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August 16, 2011August 20, 2011Fullerton City Council

City Council Meeting Tonight

The public meeting starts at 6:30 PM. On the agenda tonight are the issue of hiring contractor Michael Gennaco to “investigate” the FPD. Those of us who have been around City hall awhile know that these contractors always do what the City Manager wants since he’s the guy that got them hired. VOTE NO!

Speaking of the City Manager, Joe Felz, who has overseen the corrupt FPD and who has totally bungled the Kelly Thomas affair is up for a $35,000 raise. Yep, you heard that right. That was bad timing! It’s on what’s called the “Consent Calendar” so unless a member of the public asks the City Clerk to pull this item for discussion it will go through on the nod. VOTE NO!

Also agenized are some more ridiculous “affordable housing” projects of the kind that cost twice as much to build as regular housing. These are being pimped by lobbyists who also happen to be some of the biggest repuglicans in Orange County who are counting on Jones, Bankhead and McKinley to line their pockets. VOTE NO!

Of course you can also make your voices heard in public comments, too, at the start of the meeting.

Fullerton City Hall is located at 303 W. Commonwealth, Fullerton at the intersection of Highland Avenue.

See you all there!

August 15, 2011August 20, 2011Behind Closed Doors

The Dead Kennedys

by Grover Cleveland90 Comments

We may not always have agreed with the liberal activism of Fullerton’s Ralph Kennedy, but there’s no doubt that the engineer-turned-civil-rights-activist was the real deal – a committed believer in social justice who was willing to take unpopular stands on behalf of the causes for which he advocated.

In its obituary of him in 1998, the Los Angeles Times wrote: “He was one of those rare people who saw things as they should be. He wasn’t willing to sit in his comfort while others in the world were suffering. He always felt like he needed to dig in and do something to bring about justice, to take action, to risk his own comfort in order to make things better.”

But Kennedy’s two children – Sharon Kennedy, who is publisher of the Fullerton Observer, which Ralph and his wife, Natalie, founded in the 1970s; and Rusty Kennedy, head of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, which claims to advocate for concepts similar to those advocated by the elder Kennedys – are frauds. Their actions (or inaction, really) following the brutal slaying of Kelly Thomas by Fullerton police thugs shows how they have become lapdogs for the political establishment, which is the very opposite of the behavior displayed by their Dad. Unfortunately, modern liberals usually defend government power and abuse — they don’t stand up for the poor and downtrodden any more.

The Observer has run various news stories about the Thomas killing at the hands of cops, but the stories read like articles hatched in the Fullerton PD’s press department. There is no sense of outrage and an unconscionable reliance on official explanations and official sources. (It’s as if Ralph Kennedy, known as a crusader against housing discrimination, took at face value the official government explanations of why black folks were treated as second-class citizens in the old days. “Don’t worry, folks, Gov. George Wallace and his able team of government officials will get to the bottom of it!”) The Observer, promoting the lame efforts of Rusty and his commission, runs a story that declares: “The Orange County Human Relations Commission is responding to community requests for help in the tragic beating death of Kelly Thomas. On behalf of the Commission, Rusty Kennedy endorsed the idea of an outside, independent investigation of police practices and procedures in the case and more broadly across the department. He gave City Manager Joe Felz an evaluation of Michael Gennaco for the LA County Office of Independent Review. The Commission has worked with Gennaco in hate crime cases and most recently in setting up an OIR in Orange County, which is now staffed by Stephen Connelly, one of Gennaco’s proteges.”

The Observer and Kennedy should be denouncing this brutal attack as a hate crime and staging sit-ins and other demonstrations. Instead, they are joining the official whitewash and telling us to trust these not-so-outside investigations. Connelly has not produced a single serious investigation since he became the head of the supposedly independent commission that operates basically at the behest of the Sheriff. You might as well ask Dick Jones to produce an outside investigation.

Fortunately, this blog is filling in the role that lapdog players such as the Fullerton Observer play. Fortunately, Orange County residents are starting to learn that the Human Relations Commission is a way for limousine liberals to live large on other people’s money while pretending to stand up for the principles that true liberals such as Ralph Kennedy actually stood up for.

August 14, 2011August 20, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Views on The City Manager

by Mr. Peabody45 Comments

Felz_Joe_2011_sml — The deep end of the pool was awful scary...

Since he was promoted on an interim basis last year I have believed that former museum director Joe Felz was in way over his head. His role in handling the Kelly Thomas homicide has been fuzzy, at best. He seems to have been prepared to let his underling, Chief Sellers make the decisions (or choose not to make any decisions at all) and let police union boss Andrew Goodrich be the official voice of Fullerton – passing half-truths, irrelevancies, or outright lies.

My guess is that Felz abdicated the authority given him by the City Council and handed it over to Pat McKinley.

The only thing I’ve heard from Felz was a lame-ass attempt to play word games by saying no settlement offer was made to Ron Thomas, father of the victim. Of course that was such a sniveling lie that it alone should have earned Felz a half-hour stay in Jay Cicinelli’s basement Taser room.

Here’s an observation made by one of our commenters “Do you know”:

One person the citizen’s of Fullerton are letting fall under the radar is City Manager Joe Felz. The mayor and city council of Fullerton are largely part-time figure heads. The real power in the day to day operations of any small city is in the hands of its city manager. The city manager is also the boss of the chief of police. The chief of police does not even have the power to terminate an employee. The chief can suspend, or place officer’s on administrative leave, but they can only recommend termination. The city manager is the only one with the power to permanently remove an officer from their employment.

Chief Sellers initial inaction in this case is every bit the fault of Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz, as there is no way he did not know what is going on. Chief’s of police throughout California are on the phone with their city manager’s several times a day over one issue or another. City manager’s get their daily marching orders from regional heads of the California League of Cities. Since Chief Sellers did not take action in the early stages of this case, City Manager Joe Felz is every bit as culpable as Chief Sellers. Possibly more.

I’m inclined to agree. We are always told what a nice guy Joe Felz is. Maybe so. But it looks like he’s turned over the keys of the City of Fullerton to a rogue police department.

August 12, 2011August 20, 2011Behind Closed Doors

There Is An Emergency in Fullerton!

by Mr. Peabody61 Comments

the-observer-ostrich4-300x225 — Things never looked better for Fullerton.

Yep, there sure is.

The City Manager has called an emergency meeting of the City Council this morning at 9:00, a mighty odd time to hold a public hearing. The ostensible purpose of this emergency is to hire an outsider to evaluate the condition our FPD condition is in.

It’s pretty obvious that this decision could have waited until the next scheduled meeting. So what’s the emergency? Maybe City Manager Joe Felz and the Gang of Three are trying to look like they are finally, really and truly taking things seriously. And maybe they prefer dealing with Kelly Thomas related humiliations at nine o’clock in the morning to avoid hundreds of angry commenters.

The really pathetic aspect of the abject failure of leadership in Fullerton and this desperate and transparent effort to defuse a recall is that the real emergency existed on July 5, 2011 and was completely unknown to our oblivious City Council, including the supposed law enforce experts Pat McKinley and Don Bankhead. Or maybe they knew and just didn’t care. After all, McKinley was police chief from 1993-2009 and has admitted he hired all the cops who have made Fullerton famous lately; and Bankhead has been on the city council since 1888. Oops. I mean 1988.

bankhead_4th_july — Has it really been that long?

F. Dick Jones has been on the council for 15 years; will he not take responsibility for the state of affairs he created?

What about the ever-compassionate Sharon Quirk? She has been on the council for seven long years. How many police-related monetary settlements has she approved?

Quirk2 — Knitting socks as fast as she can...

Well, there you have it. An emergency. But its an emergency created by world-wide attention to the Fullerton Police Department’s culture of corruption, not by the corruption itself.

Well, go ahead and have your emergency meeting, folks. You can run but you can’t hide.

April 27, 2011April 27, 2011Fullerton City Council

City of Fullerton’s Proposed Budget Unveiled – $274.9-Million To Be Spent

by Greg Sebourn14 Comments

The City of Fullerton unveiled the proposed budget for fiscal year 2011-2012 and 2012-2013.

The budget appears to be largely a rearrangement of the deck chairs with no real cuts proposed. There are proposed cuts in certain projected spending to help make up for significant increases in employee benefits.

There were no explanations about the benefits increasing which Councilmember Whitaker took issue with.

Councilmember Quirk-Silva reminded staff that last year there were several ideas proposed for generating revenue and increasing fees such as the tow franchise which will be heard by the Council later this year. Quirk-Silva expressed appreciation that the tow franchise was moving forward but would like to know about the other measure proposed last year.

One of my major concerns continues to be the infrastructure. As Public Works Director Hoppe pointed out, we still have a nearly $150 million dollar paving deficit to deal with. The current paving plan does not adequately address this nor does this proposed budget. I hope the council members and City Manager Joe Felz will give serious consideration and address our infrastructure with this budget.

Below are the summaries for the proposed budget. (click on image to read) The big question remaining in my mind is how does $274.9 million in taxpayer expenditures next year benefit my family, my neighborhood, and the quality of life in my community?

April 14, 2011April 14, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Job Search for City Manager, Or Just Hire That Guy We Already Know?

by The Fullerton Savage20 Comments

At the end of the last City Council meeting on April 5 Councilman Don Bankhead, supported by fellow Councilman Pat McKinely, requested that the agenda of the next council meeting on April 19 include an item to remove the term “acting” from the title of the job currently held by Joe Felz. Joe Felz was appointed Acting City Manager last December following the retirement of Chris Meyer.

Joe Felz certainly has a great deal of experience working for Fullerton. According to the city’s December 2010 press release he began working for Fullerton while still in college. He served as Director of the Parks and Recreation Department in 2007 following a two year stint as assistant to Meyer when he was City Manager.

Is Joe Felz the right person to hire as City Manager, a position that currently pays $166,250.00 per year, plus benefits? Don Bankhead and Pat McKinley seem to think so. McKinley worked for the city for over 15 years himself as Chief of Police, and Don Bankhead has been on the city council for over 22 years and also worked for Fullerton’s Police Dept. for many, many years before that.

Is Felz a good candidate for the job? Maybe, but is he the best person we can get for the money? We may never know, because two city insiders on the council want to hire another one for one of the highest paid and certainly the most powerful position in the city government. Shouldn’t the city conduct a search to find the best candidates for such an important job? They did for the Chief of Police position after McKinley retired from FPD.

Bankhead seems to be in a big hurry to hire Felz permanently because he is “a little tired of using the term acting city manager.” Is it possible that Bankhead is just tired in general and doesn’t want to bother with a job search? Don’t we deserve to know that our City Manager is the best person for the job, and not just the one that has been around for the longest amount of time and knows the most people?

December 14, 2009December 30, 2009Behind Closed Doors

On the Agenda: December 15th, 2009

by Christian4 Comments

The Fullerton City Council has just released their agenda for December 15, 2009 and it’s a fat package!

Something near and dear to me is baseball so I take a little more interest when the subject shows up on the agenda. Item 2 of the closed session is a conference with the real property negotiator concerning 304 W. Commonwealth Avenue. It would appear that the Orange County Flyers of Fullerton want to move to downtown Fullerton to be closer to City Hall. In fact they want to have the baseball field across the street where many a young man played pony league baseball. The Duane Winters Field just might be the sight of the next Golden Baseball League Championship. In March 2007 the team gave up being the Fullerton Flyers because the new partners wanted to be more marketable. Hmm, sounds like an Arty Moreno stunt! So the changed to the Orange County Flyers. I have a t-shirt that says “Top 10 Reason’s To Be a Fan: …Reason #4: They aren’t the L.A. Flyers of Fullerton.” That’s true; they’re the O.C. Flyers. So, will Parks and Rec Director, Joe Felz, give them the field? We’ll see…

Also in the closed session is another real property whiz-bang. Rob Zur Schmiede is working on 655 W. Valencia. In 2007 this was a 63 unit condo by John Laing and the project was in plan check. 3+ years later, what could they be discussing? Price and terms with C&C Development’s Barry Cottle, according to the agenda.

In the open session you can look forward to a presentation by MWD and a few awards to people like Quirk-Silva, Dick Waltz, and – drum roll please – The Golden Bell Award, Fullerton Union High School District and (another drum roll please) Fullerton School District! How ya like dem apples?

Make sure you fill out your blue card before you yell at the council – which you will want to do…

There are a few appointments being made to the Library Board of Trustees. Your favorite Mayor, Don “Don’t Mess With Me” Bankhead and Shawn “See Ya Later Alligator” Nelson. Their terms are to expire December 31, 2012 – if they last that long.

We have a busy consent calendar to cover so hang on tight. In the mix is the amended landscaping ordinance, group insurance for city employees, the employee’s deferred compensation, more sewer replacement, a bunch of Redevelopment stuff, air pollution, SALE OF THE ORANGE COUNTY FAIR GROUNDS (seriously – item 11), Raymond Avenue grade separation, Fire Management Association agreement, Bastanchury/Valencia Mesa bike path. There is too much for me to cover here so I’ll expand a little on just a few.

First, there for Redevelopment. Item 6’s title should tell you everything you need to know… “Redevelopment Agency’s Annual Determination That Planning And Administrative Expenses Are Necessary For The Production, Improvement, or Preservation of Low and Moderate Income Housing”. Yep that’s all you need to know so don’t look into it or question it. I suggest that if you ever had a beef with Redevelopment, this is a chance for you to SCREAM at your elected officials. This “determination” is the justification for wasting your money. Because if that isn’t enough reason, read item 7, the Redevelopment Agency’s annual report. This the RA’s justification for existence to the State and Feds. If it doesn’t dazzle you with brilliance, rest assured, it will baffle you with bullshit!

Ok, enough with the Redevelopment Agency, let’s get down to real business. According to item 8, it’s time to modify the signals at Orangethorpe and Highland, as well as re-stripe the area and add some signs.

Air pollution shows up 9^th on the list. It’s actually a MSRC grant for $450,000 for a compressed natural gas station. I wonder how much money we will throw at it to get the gas station operational. How much will we sell the gas for? Are there enough customers to make it profitable or are we, the tax payers, suppose to subsidize CNG vehicle owners? I’m sure the details are all there waiting to be found.

Don Hoppe gets an appointment as the Public Works Dispute Hearing Officer. Will he get paid extra for the job?

And then we have the Fairgrounds. It appears that the council would like to request the Governator to not sell the O.C. Fairgrounds. I’m sure Arnold will read the letter and quickly cancel the whole sale.

The Raymond Avenue Grade Separation is getting a change order for AECOM. Their fee is $2,450,000. It is unclear from the agenda or staff recommendation just how much the change order will cost us, if anything. According to the recommendation, there is $63,739,000 for the project. That’s a lot of money!

Skipping ahead to the Public Hearings we have some more Redevelopment doozies. The first one, item 15, is for 524 and 530 S. Richman Avenue where the Olson Company wants to erect 34 moderate income housing units. I believe the Honorable DR. Jones said we “…absolutely have to build these. It’s the law!” Well, sort of…not really.

Also, item 16 is the Five-Year Implementation Plan for Redevelopment Agency. The item is on the agenda so that a request can be made to have a public hearing on it and consider adopting the plan. What a racket!

Here is an interesting one. Item 17 is an appeal to install a nature/wildlife habitat along a portion of the Juanita Cooke Greenbelt (known to many who are not as up to date on official trail names as “The Equestrian Trail Behind the Court House that goes to Laguna Lake”). After looking at what they wanted to do and where, I’m not sure why the City didn’t take advantage of the situation. Here are a couple who want to improve the trail where it runs along their backyard. They wanted to make it wilder (I guess) on the slope NEXT TO the path. The fix could have been to enter into an agreement whereby they can install certain pre-approved plants in a pre-approved manner, the total costs of which would be paid by the applicant. The City could have the homeowners maintain it until such time as the agreement is cancelled in which case the homeowners could be on the hook for removal/restoration costs. The cop out from Parks that the trail has two paths and this would confuse people is silly. Are people really that stupid? Also, from what I have seen, the encroachment would be onto the slope. I don’t think the mountain bikers are on the slopes nor are the walkers or horses. So what’s the problem?

The city will also be looking at parking permit fees in certain areas. (See item 18)

Moving on to Regular Business (I said this was a big package), we have a few reports on the City’s financials as well as the Airport. Also in the Regular Business is the Commission/Committee At-Large Appointment Process.

I urge you to read through all of the supporting documents for the agenda. That is where you might find some nuggets of truth that should be brought forth. I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to do it. Thanks for reading and feel free to point out other topics that I missed or are important to you!

May 2, 2009January 4, 2010Chris Norby

THE STRANGE & TRAGIC TALE OF HILLCREST PARK

by Fred L. Olmsted34 Comments

UPDATE: We are republishing this wonderful post by Fred Olmstead originally posted on February 21, 2009. We do so in order to highlight the fact that the park – suffering from real blight – is in the Redevelopment project area, and stands as yet another testament to the failure of Redevelopment. Sharon Quirk, are you reading this?

– The Fullerton Shadow

Loyal Friends of Fullerton’s Future, gather ‘round the cool glow of your computer terminals and follow a sad saga of miserable municipal negligence.

Located in the center of Fullerton is a resource of inestimable value, overlooked by almost everybody in and outside of City Hall: Hillcrest Park. Included in an early vision of the city it followed upon the City Beautiful, and natural urban park elements of the Progressive movement; and coincided nicely with the new auto culture of the 1920s, positioned as it was, along the original Highway 1.

Developed fully during the Depression in a rustic mode, the park soon after began a long decline into municipal irrelevance, and if anything, seemed to be perceived by many as a liability rather than a great asset. This tragic trajectory is a shameful blot on Fullerton’s history and is akin to placing your eighty-five year old mother in a criminally negligent nursing home.

After Don Bankhead and Fullerton’s Finest chased out the acid-dropping hippies in the 1960s, the park became a haven for perverts; trees began to die and were not replaced; erosion claimed many of the north and west facing slopes and was not arrested; as the infrastructure crumbled it was replaced by City Engineer Hugh Berry with incongruous cinder block walls and concrete light poles.

In the mid-1990s Redevelopment Director Gary Chalupsky, in a philanthropic mood, decided that Redevelopment funds could be used to address Hillcrest Park issues – the first official over-the-shoulder glance toward the park in years.

And here, dear Friends, the story turns from a chronicle of benign neglect to one of outright incompetence and, one might plausibly argue, a form of bureaucratic malevolence.

In 1996 the usual scoping/charette pantomime was performed with an historic park landscape architect, specially imported from Riverside. An odd thing happened: every time the consultant prepared a list of priorities for the park, the Community Services Department’s wishes kept getting pushed to the top. The Director of Community Services was Susan Hunt, a woman long known for her mindless turf battles with her constituents – (including the Isaak Walton Cabin in Hillcrest). Hunt was determined to hijack the process and divert resources from where they were needed to facilities that she and her department could control and perhaps even profit from.

Hunt was successful. The consultant, knowing whom it was important to please, seemed only too happy to abet the fraud that was perpetrated. The city council (including current Jurassic members Bankhead and Jones) went along. Chris Norby was there, too. Now he’s in charge of the County’s parks.

A new playground replaced the old one in the Lemon parking area even though no one had complained about the existing one that parents seemed to like. More egregious still, a new facility (known as Hillcrest Terrace) was built behind the Veteran’s building that could be rented out for social functions. But the real needs of the park – slope stabilization, plant cataloguing and replacement, the removal of inappropriate elements – went unaddressed – and the problems have continued unabated to this day, ten years later, as interest in the park waned again.

Last fall the City once again roused itself from its somnolence and created an ad hoc committee to consider issues related to Hillcrest Park. The time is, perhaps, propitious. Susan Hunt has disappeared into an overdue and well-compensated retirement, current Director Joe Felz is much more amenable to citizen input. It’s time to reclaim this park.

Hillcrest is still in the Redevelopment Area and remains affected by indisputable blight. This should become a priority for Redevelopment Director Rob Zur Schmied.

While we wonder if the Hillcrest Park committee will actually display the necessary independence from staff manipulation, and that they possess the necessary technical abilities, we wish them well. And we encourage citizens to make sure that this time any assessment of Hillcrest will objectively address the needs of the park and report directly to the City Council. Recommendations should be included in the City’s Capital Budget.

Hillcrest Park can and must return to being the crown jewel of Fullerton’s parks.

September 25, 2025September 25, 2025About Us

The Lonely Kaboom Park

by The Fullerton Harpoon36 Comments

About a week and a half a go the Fullerton Observer ran an update on their earlier propaganda about the rebuilding of the Union Pacific Park. You may remember the slight-of-hand article that mischaracterized the history of the park. FFFF pointed out that it wasn’t the toxic soil issue that closed the park. Rather it was the derelict state of the majority of the park that hadn’t been closed at all.

Truslow residents will surely remember that the park had become a magnet for drunks, druggies, and FTT gang members who claimed it as their own turf. The City Manager, Joe “Wild Ride” Felz decided to put up a fence around the whole disaster, and forget about it. And it’s been that way ever since.

On September 13th a horde of volunteers showed up to install a “Kaboom Park” – prefab plastic kiddie equipment surrounded by what look like wood chips to cushion the fall of the young children. Three pitiable sycamore saplings were planted.

The whole thing was an exercise in political, public mobilization since a little crew could have done the job in a few hours, but that would have missed the point: a bountiful opportunity for speeches, selfless volunteering, photo ops, demonstrations, and of course the usual liberal hosannas about “public health” and “underserved communities.”

Two weeks later the Kaboom park sits there alone, still fenced off from the community who is said by the Kennedy Sisters to have longingly waited for the park’s re-opening. When is the fence coming down? I bet nobody has asked. Sometime in the near future the rest of the park is supposed to be worked on. Will it be after that? Was the Kaboom operation just an empty feel-good gesture to show that something, anything was happening?

It seems to me that this little playground assembly should have been the last thing to go in, not the first. But what do I know about parks? Surely not as much as City Hall does.

Anyway, several local politicians showed up to get their picture taken, including Ahmad Zahra of course, who never misses a self-promotional opportunity. He reportedly didn’t stay to actually do any work – not even to claw at the dirt with a rake or to give moral support. He supposedly left after the pictures were taken.

The future of the re-opened park, whenever the fence comes down, doesn’t look promising. Nobody has asked about the condition and influence of the social pathologies that caused the park to be closed by Felz in the first place. Everyone has decided to conveniently forget the true history of the park

The rundown “Trail Phase 1” hasn’t been cleaned up and is usually occupied by somebody selling drugs of some sort. The Harbor bridge leading to the park from the east is a disgusting mess of graffiti, trash and broken light fixtures. Fullerton Tokers Town is still around, still marking its territory with regularity.

February 21, 2025February 22, 2025About Us

City of Fullerton Stalls FFFF

by Joe Sipowicz35 Comments

That’s the way it looks. FFFF’s attorney Kelly Aviles sent word to the City that Friends for Fullerton’s Future was planning a periodical publication and wanted to dispense it on City property – City Hall, the Fullerton Library, the Community Center. You may recall our post.

Our lawyer has not heard anything in the past four and a half weeks. There is an obvious stall tactic, of course. This means one of two things. Could it be because the City doesn’t know how to respond? Or, maybe the City wants to ignore the request just hoping somehow it will go away.

dick-jones — Staying awake long enough to break the law…

We do know that there is no love lost between FFFF and Fullerton’s astonishingly still employed City Attorney, the I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Firm of Jones and Mayer. These cut rate pettifoggers, hand job lawyers, and low percentile law school grads don’t like us because of our myriad posts outlining their incompetence, corruption, and self-dealing. They even tried to sue FFFF and a couple of its writers a few years back. Their loss must still hurt their misplaced professional pride.

We also know that the upper echelons of the City also look askance at our disrespectful but honest chronicling of their misdeeds over the past 17 years. There’s a long list of corrupt cops, boobs, drunk driving city managers, incompetents and ne’er do wells whom we have raked over the coals, including several of the current generation.

Obviously, the immigration and marriage fraud Ahmad Zahra doesn’t like us because we are anti-Muslim homophobes, which hilariously corresponds exactly with his exercise in self branding. Whether his pal in the “progressive” ideology charade, Shana Charles is opposed to an FFFF presence in City Hall is unknown.

What about Nick Dunlap and Fred Jung? We have been sort of nice to them when they do good things; also not so nice when they cave in to Fullerton’s boohoo phalanx. Are they trying to blackball us? I don’t know and I don’t know if Jamie Valencia has even heard of our humble blog.

Whatever the dynamics, we’re not giving up. If a squalid rag like the Fullerton Observer, with its innuendo, errant information, sanctimonious and blatant politicking can be disseminated on public property, so can our proposed chronicle.