Enjoy Downtown While it Lasts

Downtown Fullerton

Fullerton’s City Council last Tuesday, as expected, voted to change the rules governing how bars operate in the city in order to facilitate having more bars and making them more profitable.

The crux of the change is that it was too hard for staff to do their jobs, and for the Police Chief to stop rubber stamping permits, so the city needed to change the rules. This time they mean to enforce them unlike the last decade+ they promise… kind of… well not really.

Not one council member got an answer of who was in violation of what rules they were changing and why it was so hard for community development, code enforcement and the police to use a checklist to sort it out and in fact Ted White’s answers on how Conditional Use Permits work negated his own arguments of the Title 15 change. But again, council was too inept and/or lazy to follow the logic of the change or to ask any real questions per the norm.

The council ALSO voted to launch a pilot program, which we all know will be permanent, for paid parking in downtown. This is a data driven program tracking who comes and goes how often and how long they stay based on license plate data. As we heard at the meeting the whole point was data, data, data and more data. You will be tracked and your data will likely be sold. It’s so data driven that the vendor, staff and council want you to punch in where you park even when you don’t have to pay for parking – just because you WANT to be tracked.

Data Breach

When council asked who owned the servers the vendor claimed it was a “cloud based server” and that’s where the questions stopped. We don’t know what data is kept, where it is kept, which servers are used or who our travel data is being sold to – all because council couldn’t be bothered to ask.

It was a pathetic meeting full of incompetence, malfeasance and laughable gaffs. The Other Dick Jones™ got torn into by both Fitzgerald and Zahra for how they can/can’t handle an agenda item and when the city clerk offered helpful info the council just blanker her. It was probably the worst example of governing I’ve seen in years.

Individually the council members didn’t do themselves any favors in the integrity or intelligence departments. (more…)

Embrace DUIs or Move to Podunk

cronyism

Last night the Planning Commission voted to loosen the rules on bars while promising, yet again, that the city will hold bad actors in our downtown accountable.

They made the same empty promises staff, Planning Commission and Council have been giving the people of Fullerton for well over a decade despite any substantial actions. They can’t even be bothered to close businesses without permits but hey, trust them this time because this time they mean it. Really.

During public comments Joe Florentine suggested if you don’t like the DUI culture that you move to Podunk.

This actually happened.

The guy who stole a sidewalk thinks the entire city belongs to him and his beer shilling compatriots. He and other bar owners in attendance also tried to blame “pre-gaming” and 7-11 for all of the drunks sent out onto our decrepit roads at 2am.

Not one member of the Planning Commission asked about negative impacts, what was already being done, why nobody is ever shut down or brought before them and not one of them bothered to challenge staff or the owners on why they all supported alleged “penalties”. These people are all shameless and useless.

But Mr. Florentine put the idea out there that you either accept his vision of Fullerton or leave so I present for your consideration the vision that these guys have as this is what they support, want and endorse year in and year out.

Here is a map of the DUIs in Fullerton in 2018. Google Maps wouldn’t let us show duplicates so if 5 DUIs happened at the same spot there is only one pin.

Fullerton 2018 DUIs
Duplicate locations were omitted.

Here’s just Downtown for 2018:

2018 DUIs Downtown
Duplicate locations were omitted.

There were 636 DUIs in Fullerton in 2017, 633 in 2018 and with 80 DUIs so far this year the city is on track to keep up with this yearly average.

Nobody last night seemed to care about the carnage, mayhem or dangers on our roads so long as it makes the right businesses a profit (while driving other businesses out). What’s sad is that this idea of a Bar-Only Downtown is ruining a part of town many of us love.

But hey, if you don’t like having 1.7 DUIs a day in Fullerton (and that’s who is caught mind you) then just move to Podunk. After all, according to Joe Florentine this is a college town and we need to focus on serving students (who for the first three years of college are too young to drink mind you).

Maybe when a DUI hits the stolen sidewalk on Harbor, instead of innocent businesses like the Ophthalmologist on Orangethorpe, Mr. Florentine will change his tune on the unaccountable behavior he continues to support.

Fullerton DUI Feb 2019

Until then except more the same and be happy about it or do something to change the focus of our city council. Or hey – maybe just move to Podunk.