And if the job were so rigorous in its professional demands, then why did it pay 16 bucks an hour?
I love the accusation that Richters is “smearing” the County, as if the megalomaniacal Spitzer is equivalent to the County. The “County” is fighting only because Spitzer and his four fellow Supervisors get to make a decision based on their own instincts for self-protection – from their own, hand-picked employees.
I also love the part about Spitzer’s “best efforts” trying to get Richters a job in the bureaucracy somewhere. Who ever heard of an OC Supervisor being unable to get a former worker embedded in some footling job or other? That’s an obvious lie.
The crown jewel of this turd-bedecked tiara is the defensive, almost weepy assertion about Spitzer working late nights and week-ends for 25 years on behalf of the taxpayer. Spitzer has been working tirelessly, all right: working at self-promotion to gratify an insatiable lust for self-aggrandizement. Over those 25 years Spitzer has left a disastrous trail of self-interested decisions that have cost the taxpayers of Orange County and California billions of dollars.
The disasters are starting to mount for Spitzer, our would-be District Attorney, and at each turn of the screw we see somebody who is increasingly becoming psychologically unhinged.
Fullerton City Councilmember Jennifer Fitzgerald deserves all the criticism she gets for her primrose path approach to budgetary issues, the extravagant public employee pay raises she approved, and her false claim during her re-election campaign that Fullerton’s budget is balanced!,among other issues.
Still, it’s important to note that Fitzgerald does understand the concept of a balanced budget, when it is important to her.
As an example, here is a screen capture from her 2012 campaign statement. As you can see, she contributed $350 of her own money to that initial campaign:
And here is another screen capture of the same campaign statement showing how much of her campaign funds she directed towards her own company (C7 Communications) during that election:
$2,100.02 is a heck of a lot more than $350, meaning her campaign basically turned a profit for her personally of $1,750.02. Whatever else you may think of Fitzgerald, she takes care to make sure her personal finances are balanced. Fullerton’s? Not so much.
A very considerate friend just passed along this tidbit. Sort of an iffy news source. Still…
An ex-Orange County employee (and Fullerton native), Christine Richters is suing the County because she says her boss, 3rd District Supervisor and District Attorney hopeful Todd Spitzer wrongfully terminated her. Nothing unusual there. Apparently Spitzer goes through staff like normal people go through those disposable dental floss gizmos.
The hook here is that Ms. Richters, who disappeared from Spitzer’s staff last October, happens to be a former Playboy Playmate of the Month.
Um…okay.
What qualifications Ms. Richters had to be hired as a County Supervisor’s aide first place remains to be seen, as do the merits of her lawsuit.
Of course all of this is bound to reflect badly on the megalomaniacal, hair dyed Dorian Gray of OC politics. Spitzer already has problems stemming from his gun-totin’ handcuffing of a Christian evangelist in a Wahoo’s restaurant a few years ago.
One thing is certain, though. There are very few people who can claim as their employer both Todd Spitzer and Hugh Hefner.
UPDATE: FFFF has received a copy of Ms. Richters’ legal complaint.
Of all the money that former City Manager Wild Ride Joe Felz wasted during his shaky tenure, nothing was quite as egregious as the annual fifty grand Stumblejoe blew on Behind the Badge, a silly, pointless PR outlet that passed along empty feel-good tales involving Fullerton cops. No one knows if anyone even bothered reading this pabulum. The idea of us taxpayers actually forking over this dough in order to be administered unhealthy doses of saccharine PR back at us was bad enough. The fact that this policy decision was made, maintained and mismanaged by a bureaucrat made it worse.
Fortunately, last Tuesday, the City pulled the plug. City staff teed up the item as a cut – unless three councilmembers voted to save it. They didn’t. Here’s the video.
Of course cop supported candidates Bud Chaffee and Jesus Silva thought the whole idea was just peachy. Predictably, Jennifer Fitzgerald seemed to be going along. Bruce Whitaker and Greg Sebourn opposed wasting any more on this crap. Sebourn correctly pointed out that the cop union, having plenty of money to stick its snout in Fullerton politics, can easily afford to promote the good deeds of its membership.
Whatever changed Jennifer Fitzgerald’s mind to drop support for this ridiculous concept that has cost us $200,000 in the past four years remains a mystery, but she suddenly did a 180. Hopefully FFFF had something to do with the sudden shift to fiscal responsibility.
In the end the self-serving BS rhetoric of Chaffee and the feeble gibberish of Silva amounted to nothing and the council unanimously went along with the proposed package of cuts that included Behind the Badge.
Rest assured, Friends, FFFF will be following up with a Public Records Act request to get a copy of the termination notice.
Well done, Fullerton.
A recent report from the OCTA lists OC cities’ “pavement condition indexes” and Fullerton shows up at the very bottom.
And the projected future conditions look even worse.
But that doesn’t stop councilmember Jennifer Fitzgerald from shamelessly touting the “success” of her road repair efforts in her campaign material.
Here’s a video of councilmembers Fitzgerald, Flory, Chaffee and Popoff making excuses for the sad condition of our asphalt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRIfK4HbC18&t=48s