How does Joe Felz manage the great city of Fullerton?
What is that supposed to be some sort of joke?
No, indeedy! The Fullerton JC news operation called The Hornet sat down with our now former Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz back in the halcyon days of October when things couldn’t have looked rosier for our A Number 1 bureaucrat. As you can imagine, the “story” was an almost useless saccharine glob.
However, a couple of really interesting statements did stumble from Felz’s possibly sober lips.
First there was this shiny pearl:
“‘…why don’t we focus on who we are.’ Felz said, stating the city needs to focus on things to be proud of such as the downtown area.”
Proud of the downtown area? Another joke? In business terms, downtown Fullerton is an abject failure – at least as far as the taxpayers are concerned, costing a million and a half more annually to police and clean up than it brings in. Maybe Felz was proud of the profit he helped provide for his pals, lawless bar owners like Jeremy Popoff who is still operating his business, Slidebar, without CUP, as required by the municipal code, almost three years after he postponed his own hearing.
And then this radiant gem:
“Felz has many new ideas for the future of Fullerton and he is highly optimistic about the years ahead.”
Well that happy future went up in smoke the early November morning Sober Joe jumped the Glenwood Avenue curb, ran over a tree, and tried to drive off. And it gives the lie to the sappy farewell notice read by our choked-up lobbyist-mayor, with its formulaic “I’m quitting to spend more time with my family” bullshit.
“Focus on your career, always try to be as broad as possible…”
Good advice for running into a tree.
try to be as broad as possible…
Pretty funny coming from a drone who knew nothing about the cops, nothing about finance, nothing about HR, nothing about public works and whose only talent appeared to be politicking behind the scenes for Doug Fitzflory while undermining the other two.
The story is making the rounds that Felz is meeting with department heads and various commission members to try to make himself look like an indispensable piece of manpower so as to wangle a consulting contract. Well, that’s ain’t gonna happen unless Jesus is awful stupid.
There is a school of thought in government that “generalists” can be interchangeable parts in the machine. That may be what Sad Joe is thinking here. It’s also Grade A BS and accounts for a lot of the woes suffered by local and County government. Felz’s own record demonstrates the fallacy.
Ha,ha. Go ahead kids and follow his footsteps!
Skid marks.
Felz is full of it. There were similar farmer markets in other SoCal towns before Fullerton’s. It sounds very cosmopolitan he imported the idea from London. What a bullshiter!
From 1943, San Francisco’s farmers market is the oldest farmers market of the modern type in California. Los Angeles FM dates from the 1930s. Several towns in Southern California started the modern FMs in the 1960s and 70s
Well, this link claims that the downtown farmer’s farket opened in 1991, and this was actually the SECOND famer’s market in Fullerton:
http://www.orangecoast.com/guide/shopping/fullerton-farmers-market-thursdays-4-to-830-p-m/
When was the first farmer’s market established? Regardless, Uncle Joe didn’t become city manager until 2011.
Okay, this says the one on Valencia opened more than 30 years ago:
http://www.orangecoast.com/guide/shopping/fullerton-farmers-market-wednesdays-9-a-m-to-1-p-m/
Rubber Stamp Joe might have as well sent his recorded tape to the Hornet kid and say, “just transcribe it to the paper combining the direct and indirect style”
I’ll tell ya’, this Joe Felz took Fullerton’s night lifestyle concept too literally and ended a bit carried away
“a bit carried away”
Home, by the FPD. Sappy got carried away to the Maintenance Department chipper.
Norby, is that you?
J ust O ff E uclid
Joe is that you?
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
City Council Members must consider adding bumper car rides to Fullerton’s Farmers Market honoring Felz tremendous legacy
I’m proud of all the douchebag bros in DTF. Gives the place real class!
That poor, dumb kid just regurgitated every nonsensical lie Felz told him without question. A young Lou Ponsi in the making!
So true!
There’s still hope!
Feltz sounds like he is so lost that he believes his own lies – scary. Maybe that’s why he drinks–to dim reality.
Dear FFFF & FFFF readers,
#1. I was assigned this article at the start of my semester, only a couple weeks in to writing my first article.
#2. I would love to write in a more interesting style, but this wasn’t an article for a blog, in a magazine, a feature, or in the opinion section of our paper. This is news style writing; nut graph/down to the facts. My article was also edited down for word count.
#3. I’m not dumb, although I am broke. Questioning the information is not my job, once again, this is a different format, and I instead did the justice of providing facts so that an opinion, as well as questions, could arise from readers like yourselves and publications like the FFFF blog.
#4. Everything that Felz told me was fact checked to the best of my abilities. Maybe Felz never went to a farmers market prior to his trip to Europe. I never went to one until i started going to school at FC.
#5. Felz was in fact sober, as well as kind enough to take time out of his day to give a poor kid an interview, and I’ve been around enough people in my life to know he wasn’t being smug or lieing. I can’t defend his murder of an innocent tree, the leniency given to a city official by the police department, or speak on his record in politics, but I can say he was a nice man, I thank him for the interview, and I wish him the best in the future.
#6. Thank you all for reading The Hornet, know that we read Friend’s For Fullerton’s Future’s blog, and care what Fullerton thinks about our coverage. I invite you to check out some of my other articles like the in depth Dino Skokos/Erubiel Herrera incident coverage, the Andy Dick “comment” story that I broke, and hope you like my future articles as well!
Best regards,
Frank John Tristan
The Hornet
I’m glad Felz was sober at the time of your interview.
He was in hangover mode
Felz’s sobriety is pure speculation on behalf of the author. Without a PAS device to know for sure, the safe assumption is that he is always impaired.
FJT,
Felz was “kind enough” because he expected, and got, a puff piece.
You are very much mistaken if you think writing “news style” (whatever you mean by that) equates to regurgitating stuff a self-interested person has to say about himself without question. A journalist has to be skeptical by nature when dealing with public figures. If he can also write in an entertaining and engaging way, so much the better.
Next time you interview a Fullerton City Manager (and you may get a chance in Fullerton very soon) be sure to ask him if his budget is getting “balanced” by a wholesale, 4-year raid on reserves.
I am sorry that you are broke but I fail to see the relevance.
Dear Sipowicz,
There was nothing (at the time) in this interview that I saw worth questioning, the article was a profile, the point was to get his backstory, what he’s done in his position, and what he has planned for the future. My skepticism laid in the questions I asked him. As an Anaheim resident, I wasn’t familiar at the time with Fullerton politics, and would surely have asked him “city budget” sort of questions had I been more up to date on the issues in your community. The only one I knew about was homelessness, which I pressed him about, as well as the FPD Homeless Liason Unit in my “Homeless In Fullerton, Where Are They Now?” article. http://hornet.fullcoll.edu/homeless-in-fullerton-where-are-they-now/
I agree that one should question their public officials, and I also dislike the style of writing that I did with this article. Nevertheless the fact remains that I was taught to remain objective in my news stories, I was a couple weeks fresh on the scene of writing my first story, and was instructed just to interview him to get his back-story. I also just noticed several existing errors in the article that need to be fixed.
While I dislike the harshness, I appreciate your honesty, and would just like you to know that I understand what would have made a more interesting article. I’m aiming to get out of pyramid style writing, objective reporting, and bare bones writing I was doing at first. If I could go back, I would have interviewed locals prior, researched more into what local opinion was about Felz, convinced my editors that that’s the better story, and then grilled him on the issue’s that local resident’s have with his work in the city. I’m also working on my writing, and was more focused on presenting information & mastering interviewing last semester.
Finally, the broke comment was in regards to Frank Duplane calling me a “poor, dumb” kid. I hope you give my future articles a shot, I have some good stories coming this semester, and I promise you that my writing will be far more better. In the words of my professor, “When you first start, you’re going to suck, it’s just a fact, but don’t worry about it, you’ll get better.”
” the article was a profile, the point was to get his backstory, what he’s done in his position, and what he has planned for the future.”
And you got nothing of substance. The “profile” was his story from his self-serving perspective. You didn’t need to even be present. What makes you think that this “style” of yours is objective? It is not. “Great city of Fullerton?” Did you think you were writing for the Chamber of Commerce newsletter? The fact is you interviewed a subject without doing your homework about him and how he might try to snow you.
You have learned the first lesson of journalism: don’t permit yourself to be used, either by what you pass along or by what you don’t. And be thankful, your lesson came cheap.
“I promise you that my writing will be far more better.”
No doubt about that.
I caught the mistake too. Where it says “far more better “, it should say “fart for better”. .
This blog should be named “Whining trolls of Fullerton.”
No, that name is reserved for some of our visitors.
So long as you’re annoyed we must be doing something right.
FTW. Trolls be trolls. Haters be Haters. It’s pretty distasteful to cut a student down to size.
Why is it “distasteful?” A student put his “work” out for public consumption. Good for him. Then he got schooled here and it didn’t cost him a plug nickle.
Next time he may try harder and may do better.