Friends, by the time I got around to posting this piece, Daly had modified his website, but not before I culled the quotations below. Notice how those generic accolades have been tweaked to the actual circumstances. Now they make the endorsers like Jordan Brandman look ridiculous. And boy is that par for Daly’s course.
If you thought that our Clerk Recorder Tom Daly was arrogant and lazy you were right. Get a load of this crappola straight from his website:
“I am proud to support Tom Daly to be Fullerton’s next representative on the County Board of Supervisors. The people of Fullerton can count on him to listen to our concerns and deliver results for our community.”
Fullerton City Councilwoman Sharon Quirk
and there’s this:
“No candidate for 4th District Supervisor offers the proven record of success that Tom Daly has achieved as Orange County Clerk-Recorder, Mayor of Anaheim and member of a local School Board. His experience will make a difference for all of our communities.”
–Molly McClanahan
North OC Community College Board Trustee
and this:
“Tom Daly is a passionate and effective advocate for our schools. He will be a strong voice for education as our next County Supervisor.”
– Jordan Brandman Anaheim Union High School District Board Member
Oh, brother! Daly quit on the supervisor gig several months ago, but apparently he is still confused about which office he is running for. Or he really wants to fool people. Or he’s really lazy. Or something.
Let’s see how long it takes before Daly does something about his lame ass website.
A little less than 20 years ago, some friends and I stood in front of the Fullerton City Council pleading with the Redevelopment Agency to build a pedestrian underpass at the train station instead of a steel bridge overpass. We had three reasons. The first was expense: an underpass was about half the cost of a bridge. Second was the matter of practicality and convenience: it is easier for a pedestrian to climb 24 steps versus 49; not to mention the cost of maintaining two elevators. Third, the bridge was going to tower over the Historic Santa Fe Depot – a real incongruous pairing and one in which the Depot suffered.
When the question was asked to the city staff during the public hearing about the possibilities of an underpass the Fullerton Redevelopment Manager Terry Galvin answered that an underpass would be too dangerous and could end up smelling like urine and besides, “nobody builds underpasses.” He even dug up an incident (and only one!) where somebody got stabbed – in Raton, New Mexico. Ooooooh, so scary! The fact of the matter is that an underpass would have been a mere 50 feet long – a little more than half the distance from home plate to first base!
The staff also dismissed Vince Buck’s brilliant idea of using the existing Harbor grade separation to get people from one side of the tracks to the other, a solution that would have been the most practical and cost efficient of all!
What has always bothered me about the city staff is that when they want something they will not give the city council all of the pertinant facts to make an intelligent decision; or they will deliberately inflate the project they want and diminish options they don’t want. And then the city council does not hold anyone on staff accountable for the messes they create. And that my Friends, is the history of Redevelopment in Fullerton.
A couple years later I was at the Oceanside train station and guess what?
25 steps in all
Of course lots of local Metrolink/Amtrak stations now have underpasses including Orange, Tustin, Laguna Niguel and many others. Money was saved, citizens were spared visual monstrosities, and maintenance costs were minimized.
But in Fullerton we have Molly McClanahan (who voted for the bridge), and her immortal words: hindsight is 20/20.
Almost twenty years later and the City of Fullerton doesn’t even seem to bother with the graffiti etched into the elevator towers’ glass.
For dyed-in-the-wool government apologists like Dick Jones, Jan Flory, Dick Ackerman, Sharon Kennedy, Don Bankhead, et al., Redevelopment blunders are conveniently overlooked, when possible; when not possible, some lame defense is mounted, such as: mistakes were made (passive voice obligatory) but we learned and moved on; hindsight is 20/20 (Molly McClanahan’s motto vivendi); the problem was not too much Redevelopment, but too little!
But when any reasonable person contemplates the collection of Redevelopment disasters along Harbor Blvd. between Valencia Drive and the old Union Pacific overpass, the only conclusion he or she could draw is that the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency should have been shuttered years ago, and the perpetrators of the manifest failures crowded onto a small raft and set adrift with the Japanese Current.
We have already described in nauseating detail the “Paseo Park” debacle; and the Allen Hotel fiasco; we haven’t yet had time to talk about the “El Sombrero” pocket park give away (we will).
But instead of wasting too many perfectly good words, we will share with you Friends a Redevelopment pictorial essay with just a little piquant commentary.
First there’s the strip center known as Gregg’s Plaza. Brick veneer, of course. Even the veneer is so disgusted it’s trying to jump off the building.
The standards of the RDRC were established early.Pop goes the brick veneer...
Across the street is the Allen Furniture Store. When they got their rehab loan somebody forgot to tell them that a storefront is a storefront – not a jailhouse. So why are there bars on the dinky little windows? And pink stucco?
Stone walls do not a prison make; nor iron bars a cage...
Jumping back across the street we re-introduce ourselves to the egregious Allen Hotel, perhaps the biggest Redevelopment boondoggle of all, a mess that we have already admirably documented, here. As we noted then, the add-on was unspeakably awful (and expensive). The front is, well, pretty awful, too.
The once and present tenement...
It could have been worse. Well, no, it couldn't...
What was sold, in part, as an “historic preservation” project ended up violating just about every standard in the book. The original windows were ripped out and replaced with vinyl sashes; the transoms were destroyed and replaced with sheets of plastic and surface applied strips supposed to simulate leaded glass.
Just say something. They'll believe anything...
Across Harbor we discover the “El Sombrero Plaza,” another sock in the face to any Fullerton windshield tourist. Forget the stupidity of the sideways orientation and the Mission Revival On Acid stylings (which attain a kind of crazy Mariachi deliciousness); this development included the give away of part the adjacent public green space so they have parking for a restaurant. The owner never did develop a restaurant, of course (more on that story later).
Ay, caramba! The extra parking that was supposed to be for a restaurant is now used for a storage container!
And finally we come to exhausted collapse at another one of the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency’s low points. And by low point we mean the complete, unmitigated disaster of the Union Pacific Park, ably chronicled here; and in a whole series here, here, and here.
Maybe the less said, the better...
The poisoned park: dead as a doornail. An aesthetic, pratical, and policy disaster. And no one has ever stood up to take responsibility for the total waste of millions of dollars.
Embarrassing from the beginning. How many $100,000 pensioners had their fingers in this pie?
Well, there you have it, Friends. Redevelopment in action; Redevelopment creating blight, not eradicating it. No accountability. None. Zero. Zilch. And some people wonder why FFFF has sued to keep Redevelopment from expanding.
Well, we predicted the presence of Ed Roski in the campaign for the 72nd Assembly District, here. Roski has made a fortune in commercial real estate, not to mention controlling the dubious City of Industry – a Redevelopment Valhalla – as his personal fiefdom.
Chris Norby has been a staunch foe of Redevelopment abuse, and has singled out both the City of Industry as well as its attempt to swipe an NFL team (to play in a stadium that dodged full environmental review – courtesy of the legislature) for scrutiny; so Roski’s participation in the election seemed a forgone conclusion.
A late expenditure report by our parasitical pals at The Alliance for California’s Tomorrow shows that Roski dumped $25,000 into their committee this week. The expenditures are for “data” and “printing,” so presumably a mailer is on the way.
What’s curious is that the expenditure is that it is designated as “for” Linda Ackerman, whereas we had assumed Roski was going to be the designated hitter against Norby – so that the Ackerwoman could keep her mitts clean. That theory was undermined when Ackerwoman had to do the dirty work herself in her disgraceful mailer about the bogus sexual harassment suit. The fact that Roski is weighing in now – but not specifically “against” Norby – might indicate that he’s seen some polling numbers and doesn’t really want to offend Assemblyman Norby, but needs to show the flag, at least. But we merely speculate.
What’s also curious about the expenditure is the timing. Thousands of absentee ballots have already been returned. Why did Roski wait so long to kick in? Desperation by Team Ackerman, Inc.? Who knows?
When we get the mailer, we’ll share the contents.
In the meantime maybe our Undercover Surveillance Unit has picked up on a conversation between Dick and Ed. If so, we’ll keep you posted.
The Fullerton Harpoon did a post yesterday about an article that the Register’s Frank Mickadeit did about the Ackerman/Norby feud. Frank didn’t bother to tell his readers that he pals around with the Ackermans socially – just like he did with Mike Carona. But we know. Mickadeit proceeded to pass along a truck load of horseshit peddled by Dick Ackerman, including 25 year-old recollections about Norby as a sexual harasser that he suddenly just remembers. Of course his corroborating witness is dead as a doornail.
Well, yesterday afternoon the Harpoon re-read the Mickadeit piece and a light bulb snapped on. As the helpful Frank tells it:
Ackerman says the two had a friendly beer at Elmer’s after Norby won. “I said, ‘Hey, things are going to be good. We’ve got five conservatives.’ But the votes kept coming out 4-1,” with Norby dissenting.
In a post update the Harpoon unloads:
PROOF THAT ACKERMAN IS A LIAR – OR HAS A REAL, REAL BAD MEMORY. MOLLY McCLANAHAN WAS ON THE CITY COUNCIL THEN. THERE WERE NEVER 5 CONSERVATIVES. C’MON DICK. YOU REMEMBER MOLLY DON’T YOU? YOU KEPT HER FROM BEING MAYOR FOR 6 YEARS. YOU OUGHT TO. MAYBE LINDA LEQUIRE CAN HELP. HER MEMORY IS AT LEAST AS GOOD AS YOURS.
So what are we left with? A man whose honesty or memory is rotten. His whole interview with Mickadeit is discredited, and is just typical of everything else in the Linda Ackerman 72nd Assembly campaign: her fake residency, her phony self-description as a business woman, and her contention that people in the 72nd asked her to run. It’s all a tissue of falsehoods – as bogus as her staged photos.
I MISSED THIS LITTLE GEM WHEN I READ MICKADEIT’S PIECE EARLIER:
Ackerman says the two had a friendly beer at Elmer’s after Norby won. “I said, ‘Hey, things are going to be good. We’ve got five conservatives.’ But the votes kept coming out 4-1,” with Norby dissenting.
PROOF THAT ACKERMAN IS A LIAR – OR HAS A REAL, REAL BAD MEMORY. MOLLY McCLANAHAN WAS ON THE CITY COUNCIL THEN. THERE WERE NEVER 5 CONSERVATIVES. C’MON DICK. YOU REMEMBER MOLLY DON’T YOU? YOU KEPT HER FROM BEING MAYOR FOR 6 YEARS. YOU OUGHT TO. MAYBE LINDA LEQUIRE CAN HELP. HER MEMORY IS AT LEAST AS GOOD AS YOURS.
In a piece today the Register’s Frank Mickadeit recounts the history of the Norby-Ackerman feud – talking to both. Ackerman, it seems, has suddenly recovered memories of errant Norby behavior from the 1980s that went by the boards back in the 1995 Assembly campaign when Ackerman dove to the bottom of the campaign swamp and wallowed around there. But really.To mention completely undocumented events relating to sexual harassment, and to cite as an authority a dead man, is low even for Ackerman – and that’s saying a lot.
What makes the whole thing ring completely untrue is Ackerman’s assertion that Norby changed his voting positions on the dais from previously stated positions (actually it sounds like Ackerman is admitting to violating the Brown Act, but we’ll let that pass). He also purports that Norby called him up and threatened him. Pure unadulterated bullshit. But that’s Ackerman for you. Throw up garbage nobody can disprove and see what happens. Right out of the Richard M. Nixon playbook.
The real reason Norby got under Ackerman’s skin (and stayed there for 25 years – how’s that for weird) is that he had the audacity to vote no. Ackerman admits his annoyance with 4-1 votes. No teamwork there – and Ackerman was team captain. See the problem? Also Norby had the good sense to oppose egregious Redevelopment nonsense and Ackerman went for it. See the problem?
The crowning moment of the Mickadeit article is when he uncovered Linda Lequire, Fullerton’s former Queen of Spleen, from under her desert rock. Of course she backed up Ackerman’s story – in eerily identical detail. Since Lequire moved out of Fullerton some years ago we assume Mickadeit got her number from the Ackermans themselves – but only after Lequire had time to be coached on the nuances of the Ackerman strategy.
For those interested in a pyschological take on the Ackerman Obsession we refer readers to a previous post.
Loyal and Patient Friends, our sad narrative of The Great North Platform Disaster now draws to a merciful conclusion. We have shared all the dismal failures of the landscape architect, Steve Rose, the Redevelopment manager in charge, Terry Galvin, and Design Review Committee members that were evidently incompetent or unqualified.
Trees and planters block the platform; staff obstruction was almost as bad.
The design failure was complete and palpable. Yet as diverse groups of citizens displayed their unhappiness with the ludicrous and costly elements of the project, the City Staff dug in their heels in a rear guard action to deflect blame by ignoring the obvious and fighting to keep the mess they had created. Newly minted City Manager Jim Armstrong led the effort to defend the indefensible. He went so far as to accuse one of the leading critics of the design mess of “making the City look like shit.”
Former Fullerton City Manager Jim Armstrong doing what he did best: shovelling hard.
The City Council, to its credit, would have none of it. They ordered construction halted. Even the Fullerton Observer demanded to know who was in charge.In what may have been the last show of independence by a Fullerton City Council, the majority demanded that the incongruous and useless elements be removed. The lone dissenting vote was that of Molly McClanahan, the eternal staff suck-up, who as Mayor tried backdoor sabotage with the State – which was also providing funding for the project. City staff was going into attack mode behind the scenes.
Honest citizen tastes like chicken?
In the end the Council (with the sole exception of Chris Norby) lost its collective nerve and settled on a partial removal of the worst offending aspects of the project. The huge planter was split into pieces, allowing platform access through the middle.
Well, that's better than it was...
The miserable trees were completely removed.
The urban forest retreats. Civilization on the march...
The canopies were salvaged though the construction of alcoves cut out of the still useless block bulkhead wall.
Fullerton platform "alcove" designed by our City Council...
The wretched benches and comical little trash cylinders remain to this day. Go to the depot. You can check it out for yourselves.
It was never disclosed whether Steve Rose was back-charged for the cost of all the changes that had to be made, or whether he actually billed the City for remedial design work. Thousands upon thousands of dollars were wasted on building useless construction and then having to remove it. And what happened to the parties responsible for this complete fiasco? You mean you can’t guess by now?
Oh, we'll be hanging on to this...
Nothing, of course. The proponents of sensible and functional design were blamed by staff for making the City look bad; the whistle blowers were turned into the villains of the melodrama. Chalk up another big win for the escape artists at the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency.
The Fullerton Observer continues to sink to new lows in its coverage of important Fullerton issues. Or lack of coverage.
In its most recent edition it published a redevelopment article which was simply an interview with RDA Director Rob Zur Schmiede, whose very job depends on RDA expansion. Wow, that’s cutting edge investigative journalism!
The Observer has totally ignored the RDA’s $6 million McDonald‘s move. An evil corporation making kids fat, a giveaway to the rich, money intended for blight going to promote junk food! Fast Food Nation was written by muckraking journalists that the Observer should emulate. $6 million to help McDonald’s make high school kids fatter!
McMore please
The Observer has completely ignored the story that has excited even usually tepid reporter Barbara Giasone. They will NOT embarrass the council majority that it helped elect with their endorsement. Jones, Bankhead, Quirk, Keller were all backed by the Observer.
Could it also be that the Fullerton RDA–is paying for quarter page ads in the Observer?
The Observer has published two pieces by Supervisor Norby expressing the County’s opposition to the RDA expansion, but only afterleaking both articles to city staff in time to write rebuttals. The rebuttals themselves are not fact-checked by anyone and are filled with lies.
In the current July 2009 edition (Page 4) Kennedy bewails the 1994 recall of Bankhead after he “voted to support a ½ cent utility rate increase to keep the city from going bankrupt”. Three wrong statements in one sentence!
is that you Molly?
It was NOT a utility rate increase, but a utility TAX on gas, water, electricity and cable TV. It was NOT a half cent but 2%. It did NOT keep the City from going bankrupt. In fact, it was repealed soon after the recall and has saved us Fullerton tax payers over $ 100 Million dollars over the past 15 years and the City is just fine!
True to form, the Observer has supported every city, county and state ballot measure that increased taxes, most of which went down in defeat. It especially likes sales tax hikes, which disproportionately affects the poor–the supposed constituents of a “progressive” paper.
Word has it that Don Bankhead has endorsed Hieu Nguyen for Clerk-Recorder, joining Dick Ackerman’s anti-Norby jihad. This is a slap in the face for the lone councilman who supported Don’s quixotic bid for Sheriff back in 1990. Ackerman supported Brad Gates, who easily turned back the Bankhead challenge.
Don was first elected in 1988 with the promise that he–like Norby–would back Molly McClanahan for Mayor (an Ackerman/Catlin/LeQuire triad had blocked her for years). That broke the annual mayoral controversy and restored the rotation that continues today. So Norby and Bankhead began as buddies. Norby even endorsed him as late as 2002, much to the ire of some longtime loyalists.
For Don, though, it’s still all about his being recalled by Fullerton voters. Norby opposed the utility tax passed by Bankhead, Catlin and McClanahan which led to their recall in 1994. He’s been sore ever since. Norby did not actually support the recall, but his later hiring of organizer Bruce Whitaker is a constant reminder of the utility tax/recall fiasco, foisted on Fullerton by then-City Manager Jim Armstrong.
Yo G, what does 1+1=
Other Hieu backers with grudges against Norby include: La Habra Councilman Tim “Taxman” Shaw (mad at Norby for pulling his endorsement when he supported the 1/2 cent LH sales tax hike), State Sen. Mimi Walters (mad at Norby for supporting Harry Sidhu against her), Ackerman (mad at Norby for beating his hand-picked council candidates) and Cynthia Coad (mad at Norby for beating her for Supervisor in 2002). It ain’t no secret, the Republican party is the party of grudge holders.
The fact that County Counsel is actively opposing the proposed redevelopment expansion further fuels Bankhead’s bile. Perhaps, Bankhead thinks the County should just lay down and let the RDA steal the County’s money for that all-important Commonwealth blight fight. But, it appears the recall is what really keeps galling Mayor Donahieu.
If county bureaucrat Hieu Nguyen thinks Dick Ackerman can help his Clerk-Recorder campaign, he’d better think again. There is one word for Ackerman-backed city and county candidates: LOSERS.
Is it just bad luck? Or does Dick choose weak candidates he can control after they’re elected? The problem for him is that they don’t get elected!
Look at the record of Dick’s choices, dating back over a quarter-century:
1982: Ackerman backs insurance agent Jim Williams for Fullerton City Council. Williams loses to Molly McClanahan.
1984: Dick endorses realtor Merrill Braucht for the open council seat. Braucht loses to Chris Norby.
1988: Dick supports Dan Baker for an open council seat. Baker loses to Don Bankhead.
1992: Ackerman goes 0-for-2 in ’92. His hand-picked candidates Jim Blake and Jack Beddell place 5th and 6th.
1994: Ackerman vocally opposes the recall of Buck Catlin, Bankhead and McClanahan. That trio had rubber-stamped an unpopular new utility tax foisted by City Manager Jim Armstrong. The recall easily passes, all three leave office and the tax is repealed.
1996: Dick endorses fellow legislator Mickey Conroy for Third District Supervisor. Conroy loses his cool—and the election–when he flips his opponent the bird during a debate. Brea School Board Member Todd Spitzer wins handily.
2002: Like 1992, Dick goes 0-2 in 2002. He actively supports Supervisor Cynthia Coad’s re-election and is featured prominently in her mailers. Coad loses to Norby. Later that year he backs accountant Chuck Munson for Fullerton City Council. Munson is buried by Shawn Nelson.
To be fair, there is one current Council Member who was elected and thrice re-elected with Dick Ackerman’s support: Dick Jones.
