While checking out election disclosure Form 497s yesterday, I noticed that some rich dude named John Phelps had made two significant contributions – maxing out at $5500 apiece for Jan Flory and Vivian Jaramillo.
Obviously that made me wonder who John Phelps is. So I reached out to occasional commenter “Fullerton Old Timer” for a helping hand. Here’s what FOT wrote:
John Phelps is one of the last of the old guard defenders of anything emanating from City Hall bureaucrats. While his clan has been around for a long time he really made his fortune courtesy of the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency that helped develop the massive shopping center on the southwest corner of Harbor and Orangethorpe. He is the epitome of the government-aided developer.
He’s been supporting liberal causes for a long time but has been mostly interested on defending the status quo, Democrat or Republican. It’s no wonder he’s digging deep for Flory and Jaramillo, since they represent Fullerton statism, instead of accountability. His name appears on Jaramillo’s list of endorsers where he is erroneously listed as a former mayor. That will never be fixed.
It’s interesting to note that Phelps also gave the max to the pro sales tax, Measure S a few years ago; in 2022 he gave the maximum amount to the prevaricating Ahmad Zahra’s re-election. He will be likely be supporting the sales tax 2.0 as well.
Well there you have it. The Fullerton Circle of Life.
Many politicians get in the game for self-aggrandizement – the opportunity to be known and if not respected, at least have people pretend to respect your opinion and laugh at your jokes.
Higher office offers the opportunity to make better money and benefits than most elected office holders could possibly attain working in real jobs. But local office doesn’t offer much in the way of remuneration; and campaigns for office offer nothing. Or so I thought.
Gotta pay the bills…
Most candidates running for office lend their campaigns money with the expectation that if they win, they can leverage their new job and pay off their debt – to themselves. So did Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, who lent herself $3000, and no doubt expects a victory would provide a windfall from the Long Beach marijuana cartel to pay herself back.
But I I can’t remember a candidate actually paying him or herself out of funds raised for a campaign. Look at this this entry on Jaramillo’s form 460 for her current campaign for the Fullerton City Council:
I’m not sure what “Agent Payment” means in this instance, but you’ll notice there’s no entry in the “CODE” column to tell us what this is for. So Kitty made a $750 payment…to herself? Campaigning for fun and profit? A little short on the rent that month? Who knows? But if Kitty is paying herself back for some expense or other, she’s dodging the requirements of the California Fair Political Practices Commission and is inviting official scrutiny.
Hopefully, one of Jaramillo’s contributors like F. Paul Dudley or Jan Flory will ask Kitty why she’s reimbursing herself out of campaign funds.
The Fullerton City Council election race slate of candidates was completed yesterday. So we know who’s running and what they are calling themselves these days. The candidate statements on the City Clerk website are somewhat revealing.
It looks like the most interesting race is in the 4th District where the incumbent, Bruce Whitaker is termed out. His wife, Linda, is running to replace him. She has name recognition, for sure which has no doubt caused alarm in the dungeons of OC DEM headquarters.
She wants what you have.
The DEM Central’s endorsed candidate is someone we know – Vivian Jaramillo, a retired purveyor of parking tickets and a code enforcement busy-body. She calls herself a “Retired Preservation Officer” (but admits in her grievance statement to be a “code enforcement officer”) which is meant to convey nothing except that maybe she was some sort of cop instead of what she really was.
Another candidate is Jamie Valencia, a “Registered Nurse” which is doubly good: a Latino name and a profession that requires training, diligence, and patience. I don’t know anything about her, yet, but this could be a real surprise candidate. In her rather jumbled statement she claims to be endorsed by the FPOA which is a big deal. It will be interesting to find out how that happened and to find out who the paramedics are endorsing.
The fourth candidate is named Scott Moskowitz who popped up at the very last minute out of nowhere. That’s not nearly as interesting as his ballot statement, which is wild.
Two things we know for sure. First, there’s something suspicious about this guy’s presence at the last minute, and something seems off here. The reliance on Trumpian talking points raises suspicions, such as the idea that this is a phony candidacy by an unknown just meant to attract white voters away from the other non-Latino named candidate – Linda Whitaker. And that cynicism would be very much in keeping with the recent OC Democrat Party playbook. I’m going to do a little research on this Moskowitz chap – as in who his pals are and to what party he’s registered. Maybe he’s kosher, maybe he isn’t.
Ever see this guy before?
The second thing we know about Moskowitz is that he can’t write or spell well. But, were these foibles intentional to enhance the redneck appeal? That would be unusually clever for the political small fry.
The 1st and 2nd District races face off incumbents Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap, against, respectively, some guy named Matt Truxaw and Jan Flory. Truxaw can be dismissed out of hand as some clown dredged up to make Jung spend some money out of his vast campaign account. That’s it. The other race features the three-time retread Jan Flory, whose mind-set is firmly locked into the 1970’s. She isn’t just antiquated, she’s mean spirited, arrogant and seems to genuinely dislike her constituents.
I hate you, and I always will…
Flory’s ballot statement wisely omits her age since she must be an octogenarian, or very close. She touts her “experience” and mentions her esprit de corps, but omits her complicity in letting the infrastructure crumble, her dedication to taxes, and her role in approving unbalanced budgets – then lying about it.
Well, that’s story, for now. FFFF will pass along more information about Ms. Valencia and Mr. Markowitz when we learn more.
There’s only a couple days left for candidates to file their paperwork to run for Fullerton City Council. The deadline is August 9th – unless the two incumbents in the 1st and 2nd District, Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap pull out – then there’s another week. Neither has filed their nomination documents yet.
I know who I want to work for, and it isn’t you!
Previously, two individuals turned in their nominating papers – Jan Flory, who’s been on the City Council on three different occasions, already filed to run against Dunlap Her record on the Council has been a trifecta of terribleness.
Mr. Truxaw in better days…
And then there’s some odd guy named Matt Truxaw who had filed for the 1st District to run against Jung. He seems like a sucker set up for the steamroller.
Whitaker, Linda
And now a third candidate has made it official: Linda Whitaker, wife of outgoing Councilman Bruce Whitaker, in the 4th District. Oddly, Ms. Whitaker has listed no occupation which is extremely unusual, not even a “retired” this or that. Does it matter that much? Maybe not. Flory calls herself a “retired family lawyer” which may not be helpful since people generally don’t have happy experiences in family court.
You are what you eat…
Finally, a new potential candidate has taken out papers to run in the 4th. The name is Scott Moskewitz, someone none of us have heard of. There is a 67 year-old Scott Moskowitz who lives on Woodcrest Drive. I have to wonder if this person isn’t simply a plant, an obscure name on a ballot meant to draw votes away from the only person in the race at this point without a Spanish surname – Linda Whitaker.
Tony Castro. Staying out of jail long enough to be of use to the Democrat Party of OC.
We all remember 2022 when the Democrat Party of OC set up a guy named Tony Castro to draw Latino votes away from Oscar Valadez in support of non-Latino Ahmad Zahra. Mr. Moskowitz pulled his papers very late – two days ago which may indicate a certain strategy. We shall see if he is in by Friday afternoon.
An amused Friend shared this Yelp review of lawyer Jan Flory, posted just about the time Flory was on the backstretch of her second lap around the Fullerton City Council track.
Don’t worry, Michelle. She never cared about us, her constituents, either. It’s always been about protecting the bureaucrats in City Hall – the ones she calls the “heart of the City; and protecting the Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department.
And I agree, Michelle. It’s too bad there isn’t a zero star option.
What appeared to be a pretty tame fall City Council election may have just become a lot more fun.
The closer you look, the worse it gets.
Word on the street is that Jan Flory pulled nomination papers yesterday to run against Mayor Nick Dunlap in the 2nd District election in November.
Too much scotch, not enough water…
Who is Jan Flory? If you don’t know, take a spin through our files, here. You’ll find all sorts of entertaining stories about Ms. Flory and even about her creepy/pervy son Mike, who used to be a Deputy District Attorney and even tried to be a judge once.
How far did the apple fall from the tree?
Maybe not breast fed long enough…
Jan Flory was elected to the City Council in 1994 and voted off in 2002. In those eight years she happily allowed an illegal water tax, voted for the disastrous retroactive public safety pension spike and supported the culture of unaccountability that has helped us get where we are today.
In 2012 she hauled herself out of the stable to try another lap around the track.
See if you can find the old nag.
Her mission was to restore municipal authority to the Old Guard she represented, and to protect the Culture of Corruption at the Fullerton Police Department from any sort of reform. She informed us that the City Department heads were the “heart of the City.”
She put in her four years, patting her Chief of Police Danny Hughes on the fanny as they both walked out the door in 2016, a few days after the drunken City Manager, Joe Felz drove over a tree and tried to drive away. The ensuing cover up turned out to be expensive. Oops.
Poor Sappy. So young, so vibrant…
But Jan wasn’t done with us. Not by a long shot.
When an opening on the City Council occurred in 2019 guess who was there to snap up the job? After her appointment she rewarded the unemployed Ahmad Zahra for his vote with a paying gig at the Orange County Water District.
In this last stint Flory was happy to continue her love affair with unbalanced budgets and was one of the members of the Council, along with Jesus Quirk Silva, Ahmad Zahra, and Jennifer Fitzgerald who waged a legal vendetta against this blog and specifically against Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee. Of course that harpy-like mission cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, but didn’t cost the perpetrators anything.
Ferguson and Curlee. The easy winners…
Well, I sure hope Ms. Flory really does want to run. The entertainment value alone is worth it. Who her constituency might be is unclear. There aren’t that many elderly liberals left in Fullerton. She might get the support of the yellowing, and thinning Fullerton Observer crowd, but a humorless, stick-up-the-backside septuagenarian is not likely to appeal to anyone under seventy.
Some folks have been asking about the fate of the idiotic “boutique” hotel project that had morphed into a hideously overbuilt hotel/apartment hippogriff that is twice the allowable density permitted per the City’s own Transportation Center Specific Plan. Of course the project was never contemplated at all in the Specific Plan, so who cares, right? Fullerton being Fullerton.
In an act of utter incompetence the City actually rushed the approval to transfer of title to the land, before the deal had received final approval. Then they gave it away the land for pennies on the dollar.
Friends may recall our last October post in which we discovered that the new “developer,” one Johnny Lu of TA Westpark LLC, was way upside down on loans he had somehow leveraged on apartment blocks in Irvine and was in default.
You may also recall that Lu started shifting the property to different corporations, the first of which, a Delaware corporation, was non-existent. And just for grins, Mr. Lu changed the property description, too, when he later deeded it back to his California Corporation.
Anyhow, it looks like Johnny has finally created and recorded the appropriately named Delaware corporation in March – only two years too late, but, hey, not bad for Fullerton, right?
There has been nothing but radio silence from City Hall as to the status of Mr. Lu and whether he has met any of the stipulated deadlines in the Development and Disposition Agreement, but as we have learned in the case of the Florentine/Marovich sidewalk heist, contractual obligations mean nothing when the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones & Mayer is your City Attorney. Recently, cluelessly verbose Shana Charles indicated that the project was still alive and well. She didn’t mention Mr. Lu’s financial embarrassment, but then nobody else has, either.
And now for some sadly interesting news. It turns out the original Founding Father of the boutique hotel concept, Craig Hostert of West Park Development – the guy who sold the idea to Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, Jesus Quirk Silva, Ahmad Zahra, Bruce Whitaker, et. al. – died in late May.
Hostert
Poor guy. He went to his Reward after getting pushed out of his own scheme, and sticking us with the appalling, metastasized mess the concept has predictably morphed into; showing that once again, no bad idea goes unappreciated in downtown Fullerton. Being Fullerton, of course.
Last Tuesday the Fullerton City Council voted 4-1 to approve the ’24-’25 city budget. Whitaker, as usual voted no. The budget projects big deficits as we’ve already heard.
After that the Council was presented with “revenue enhancement” ideas – the same old nonsense that we’ve already talked about, here. At first these ideas were simply floated to make it look like somebody had given some thought to find other ways, however silly, to address the tsunami of red ink; but in reality the point was to push a general sales tax, a movement that had been subtly going on for many months.
However the proposals agendized last Tuesday did not include a sales tax this fall, a sure indicator that the City Manager has polled the Council and knows he doesn’t have the votes to put it on the ballot. But that didn’t stop Councilmembers Charles and Zahra from pitching and pitching and pitching the idea; and finally supporting each other to get the issue of a sales tax on the an agenda, pronto, in time to schedule it for the November election.
But before that happened the public was treated to some of the most blatant and self serving re-writing of Fullerton history I have ever heard.
If I knew what I was talking about this wouldn’t be Fullerton!
Shana Charles started off with long-winded blabbering that was irrelevant, self-contradictory, confusing, and erroneous. Of course – “decimated” staff, the ill-effects of right-sizing,” reduced response times – the usual liberal litany of problems were simply meant as an introduction to the sales tax proposal. Her complaint was that previous councils had made mistakes, not by exercising fiscal restraint, but by “cutting to the bone.”
Charles then lauded the wonderful benefits that the City of Placentia derived from it’s Measure U sales tax that saved it, having declared bankruptcy – a statement completely false. She failed to mention the fact that Placentia has saved millions by getting their “fire fighters” out of the paramedic business, an idea of which her Fullerton fire fighter union pals are terrified.
While patting herself on the back for very recent staff and service level increases, she failed to see the rich irony of her own incompetence on the edge of a precipice: a situation well-understood when she voted for last year’s budget.
More economic development, better wardrobe…
If Charles blathered nonsense, Zahra just lied about Fullerton’s recent fiscal history, most likely because he has been on the City Council for 6 years, and has his greasy fingerprints all over the budgetary disaster.
According to Zahra, our problem reaches back decades and only now is the Council addressing the problem. Of course our City Councils have made bad decisions over the years, but the current disaster is of very recent vintage and has also occurred while he has been on the City Council.
For several years in the mid and late teens Fullerton was dipping into reserve funds to pay the freight, even as Zahra’s allies Jan Flory and Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jesus Quirk- Silva were lying to the public about the budget being balanced. It wasn’t. In fact the City continued in its cavalier way until Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap joined Bruce Whitaker on the council in 2020.
Let me count the ways…
Zahra related how he, as a precinct-walking candidate, noted how people wanted better roads and how his predecessors had promised them, too, but that they failed. He didn’t note the fact that Fullerton’s public safety employees were hogging up bigger and bigger shares of the budget – as they still do.
The subject of Zahra’s failed 2020 Measure S sales tax came up, a sore subject, apparently, since his underserved constituents in D5 voted for it. So let us not stop from revisiting it, and right now! Charles chimed in that well she people she spoke to voted against it because there was no sunset provision, and, get this – because there was no oversight committee!
As an aside, I have to share that Zahra made an hilarious little speech about he could not support an infrastructure improvement bond because voting for municipal debt would keep him awake at night!
It’s not rocket science…
Bruce Whitaker made just about the only insightful comment of the discussion, namely: that cities can control costs but they can’t control revenue, an observation that flies in the face of the revenue enhancement propaganda, but that is perfectly true. As has been stated here before: nobody even knows if an Economic Development Manager even pays for himself in terms of incremental tax increase.
I will wrap this up by acknowledging a Zoom caller who actually did make a good revenue enhancing and who identified a huge fiscal problem: downtown Fullerton, the annual sinkhole that makes millions for the scofflaw club owners and that leaves the taxpayers with a $1,500,000 bill. He suggested a special assessment on these eager party entrepreneurs to pay for the havoc their booze and their customers cause. Not surprisingly, none of the council members even mentioned the problem. They never do.
The other day the Fullerton Harpoon posted a brief synopsis of Fullerton’s Fiscal Year 24-25 budget, suggesting that the “workshop” to present Fullerton’s dire economic situation was just another step in the process of trying to get the City Council to put a sales tax increase on the November ballot.
Of course Mr. Harpoon is right about this. Not only have we seen this play before, we noticed that the process of collecting manipulated information started last year. Of course it’s still ongoing. But the pro-taxers in City Hall are running out of time for 2024 since some acceptance of tax inevitability will have to be discussed during the budget formalization in June.
After that there’s only about a month until the 2024 ballot cutoff.
To be sure, the tax increase doesn’t have to be on the ballot in the fall. And the reality is that there may not even be the votes to do it. This makes the 2024 District 4 election more important.
She wants what you have.
District 4 candidate and former City parking ticket hander outer, Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo would no doubt be only too happy to apply a regressive sales tax on her “underserved” constituents, just like Ahmad Zahra was in 2020. If the votes are there a special election in 2025 might be tried.
In any case, our tax dollars would undoubtedly be used to propagandize us about how our quality of life is determined by how many happy public employees we have bumping into each other in City Hall. Even worse we would be scolded about our lack of civic responsibility, etc. etc.
It will never occur to the would-be taxers that a lot of folks in Fullerton don’t feel like having taxes raised as a response to years and years of fiscal imprudence on the part of liberal councilmembers and incompetent city managers.
Our message to our would be overlords in City Hall, the “heart of the City” as Jan Flory called them, is clear.
The Fullerton City Council is holding a special meeting tonight – a 2024-25 Budget “workshop.” No work will get done but there will be shopping going on as staff begins its formal press to raise a sales tax.
There is a lot of self-serving verbiage about how well our City staff has performed its tasks up ’til now, but then the hard reality hits because budget numbers can’t pat themselves on the back.
There are some harrowing numbers in the proposed budget – including a $9,400,000 draw-down from strategic reserves. This means of course, that the budget is no where near balanced as City Hall apologists like Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory claimed when they ran the place into the red almost every year.
M. Eric Levitt. Will he save us from ourselves?
Let’s let our City Manager, Eric Levitt tell the tale:
“Financial Stability. The City has been able to over the last two years (for the first time in recent history of the City) to reach and maintain a 17% contingency reserve level. This budget maintains that reserve level; however due to an operating deficit, we will be utilizing one-time excess reserves this year and coming close to that 17% level in FY 2024-25 and below that in years beyond next year“
Read. Weep.
The overall picture gets even worse as the levels of reserves slowly dwindle away. After this year Fullerton continues to be upside from $7.5 to $8.8 million each year until the end of the dismal decade. We are not favored with the running reserve funds balances.
Infrastructure is supposedly a big deal. Which reminds me of a quotation attributed to Mark Twain: Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. But this year we are told, we can push get going on our deteriorating infrastructure along by borrowing! Once again let’s heed the words of Mr. Levitt:
“I have also put together a strategy to increase that funding level to closer to $14 million over the next four years through the use of financing. However, there are both upsides and downsides to this approach which will be discussed with you in more detail at today’s presentation.“
Now this should be a red flag: borrowing to perform maintenance, a basic accounting no-no. And what form will the borrowing take? Not a municipal bond, you can be sure, It would likely be by selling certificates of participation or some other dodge to avoid municipal debt restrictions. Here’s the table that shows our Maintenance of Effort (MOE) shortfall without financing.
Now we all know that interest payments are made by somebody, somewhere, and that somebody is you and me. We get to pay the interest on debt incurred by years of municipal mismanagement by people like Joe Felz and Ken Domer and Jeff Collier who get to sail off to a glorious and massively pensioned retirement at 55 years of age.
And finally, to circle back to the story lead, here’s a distasteful nugget carefully slipped into the City Manager’s report:
“Staff recommends City Council review options over the next year to stabilize the budget and ensure the City remains financially sound.“
Jesus H. There it is. Not quite explicitly stated, but we know very well where this is going. Another general sales tax effort, just like the ill-fated Measure S of four years ago. The seeds for this have already been planted, of course, in a nasty little taxpayer-funded fishing expedition in the guise of a community survey. Last November I regaled the Friends with this slimy maneuver, here.
How did things get so bad?
By the way, this is exactly the same process City Hall rolled out four years ago. And we will be told By Ahmad Zahra, Shana Charles and Vivian Jaramillo that if we don’t pony up we will be morally deficient.
Well, good luck Friends. This is going to be a long year and you can bet the farm that we will be asked to pick up the check – again.
