Tag: Jesus Silva

Posted onAbout Us

Fullerton Lies to the ACLU, LA Times and Others

by 3 Comments on Fullerton Lies to the ACLU, LA Times and Others

The City recently sent out a file from the City Attorney, via Assistant City Clerk Klein, that lists officers who’s records are disclosable under the Records Law known as SB1421. This was sent to those who had requested these files such as myself, the ACLU, LA Times and others. The following is my response;

Dear SB1421 Requesters and interested parties,

It has come to my attention that the City of Fullerton has broken California’s Public Record’s Law, specifically related to SB1421, by denying you records which are quite clearly publicly disclosable.

In the link sent to you by Mea Klein, Assistant City Clerk, as provided to her by the City Attorney, you were told that there are 27 Officers “REQUESTED BY NAME, BUT NO DISCLOSABLE FILE AVAILABLE (27)”. This is patently false.

The City of Fullerton is currently suing me, my compatriot David and the blog Friends for Fullerton’s Future directly related to the published findings on several of these officers.

City of Fullerton Is Suing Me And This Blog

In looking at this list I can quite easily name Officers on that list who have disclosable records under SB1421 including but not limited to Kathryn Hamel, Paul Irish, Miguel “Sonny” Siliceo, Christopher Wren & Nathan Roesler.

A sustained finding was found against Hamel and one cannot simply unring that bell as seen in the recent Contra Costa County tentative decision (CASE NAME: RICHMOND POLICE VS. CITY OF RICHMOND).

This FFFF article related to Hamel is specifically mentioned in the lawsuit against myself and FFFF:

Fullerton Police Cut a Deal to Bypass the Law

Christopher Wren had a sustained finding against for dishonesty related to a workplace affair with a subordinate. In IA Case #17-0038 one of the sustained findings against Officer Wren is as follows:

“6. On December 17, 2017, when Lieutenant Cleggett asked you about your whereabouts, you dishonestly stated to Lieutenant Cleggett that you had been on the phone with your wife the entire time and did not notice Lieutenant Cleggett’s text message.”

This statement of dishonesty was directly related to misconduct as outlined in the timeline of Wren’s activities and being in violation of policy.

Likewise with Christopher Wren, an article is specifically listed in the lawsuit being waged against myself and FFFF:

What Happened to Officer Christopher Wren

The idea that the city attorney is unaware of the sustained findings against their officers which are disclosable under SB1421 is laughable when those very stories are being used by the same attorneys as evidence in a lawsuit where the city seeks a prior restraint against myself and FFFF.

The blog has likewise published stories on how Paul Irish was terminated for dishonesty;

Fullerton’s Veritable Serpico Problem

Miguel “Sonny” Siliceo admitted in his plea deal that he both used excessive force and falsified a police report.

Sonny’s Admission of Guilt

Nathan Roesler filed a false report with the City of Placentia which resulted in an innocent man being arrested for a crime that wasn’t committed against Roesler. This was referred to the District Attorney for prosecution.

Another Possible Cover-up by FPD

These are the cases which are readily and easily pointed out which I believe to be disclosable under SB1421 which calls all of the other officers on the list into question. The City is blatantly lying to you, your organizations and agencies as well as the public and concerned entities about disclosable records despite being in a separate lawsuit over these very violations of SB1421.

If you are honestly seeking these records and others from the City of Fullerton you will likely have no recourse but to seek remedies in order to get to the truth. I have already been forced to take this route unfortunately.

They are likewise violating the law in regards to the officer whose records are “PENDING; NOT YET PRODUCED (3)”. The incident in Corbett’s case was from 2016 and Paez’s was in 2017. The timeline has long passed for required production in both of these cases.

Thank you for your time and I wish you all the best in your efforts to get to the truth.

Sincerely,

Joshua Ferguson
Host, The Hourly Struggle
Writer, Friends for Fullerton’s Future
Concerned Citizen

For the record, City Manager Ken Domer is fine with these lies as he could put an end to them but works with the City Attorneys to keep them going. The same for Police Chief Dunn. He has no desire for you to know which of his officers are corrupt or he’d demand the city follow the law.

The City Council? 4 of the 5 of them have repeatedly voted to sue us without so much as questioning the liability the City Attorney themselves caused. Remember, when the City Council wants YOU to follow the law – they have no problem shielding police from it.

Despite all of their bluster over Black Lives Matter, Jesus Silva & Ahmad Zahra don’t care about police misconduct or oversight. Jan Flory & Jennifer Fitzgerald don’t care about integrity or accountability either. Remember, they all voted to sue US to keep the records of corrupt police from YOU. Hell, Sharon Quirk-Silva, Jesus Silva’s wife, voted AGAINST the very law in question here (SB1421) if you want perspective of how little these people’s rhetoric matters.

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Posted onBad Cops

Keep Protesting All the Way to November

by 34 Comments on Keep Protesting All the Way to November
Photo Courtesy of Voice of OC

There was a protest today in Fullerton, like many cities around the country, sparked by the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. People are justifiably angry about the actions of the officers involved who killed Mr. Floyd.

This blog has long stood against police misconduct and abuses of authority from the Pre-Kelly Thomas days to my ongoing lawsuit trying to expose the ongoing Culture of Corruption within the City of Fullerton.

We’re allies on the issues of abuses of authority and unaccountable police.

That said I implore you to focus your anger.

Police abuse people not for such a simple issue as wrongthink. Manual Ramos threatening Kelly Thomas with his balled up fists wasn’t a Black vs. White issue. When 50% of the Officers fired for the murder of George Floyd are POCs it breaks the lazy narrative.

Police do terrible things because we as a society let them. We tell them it’s okay. We condone and support their actions. We give them endless benefits in their checks and qualified immunity in the courts.

We do it every election at the ballot box.

In 2016 Jennifer Fitzgerald, our current Mayor, won election with more votes than any candidate has ever received in the city of Fullerton. She won with these numbers despite being the biggest bootlicker on council since the 3 council members we recalled.

During her tenure, this woman has caused our budget to be absolutely CONSUMED by police pay and benefits. Public safety currently accounts for more than $7 out of every $10 we spend in our general fund. This is ridiculous but it has no end in sight and we’re getting less and less for it.

Our city cannot afford to fix our roads because she and those like her have never seen a police pension or pay raise she didn’t adamantly support.

Meanwhile she has fought, tooth and nail, against any meaningful reform of the Fullerton Police Department from her seat on council. She glad hands police and supports their militarization at every opportunity. She has supported asset seizures which is when the city steals your property to pad their budgets. She has gone so far as to support hiding records from the public by not demanding the City follow basic public records laws. Hell, this blog got sued for showing that FPD is RIGHT NOW doing everything they can to AVOID publicly disclosing wrongdoing by their officers.

This blog exposed a pervert cop who was caught filming up a 16 year old’s skirt while assigned to Fullerton High School and her solution was to vote, multiple times, to SUE US. Oversight? Accountability? Assurances that there is chain of custody and accountability? That FPD won’t turn more of our kids into victims of sex crimes? She’s been as quiet as a church mouse on those issues because she puts bad cops over our kids & our city as a whole.

Did she demand accountability after the Fullerton PD put their friend & then City Manager Joe Felz above the drunk driving laws? Nope. She cried that she’d miss her friend.

Did you know that Fullerton purchased 160 AR-15s? That’s more than one PER officer. Why? Why does FPD need that kind of firepower? It certainly isn’t to protect you. And if it’s not to protect you, it’s to protect the very police that our elected officials refuse to hold accountable from you.

Fitzgerald eagerly supported this purchase and militarization without hesitation. As did Jesus Silva & County Supervisor Doug Chaffee.

They do the bidding of the Fullerton Police Officer’s Association and the FPOA cares about one thing and one thing only – keeping cops with fat wallets above the law at your expense. Remember that the less accountable they are, the more you pay when they screw up. Those millions that Fullerton paid Ron Thomas certainly didn’t come out of any police pensions or FPOA bake sale.

In the near decade since Kelly Thomas was murdered we have seen no meaningful reform of the Fullerton Police Department. No transparency. No real oversight. Jennifer Fitzgerald has now been Mayor twice in that time. She was put onto council in the election months after the recall resulting from the Kelly Thomas murder – she even ran on exploring changes to the police department and it was all bullshit to placate you. She allegedly refused to even watch the Kelly Thomas video unless her buddy, Chief Danny Hughes, was there to guide her opinion. Imagine somebody saying that about the George Floyd video – that they wouldn’t watch it without the Commander in charge to guide them through it? That’s our Mayor.

If you care about police accountability. If you care about justice. If you care about any of the things the protesters claim to care about in this moment of national outrage – make your voice heard at the ballot box AND the in the streets.

Don’t forget. Don’t get complacent. Vote against anybody who puts the FPOA above we the people. Kick the Jennifer Fitzgeralds with their constant bootlicking to the curb. Be a part of the change that stops the platitudes.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Press Release – City of Fullerton – Notice of Data Breach

by 37 Comments on Press Release – City of Fullerton – Notice of Data Breach

FULLERTON, California (May 13, 2020) – The City of Fullerton (the “City”) announced today that we’re too dumb to use Dropbox and that led to the internet having access to things we’d rather you not know about – such a pervert cop filming up skirts and having child porn on his phone while stationed at Fullerton High School, a Lieutenant in Fullerton PD having not one, but two, Internal Affairs investigations against her that we dropped in order to bypass Public Records laws (SB1421 specifically), employees stealing things and us cocking up the investigation so badly that they got away with it, a City Employee overturning a Parks Vehicle while likely under the influence and on and on and on.

This isn’t new, in fact most of it came to light against our will almost a year ago so none of this is recent but we’re calling it a “recent event” that “may have impacted the security of personal information of some City residents and employees” because that sounds better than “our lawyers, who we refuse to fire and stand behind 100% are too stupid to use Dropbox and they totally screwed the pooch”.

The City became aware of posts on a public website, we all know which one but we won’t say because reasons, which contained confidential City information – see the list above. The city immediately began throwing money around trying to figure out who to blame and how we can get away with avoiding any responsibility. During the City’s investigation, it discovered that we are in fact too stupid to use Dropbox. We’re calling Dropbox “an internal data storage account” because it sounds better but yeah it was Dropbox. We gave out the website (CityofFullerton.com/outbox) on multiple occasions, to countless people, made it a legal public record and then sued some guys and a blog because they allegedly clicked links we put their names on in that Dropbox account – again that we told them about.

We gave them access and ignored that we had total control over who could see what and then our crack team of bureaucrats, lawyers and IT professionals somehow missed that we were too dumb to figure out Dropbox from about 2016 through June 21, 2019. The investigation further revealed the data included copies of emails and attachments that contained certain protected information. Information we never should have put online in an unsecured fashion but you don’t pay us the big bucks and for our lifetime pensions so we’ll be smart – you do it because we extort it out of you by taking away your toys (the library, roads, parks, etc) if you don’t give in to our mercenary demands. As a precaution, the entire contents of the Dropbox account were reviewed to identify the information that may have been accessible online for all the world to access. The City provided written notice to those individuals whose information was found on Dropbox. However, a small number of files we uploaded to Dropbox between 2016-2019 we totally deleted and therefore were not recovered and were unable to be reviewed and now we have no idea who’s information we negligently put online for the whole world to find. Whoopsie.

What Information Was Involved? On October 25, 2019, a day after suing the FFFF blog over our cockup, the City provided written notice to a small number of individuals whose sensitive information was found on Dropbox despite knowing about it for months. However, because we’re dumb and deleted things, a small number of files we uploaded to the non-password protected, public facing Dropbox account (at CityOfFullerton.com/outbox) were not able to be recovered and now the City is providing this additional notification. The personal information that we may have totally put on Dropbox in the files we absolutely deleted may include your name, Social Security number, driver’s license number, payment card information, medical or health information, and/or passport number. However, the City is unable to confirm the contents of these files or whether sensitive information was present in these files because, again, we’re dumb and don’t pay attention to what all we put on Dropbox despite us giving that account out willy-nilly. Hey, we waste your money and you don’t say anything so we figured you wouldn’t mind if we did the same with your data.

What Are We Doing? Suing people to cover up our incompetency mostly. The City takes the security of our employee and citizen information very seriously. So seriously that The City put that information on a non-password protected, public facing Dropbox account (CityofFullerton.com/outbox) in violation of HIPPA, Dropbox Terms of Service, Legal Best Practices, Common Sense, etc. In The City’s diligence The City immediately secured the Dropbox account at issue by deleting everything because passwords and access controls are too hard for our IT department and lawyers to figure out despite The City maybe needing those things for our pending lawsuit and to find out what we put online. The City reviewed existing security measures as a byproduct of our Dropbox screwup and finding essentially none paid $541,000+ to a digital security expert to do what our IT department should have been doing all along –  ensuring the security of The City’s network and keeping our idiot lawyers off of Dropbox.

The City is also providing information about our stupidity and about the steps individuals can take to help safeguard personal information – basically just don’t trust The City to be competent.

In addition, the City is offering to spend more of your tax dollars to offer identity monitoring services through Kroll because nobody in The City pays a price even when it costs you over half a million dollars and counting.

What You Can Do. The City encourages individuals to remain vigilant against incompetent city staff and council members who would compromise your information while putting you at risk of identity
theft and fraud through gross negligence.

Under CA law, individuals are entitled to vote incompetent asshats out of office every election cycle and we strongly recommend throwing circus ringleader Jennifer Fitzgerald out on her ass along with Go-Along-To-Get-Along rejects Ahmad Zahra, Jesus Silva and Jan Flory should Flory’s corrupt self decide to grace us with another council run.

For More Information The City also encourages individuals to read our other press releases where we pretend that we didn’t get slapped down by the Appellate Court and that we’re winning this ridiculous case that we filed against our own watchdog citizens to cover our asses.

Again, at this time, there is no evidence that any information has been misused but we want to drag a few guys through the mud and hope that our infinite resources (your tax dollars which we’ll be taking more of soon) are enough to scare them into submission so we don’t ever have to take responsibility for our own government incompetence. After all, would YOU keep voting for City Council members (Fitzgerald, Zahra, Silva, Flory) who stood by lawyers as dumb as mentioned above OR who let a City Manager attack citizens in the courts and press while taking home $242,931.63 in 2019? We think not.

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Posted onAhmad Zahra

The Cost of Suing Us

by 33 Comments on The Cost of Suing Us
Yes, that is the answer!

Fullerton just “separated from employment” 150+ non-union part-time staff. Why? Because despite years of Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald’s lies about a “Balanced Budget” and our mythical reserve fund – we had no plan for a rainy day.

During meetings, myself, David and others warned the City Council that a downturn was likely in the future and with CalPERS continually raising our pension costs we needed to be smarter financially.

Fitzy & Flory wanted none of that and spent like floozies in Vegas throwing every dollar we had at every uniform in sight with Silva, Chaffee and so on along for the ride.

Now here are we looking at a month of limited tax revenue and 150+ people lost their jobs with the city. 150+ positions aren’t being eliminated – no no no, they’ll tax us more to fill those again later and cry about not being to staff the libraries and parks to justify the new taxes/fees and whatever added costs to us they can cook up along the way. But 150+ people are now wondering how they’ll pay their bills.

But let me drive this home for you some more – the city is suing myself, David and this blog because we allegedly clicked some Dropbox links in an account they sent us and told the world about in PRRs. Remember, according to Kimberly Hall Barlow this isn’t about publishing or the 1st Amendment – this is about alleged theft and “hacking” because we allegedly clicked some Dropbox links.

In the process of investigating that alleged crime, the city found out that their network (which has fuckall to do with Dropbox) was incompetently setup and they hired an outside firm to fix it. This was the reason they claimed they waited to sue us for months on end – that they had to secure their network – which again has fuckall to do with Dropbox.

Glass Box Discussion

The firm they hired, Glass Box Technology, has a contract with the city for $60k/month not to exceed $500k.

Glass Box Contract

So far, according to the City Council approved Check Register, they’ve paid Glass Box $541,451.25 to date which is $41,451.25 over their “not to exceed” limit.

Glass Box Checks

That’s over half of a million dollars SO FAR because the City found out that they suck at running their own network as a BYPRODUCT of suing us which has nothing to do with what they allege we did. This was an unnecessary expense that has to come out of next year’s General Fund because it’s yet another major cockup for which nobody will be held accountable.

How many of those 150+ people wouldn’t need to be unemployed right now were it not for sheer incompetence in City Hall? Seems that $500k+ would have covered quite a few part timers.

Then we have the expense of our idiotic City Attorneys, Jones & Mayer. Since this nonsense started back in June with their Cease & Desist letters, the city has paid Jones & Mayer $891,074.49. We have no way to know how to split that up or what to attribute to the lawsuit against us because City Hall has a long history of lying about funding and hiding expenses in the wrong accounts. Just because something is coded to the Library, might not mean it has anything to do with the Library.

J&M Checks 2020

But if we assume that just 5% of their work product can be attributed to the lawsuit against us, and considering the reams of paper they keep filing with the courts we know their billable hours are stacking mile high, we can attribute approximately $44,553 to this stupid lawsuit. Seems to me that’s a few more part timers who could still be employed were it not for the malicious lawsuit being pursued by Fitzgerald, Flory, Silva and Zahra.

We don’t know how much the city has paid their other experts or consultants in their pursuit of the evil “hackers” who allegedly clicked Dropbox links – some with my name on them – but so far we know it’s pushing $500k+.

Where there’s smoke…

Remember this come election time & demand answers from these idiots on council who would rather spend your money, and it is your money, attacking us over their own stupidity than spend it providing the very services they’re elected to oversee in our city.

Shame on Fullerton. Shame on Mayor Fitzgerald. Shame on the City Council for always squandering your money pursuing their egos instead of your best interests. Sure, they’ll blame the need to “separate from employment” those 150+ people on this “global pandemic” – but that’s only because they constantly spend all of your money elsewhere while lying to you about our “balanced budget”.

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Posted onAbout Us

Why Keep Threatening Us?

by 6 Comments on Why Keep Threatening Us?

For every problem that isn’t a nail, there’s a moron ready to swing a hammer.

20 Days ago FFFF got another threatening letter from the City that said if we don’t stop reporting news and telling the public the truth about what’s actually happening in their town, apparently there will be consequences.

We told them to kick rocks.

What really strikes us as odd is how hard the city works to solve real problems v make work problems.

If they’re willing to go after local journalists connected to a blog that city employees routinely insist that no one reads, one can’t help but wonder what wrath the city brings down on real problems.

Can we assume that the city also takes things like life safety issues impacting the public, police brutality and sexual misconduct, wasted tax dollars, theft by employees, recklass or perhaps drunk driving by employees, or total disregard for budget discipline, public trust, and basic fairness as seriously as they take shutting down transparency?

Oh wait, we don’t need to assume anything as we know exactly what kind of resources the city spends on those problems. None.

We know because we broke and covered those stories.

Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe the City is tired of having a group of “chronic malcontents” embarrass them by telling the truth. (more…)

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Posted onChronic Failure

Enjoy Downtown While it Lasts

by 7 Comments on 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…)

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Posted onChronic Failure

Downtown Rules Apply or They Don’t

by 43 Comments on Downtown Rules Apply or They Don’t
welcome-to-fullerton

I’m in Downtown Fullerton as I type this post. Specifically I’m at an office space some friends and I are thinking about renting for our podcasts, the same office space I used for the live video on Flory’s appointment. I’m here because I wanted to reshoot that video owing to the technical and delivery problems of my first ham-handed efforts and I wanted to see how practical this space is for our purposes at night.

I knew the train schedules and checked the sound levels with a decibel meter for quality and started figuring out some of the technical things I wanted or needed to change. Then 8pm hit and I encountered something I hadn’t really planned around – live music emanating from across the transportation center.

Let’s get to brass tacks here; it was coming from the Slidebar – a favorite punching bag of commenters here on FFFF and some of the people I know around town. But this is a problem for me because generally I LIKE the Slidebar. I know Jeremy and he’s always been civil with me. I know Josh and he allowed me to take photos inside the bar back when I shot bands for a hobby. I have little desire to bother people I have no beef with personally and who have been cool with me historically.

SlidebarMotto

When I go after things I try to focus on issues and the people I think are causing the problems. I spill a lot of digital ink railing against Fitzgerald, Silva, now Zahra and so forth because I think they’re bad leaders and corrupt politicians – but I try to leave their personal businesses and family lives out of my posts, comments and claims as best I can because that’s not where my interests rest unless those things prove to be connected to some form of political corruption, grandstanding or malfeasance.

But tonight I got irritated. I got irritated because this city plays favorites and that favoritism, while common everywhere, shouldn’t exist from government and shouldn’t impinge on my ability to do my work in an office I want to rent. Further, the city lies about basic provable things because they think nobody will bother to call them out on their nonsense. I saw this when Fitzgerald ran all over Fullerton claiming our budget was balanced. I saw this when the city lied about Red Oak’s bonafides to convince the council to approve a zone change. I saw it and heard it again tonight.

(more…)

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Posted onAbout Us

Flory Wins Wheel of Candidates

by 13 Comments on Flory Wins Wheel of Candidates
Accountability? It was never on the agenda.

Well, that was predictable.

In fact, after breaking up the FFFF kitty last night, those betting $1 on Jan Flory only got $0.98 back. Everyone knew it was coming.

Why? Because Fullerton gonna Fullerton and the house always wins. There was never any real chance that anyone was going to do the right thing. Ahmad Zahra of 2018 has clearly been through the establishment sheep dip, emerging as the self-righteous lecturer Ahmad Zahra 2.0 of 2019.

You didn’t know what the NUFF forum was for you to learn about a candidate so you could come speak your piece during last night’s public comment period? Ahmad is offended!

You don’t care about Ahmad’s latest sob story justifying his total lack of conviction to do the right thing by the voter? Ahmad is offended!

You expected Ahmad to abide by his word and not vote for someone lobbying for a position that hadn’t even been announced? Ahmad is offended!

Well, we can see where this is going to go for the next four years. Maybe we’ll start keeping a list of reasons why Ahmad is exempt from being held accountable for his own actions and statements. Excuses seem to be his tool of choice.

As for Jesús Silva, Fullerton’s next liberal lion, he just sold out his wife and the rest of Fullerton’s liberal cabal by granting a third vote to continue enforcement of Chevron’s development agreement for West Coyote Hills. There’s a flip flop that would even make Doug Chaffee envious. Sorry Fullerton, the bulldozer is coming, all thanks to Jesús.

No surprises from Fullerton’s Queen-of-Mean Jennifer Fitzgerald. One has to wonder what all those whispers between her, Ahmad, Jesús, and City Manager Ken Domer were all about.

As the council begins to tackle the problems created by their predecessors, at least they’ll be able to look over to the left and ask Jan Flory directly, “Remind us again, why did you do that?”

We, the collective imbalance that is FFFF, look forward to hearing how Indivisible types attempt to exculpate themselves as they realize their progressive reformers are actually no different from the cronyistic corporatists they despise.

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Posted onAhmad Zahra

Will Ahmad Zahra Hold Firm?

by 22 Comments on Will Ahmad Zahra Hold Firm?

AhmadZahra

Back in December, in his first at-bat, Ahmad Zahra surprised me by speaking of the Constitution and transparency whilst simultaneously voting against FitzSilva in their attempt to appoint Jan Flory to Council. Zahra was on fire with gems such as:

“My decision is going to be contingent upon us making sure that the appointment process is fair and open and transparent. So until we can make that decision, I don’t see how we should take votes away from people.

“The question is, is there a fairer and open and more transparent process than voting itself? Can we come up with that? Can we come up with something better than what the Constitution come up with? That is my question for the council. I’m leaving my decision until I hear other council members.”

Tonight we get to find out if Zahra is a man of principle standing by his own talking points at the last meeting or if that was all simply a clever flex to show who has the real authority on this issue in an effort to get his preferred pick onto council.

For those new to the story here’s the gist as I understand it —

Jesus Silva wanted incumbency in 2022 and thus opted to run for the District 3 seat on council.

Council then chose to change the law ON ELECTION DAY in the case Silva beat Sebourn in order to limit the options for voters.

Silva took home the ring on election day and in winning he vacated his at-large seat which runs until 2020.

Then in December the dynamic duo of Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jesus Silva testily complained that they needed Ahmad to go along to get along in order for them to get what they wanted. Zahra didn’t go along which brings us to today.

Tonight we’ll watch as FitzSilva likely tries to lay it on thick and blame Ahmad for the cost of the election should he choose transparency and an election (as he did back in December). This is posturing bollocks but I’m wondering if he’ll stand firm. Both he and our residents need to know that the fault here lies partially with Silva for running, partially with council for changing the city ordinance, ON ELECTION DAY, to facilitate this choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, but really the fault lies with our City Attorney The Other Dick Jones™ for offering terrible advice and putting us in this situation in the first place. Zahra is blameless here on the issue of cost should he choose openness and transparency by way of a special election.

dick-jones

Prepare for the same shenanigans with FitzSilva promising a fictionally transparent process in this city which is allergic to the very premise of transparency. The same transparency which had Jan Flory meeting with at least 2 (if not 3) current council members and bringing a cabal of people to lobby for her to be appointed without the citizenry any the wiser. THAT type of so-called transparency should be rejected and here’s hoping that Councilman Zahra continues to impress the way he did during at his last at-bat.

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