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January 6, 2012January 6, 2012About Us

Broken Bones and Blaming Whitaker for the Truth

Syl — Oh, oh! The truth almost escaped her mouth! (Image generously borrowed from Fullerton Stories)

It is July 22, 2011 and now-MIA Chief Sellers gets an e-mail from City Hall’s version of Andrew Goodrich, city publicist, Syliva Palmer.

She’s subsequently fled the the scene of the crime, and won’t have to answer embarrassing questions about this correspondence – like her insinuation that Councilman Bruce Whitaker leaked inside information to FFFF in a post. Apparently the otiose Palmer was too lazy to actually read the post, and too stupid to follow the link to The Fullertonian – the ones who actually caught Goodrich in the broken bones lie.

But so what if Whitaker had actually had a hand in disseminating the truth? The outright lie about Fullerton cops suffering broken bones was propagated by Goodrich, clearly with the blessing of Sellers and Plamer, and now we may safely assume, Palmer’s boss City Manager, Joe Felz. Perhaps with the blessing of the Three Dead Tree Stumps, too. That would certainly fit the truth-challenged profile of Pat McKinley.

Note also that Palmer laments the fact that the media didn’t talk to other reliable councilmen who, presumably were only too happy to toe the party line.

December 21, 2011Behind Closed Doors

A New Acting Chief

by Joe Sipowicz96 Comments

The old one lasted four months and the one before that hightailed it for the tall grass when the going got tough. Boy did he get going.

Anyway, the new man is 28 year FPD veteran Captain Dan Hughes, who was the boss of all those rogue cops we’ve been telling you about lately, so that’s a real bad sign right there. Was he part of the report write-and-rewrite perpetrated by the killers of Kelly Thomas? Such things are not for the public to know, and you can bet your last nickel City Manager Joe Felz hasn’t got the huevos to find out. Hughes also got kudos from folks for tearing up the “excessive horning” tickets of which he was seen orchestrating the issuance. ¡No bueno, numero dos!

Anyway II, the OC Weekly’s Brandon Ferguson tells about it here. Follow his link to the vapid Fullerton Chamber of Commerce website where its writer manages to scribble twelve paragraphs on Fullerton’s police chief carousel without a single word or even oblique reference to murders, perjury, assaults, sexual battery, theft, fraud, etc., etc. Too bad the Fringies® are over, or else we’d wave a real winner there in the stoogery category.

December 19, 2011Fullerton City Council

On the Agenda – December 20, 2011

by Christian92 Comments

Hang on to your common sense- you may need to share some at the upcoming City Council meeting.

Here is a brief look at what the City will be looking at on Tuesday’s agenda.

Rusty Kennedy will be there to justify his job as the head of OC Human Relations plus there will be presentations to the Boys & Girls Club and CalGRIP.

In Closed Session the Council will be discussing various pending litigations, police/fire management labor negotiations, and the condemnation of 201 East Bastanchury for the widening of Bastanchury.

The consent calendar is full of baffling buffoonery.

Item 2 looks to give City Manager Joe Felz a contract and full salary of $212,000 per year. He gets lots of perks as well like a one year severance, City-owned car, no benchmarks for success, and future raises tied to the raises of his subordinates. That’s just goofy, not to mention poorly timed.

Item 3 is the Group Insurance Program contract renewal. The premiums, as expected, are going up but staff wants you to think this is ok because they aren’t going up as much as they thought they would which looks on paper like savings. The City should do like most employers and place a cap on the employer contribution in the form of a fixed dollar amount, not a percentage. For Pete’s sake, isn’t there one person in City Hall who gives a rat’s ass about the taxpayers?

Item 4 is ends a special tax in Amerige Heights but then in item 14, the City looks to impose another tax on Amerige Heights. The City just loves to tax.

Item 5 will cause most eyes to glaze over. The Measure M2 Expenditure Report tries to show where the money went -or more aptly stated- where it didn’t go.

Item 6 is a request from the City to the Orange County Transportation Authority. City staff would like to enclose the Brea Creek Channel in front of Hillcrest Park and create an additional northbound lane on Harbor Blvd from Berkley to Brea Blvd. The total cost is estimated at $2,850,060.

Item 7 is a contract award for elevator design for the pedestrian overpass at the Transportation Center.

Item 8: The City will accept a 26 year old offer of dedication for right-of-way along State College at the BNSF railroad crossing and grade separation.

Item 9 is an approval to build room additions at the Airport. On a side note, why do they always go low-bid? The lowest bidder is often lowest because they do not understand what is involved and how to deliver the quality needed.

Next up, item 10 is a service agreement for the Richman sewer replacement from Commonwealth to Fullerton Creek and then to Woods Avenue. The design and preparation of plans is estimated to cost $132,869.

A slew of parking restrictions fall under items 11 through 13. They include no parking on Arroyo, 20-minute parking on Euclid, and early morning restrictions along Wilshire Avenue.

As previously mentioned, item 14 is a Mello-Roos tax in Amerige Heights. Expect Councilman Bruce Whitaker to vote NO!

Amerige Court is back with another amendment to the development agreement on item 15. This will give the developer another 2 years to get their act together. Thank the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency.

Item 16 is the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of Fullerton (a.k.a. YOU) and the Fullerton Management Association (a.k.a. middle management and upper management). They get the same basic package as the other employees: reinstated pay, 7% contribution to their pension, and lots of holidays off.

Item 17 is the resolution that gives department heads the same basic package as the other employees: reinstated pay, 7% contribution to their pension, and lots of holidays off.

Item 18 seeks to merge Engineering and Maintenance Services which will save about $300,000. This will formalize Engineering Director Don Hoppe’s promotion to Public Works Director. Considering what Hoppe has done with our roads, one can only hope we aren’t being penny wise and pound foolish.

Item 19 is an overhaul of West Fullerton. It scraps old bus benches and targets vandalism and lighting. These issues have been brought up more than a few times at community meetings.

Item 20 is a request for federal funding for affordable housing and City-administered welfare programs. Among those receiving money, Code Enforcement (a.k.a. Community Preservation) looks to receive $337,500. A relatively small amount, $150,600, will go to cover “public service activities” like Nutrition Services Program ($5,000), Boys and Girls Club After School Program and the Club’s Youth Gang Prevention ($44,000), Long Term Care Ombudsman Service ($17,200), Fullerton Fair Housing Services ($20,000), New Vista Shelter Life Skills Training ($9,600), Meals on Wheels home delivery ($30,800), Cold Weather Armory Shelter ($8,000), Women’s Transitional Living Center Shelter Program ($8,000), and the YMCA’s Richman Center Youth Achievers ($8,000).

December 17, 2011December 18, 2011Fringie Awards

The Fringies® Continue. Worst Vote 2011

by Jan Florys Dog88 Comments

Another popular Fringie® category, Worst Vote, once again had the Nominating Committee sifting through reams of material trying to separate the ridiculous from the sublimely ridiculous. The effort was herculean, and by herculean I mean mind-numbingly depressing. And so the Committee, exhausted and babbling, climbed into a dune buggy and drove off into the cold desert night with nothing but twelve bottles of Thunderbird® and soda crackers.

Anyway here’s what they left behind.

1. In November the Fullerton City Council really distinguished itself, buying 200 special raincoats to keep their police force dry, even though the force only consists of 140 cops, only a few of which would ever be on duty in the rain. They spent $17,000 on that outlay, almost $90 per, but hey, sometime you’ve got to say that money is no object. The vote was 5-0.

2. In July the Fullerton School Board voted 4-1 to hire a huckster named Rudy Ruetigger to be their management retreat’s motivation speaker at $2000, a real bargain. Maybe the bargain basement price was due to the fact that the SEC was nipping at Rudy’s heels. None of the Trustees who supported this extravagance seems to have been the least bit curious about why six-figure salaries plus benefits wasn’t ample motivation for Fullerton’s educrat class.

Pat-McKinley-Cops-300x206 — Me 'n my aliens are about to stomp you.

3. In December the Three Hollow Logs on the Fullerton City Council elected one of their own, Pat McKinley, to be the back up face of Fullerton as Mayor Pro Tem. Well this is perfectly appropriate. McKinley, who makes $20,000 each and every month as a retired public employee is a poster child for runaway pension abuse in California; his insulting and ignorant comments about Kelly Thomas’ injuries, and his jaw-droppingly embarrassing views on sexual battery perpetrated by his policeman make him a perfect symbol of an entrenched, sclerotic, gerontocracy.

4. In August, as the pressure of world-wide scrutiny mounted, the City Council voted 4-1 to hire an outside contractor named Michael Gennaco to avoid doing needed to done: an immediate house cleaning. More wasted dough. An accompanying action was to create a task force on homeless issues, chaired by Rusty Kennedy, friend of cops throughout OC. The creation of this committee was the rudest diversion of all, suggesting that the real issue wasn’t an out-of-control gang of thugs, pickpockets, perjurers, and killers roaming the streets of Fullerton in police uniforms.

tricky dick — Heh, heh. Nobody laid a glove on me!

5. Also in August the Three Hollow Logs needed to prove they still had potent f-up mojo and awarded a multi-million dollar subsidized housing project to the clients of the guy who would become the Recall defense team leader, Dick Ackerman. Ackerman’s client St. Anton Partners who is slated to get millions of public money jumped all the way from eighth place into the driver’s seat. The Age of Miracles is not over!

6. Back in March the Three Tree Stumps voted to try to hide Redevelopment assets from the State, because, let’s face it, these so-called conservatives are hooked on government central planned boondoggles like a junkie is on black tar heroin.

7. The Fullerton School Board granted furlough days to their teachers instead of a comparatively small pay cut. Trustee and union jock strap Janny Meyer opined on face book, and we were there to share her illiterate boo-hooing.

Felz_Joe_2011_sml — Not ready for prime time...

8. Away back in April the City Council gave “acting” City Manager Joe Felz the permanent job without ever having engaged in a search. Three months later Felz would wilt like an old leaf of lettuce in the sun. Joe probably figured the job would be a breeze. After all his predecessors Chis Meyer and Jim Armstrong got away with murder (figuratively). His police force wasn’t so lucky (literally).

Well, Friends, them there’s some pretty bad votes. Feel free to share your opinion.

November 28, 2011March 19, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Howard Jarvis Will Challenge Fullerton’s Illegal Water Tax

by Travis74 Comments

It looks like our city may be in for another lawsuit. Check out this letter that was sent from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association just before Turkey Day (emphasis mine):

Mr. Joe Felz, City Manager
City of Fullerton
303 W Commonwealth Avenue
Fullerton,CA 92832

Re: Water Department “In Lieu Fees”

Jack Dean, a friend of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, has brought to our attention that the City of Fullerton pads the rates charged to water customers in order to transfer funds from the Water Fund to the General Fund. These transfers appear in the City’s Budget under Water Fund expenses and General Fund revenue as a 10% in-lieu franchise fee. We believe the fee and revenue transfers are illegal.

If a private company provided water service to the residents of Fullerton, the City could charge the private company a negotiated franchise fee for occupying public rights of way with its pipelines. That is not the case in Fullerton, however, as the City operates its own municipal water utility. The rates the City may charge are governed by the California Constitution, which limits rates to just the amount required to provide service, and prohibits transferring rate revenue for use elsewhere.

California Constitution article XIII D § 6(b) states in relevant part: “(1) Revenues derived from the fee or charge shall not exceed the funds required to provide the property related service. (2) Revenues derived from the fee or charge shall not be used for any purpose other than that for which the fee or charge was imposed.”

We successfully litigated this issue several years ago in lawsuits against the cities of Roseville and Fresno. The courts in those two cases ruled that a city’s utility enterprise can reimburse the General Fund for actual, documented expenditures incurred on behalf of the utility, such as the utility’s use of the City Attorney’s services, or the utility’s share of a common insurance fund. However, the utility cannot serve as a supplemental source of revenue for the General Fund. As the court in the Roseville case said:

“[T]he in-lieu fee violates section 6(b) of Proposition 218 in a more direct way. Roseville concedes that ‘[r]evenue from the in [-]lieu franchise fee is placed in [Roseville’s] general fund to pay for general governmental services. It has not been pledged, formally or informally[,] for any specific purpose.’ This concession runs afoul of section 6(b)(2) that ‘[r]evenues derived from the fee or charge shall not be used for any purpose other than that for which the fee or charge was imposed.’ It also contravenes section 6(b)(5) that ‘[n]o fee or charge may be imposed for general governmental services.’”Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. v. City of Roseville (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 637, 650.

By this letter we are formally requesting the City of Fullerton to stop charging the 10% in-lieu franchise fee, and to adjust its customers’ water rates accordingly.

If the City believes its 10% in-lieu franchise fee is legally defensible, then please consider this letter a request under the California Public Records Act for copies of the study(s) and/or accounting(s) that itemize General Fund costs on behalf of the Water Fund totaling exactly 10% each year.

Your response by December 10, 2011, would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Timothy A. Bittle
Director of Legal Affairs

The tax became a big issue back in July, when a guy named Jack Dean from the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers pointed out the illegality of this water tax to the council (during an attempt to double water rates.)

Well, it’s been four months now, and Fullerton residents are STILL PAYING that illegal tax on every water bill.

Of course Bankhead, Jones and McKinley are waiting for the city attorney to find a way to squeeze that tax through a legal loophole, instead of rescinding it and refunding the money they’ve been helping the city steal from taxpayers since Prop 218 passed fifteen years ago.

October 26, 2011October 26, 2011Dick Jones

Medical Leave? Um, So What Was the Problem, Again?

by Joe Sipowicz74 Comments

PoorMike — Suddenly the job lost its attraction...

I’m starting to get a little annoyed about a system that coddles public employees, especially those who are supposed to be providing “public” safety, yet who seem to creating more public danger than safety, especially when budget time rolls around.

Let’s take our current police chief, Michael Sellers, who is on some sort of indefinite sick leave. Is he really sick? His doctor says so and like our idiot mayor, I am willing to believe he somehow got hold of a medical degree and a license to be a doctor.

So what’s ailing Sellers? Initial reports said high blood pressure and stress. Hell, I give my cat medicine for its high blood pressure, so that’s a load of bullshit right there. Stress?!! Jeez, some tax payers rightfully conclude that workplace stress is one of the reasons people like Sellers are paid huge salaries of almost $20,000 a month.

Maybe Sellers is just sick all of a sudden about being held accountable for something he was supposed to be in charge of.

And now that Sellers has disappeared to the friendly beach-side confines of San Clemente, he still pulls down that fabulous salary for doing nothing! At this point some cynical folks might assert that Sellers wasn’t doing anything anyway, so what’s the difference? Hard to argue against that. But Sellers has a boss – City Manager Joe Felz; and Joe Felz has five bosses – the city council. So who the Hell has been in charge of the Fullerton police the past two years? Nobody, apparently. It’s true that Pat McPension left Sellers a culture of corruption, but still, Sellers must have known what was going on.

Will he be back? The Three Mummified Miscreants don’t seem to think so, but their lawyer has told them they can’t talk about it.

September 28, 2011September 28, 2011Don Bankhead

Get Your Own Task Force

by The Fullerton Savage76 Comments

Who cares about the homeless and mentally ill? Lots of people, it seems, but only some of them were approved to serve on a task force investigating the issues on behalf of the city. At the city council’s most recent meeting on September 20th City Manager Joe Felz presented a proposal entitled Fullerton Task Force on Homelessness and Mental Health Services. The city council had asked for such a proposal during a previous meeting on August 16.

The staff identified five specific tasks for proposed group, and went so far as to recommend sixteen people as members. They included representatives of various non-profit organizations and churches and for some reason the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce, as well as three individuals, including Ron Thomas, father of Kelly Thomas. OC Human Relations Commission CEO Rusty Kennedy was proposed to lead the group.

About a dozen people from the public spoke to the issue or ranted about unrelated homeless issues. A few of them offered their assistance as prospective members of the task force, including people who described themselves as homeless or formerly homeless. Mayor Dick Jones suggested that the membership of the task force could be determined at the next council meeting. Perhaps he either did not understand that the council was recommended to adopt the supplied list or did not agree with it. Don Bankhead rambled about having known Rusty Kennedy’s father and said he was extremely glad about something or other that can’t quite be heard in the tape because he habitually does not speak into his microphone.

Both Bruce Whitaker and Sharon Quirk-Silva supported making the task force as inclusive as possible. Whitaker suggested that of the five tasks identified, it might be best to hold the fourth one listed in the proposal first, namely to hold a public forum to solicit ideas on the subject. Quirk-Silva, noting that the idea was not to duplicate already existing services, made a motion to move forward with Whitaker’s idea.

But Pat McKinley would have none of it. He offered an alternate motion to approve the task force membership list recommended in the proposal, but curiously left off the three unaffiliated people, Kitty Jaramillo, Janice DeLoof and Ron Thomas. Bruce Whitaker characterized McKinley’s proposal as “the epitome of top down organization,” saying that it would bring no new energy or ideas to the task. Quirk-Silva joined Whitaker in voting against McKinley’s motion, but McKinley was predictably joined by Jones and Bankhead, although Jones did clarify that other members could be added to the group later.

It cannot be stated too often that homelessness and mental illness are real problems for many people, but addressing those issues should not be confused with seeking justice for a man beaten to death by police officers. Even so, it is remarkable to watch the video of the meeting to see Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley treat yet another problem with the wrongheaded approach of excluding people asking to be included in a solution. In the words of a later speaker, they squandered the opportunity to engage the very public who had been criticizing them week after week for their inaction in the face of a crisis. In the end the Three Arrogant Amigos proved once again that institutions trust institutions, and individuals need not apply.

September 19, 2011September 20, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Jones, Bankhead & McKinley’s Chickens Come Home To Roost

by Grover Cleveland117 Comments

And by come home to roost I mean a veritable pile-up of embarrassing and expensive lawsuits we will all have to pay for.

Check out the slew of new legal threats against the city on this week’s agenda, ironically followed by salary and pension negotiations with the unions whose members caused these problems in the first place. I wonder if Bankhead, Jones and McKinley will make that connection. Highly doubtful.

And don’t forget that City Manager Joe Felz is going to take another swing at getting that raise. God Almighty, who is minding the store?

Correction: Felz raise didn’t make it on to the agenda for some reason.

September 18, 2011September 18, 2011Behind Closed Doors

A New Sheriff in Town?

by Grover Cleveland259 Comments

Hutchens4 — I cleaned up the OCSD and I can help you, too...

I keep hearing persistent rumors that the Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz has had discussions with high level County officials about the possibility of abolishing the Fullerton Police Department and replacing it with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Apparently the hook is not just the recent revelations of FPD misconduct, perjury, cover-up, crimes high and low, a spokesman caught blatantly lying, and the attendant PR curse that the department has visited upon itself. There is an issue of huge cost savings. And I mean huge.

While the prospect of getting honest, competent and respectful police services from the Sheriff’s Department is probably only marginally more likely than with the FPD (and there’s no way in the world it could be worse), extrapolating from current costs in contracted cities, using the OCSD could save the taxpayers of Fullerton as much as $13,000,000, per year from the FPDs bloated budget of $37,000,000.

That’s a whopping 37%, and $13,000,000 could go to a lot of things Fullertonians hold near and dear.

In this era of government fiscal constraint brought about in large measure by irresponsible decisions by dimwits like Don Bankhead, Dick Jones and PatMcKinley, to hand out exorbitant pay and benefits to “public safety” employees, everything should be on the table.

September 15, 2011September 15, 2011Don Bankhead

Don Bankhead vs. Free Market Speech

by The Fullerton Savage161 Comments

Word has it that Mayor Pro Tem Don Bankhead was not so happy to see volunteers gathering signatures to recall him from office outside of Ralphs supermarket on Harbor Blvd. earlier this week.

Petition gatherers say that he and the Mrs. suggested that they shouldn’t be there and were then seen to be speaking to a store manager inside. A couple of days later the signature gatherers were told by both the manager of Ralphs and the manager of the shopping center that they were not welcome there, and had to leave. Volunteers collecting signatures in front of Albertsons on Raymond Ave. were told the same thing.

Fortunately Fullerton Recall Coordinator Chris Thompson knew that petitioners have the right to collect signatures on some private property as long as they are not causing a disturbance. The California Supreme Court upheld this right in something called Pruneyard vs. Robins, that basically holds that any place that is normally open to the public, like a mall or shopping center, is covered by free speech rights, even if it is private property.

Thompson called the city of Fullerton and had none other than City Manager Joe Felz and the city attorney confirm that the signature gatherers had a perfect right to collect signatures in front of both Ralph’s and Albertsons. Thompson then met with police officers at Ralphs, who agreed. One of them even gave the signature gatherers his card and told them to call him if they had this problem again.

Don Bankhead, who has no problem giving away millions of dollars in public land to developers is suddenly bothered by a couple of people collecting signatures in front of a busy supermarket. I guess he hasn’t learned much since the last time he was recalled from the Fullerton City Council 17 years ago.