Friends For Fullerton's Future – FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County

June 22, 2026June 22, 2026A Manfro All Seasons

The Dog Ate My Homework

Fullerton is supposed to have its budgets wrapped up by the end of June. That’s when fiscal years end and new ones begin. It’s in the Municipal Code.

But not this year. So a resolution was needed to keep the gears of government grinding in Fullerton at current levels so that “essential services” be maintained. At the June 16th meeting the City Council passed the appropriate resolution authorizing the continuation of the process into July. Here’s the casual explanation of what’s going on::

“Staff continues to evaluate revenue projections, expenditure estimates including cost containment and deficit reduction strategies, capital improvement requirements, reserve levels, organizational needs and other fiscal considerations as part of the FY 2026-27 budget development process.”

Permit me to translate the double talk: “a complete absence of leadership has stalled the process and nobody in City Hall has the remotest idea how to deal with the massive, impending budget shortfall except by taxation.”

We have seen over the past year the revitalization of the footling Budget Sustainability Committee that accomplished exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. Well, not quite nothing, because its members reflected the positions of those that appointed them. Dunlap’s appointee voted against all tax proposals offered up. Jung and Valencia’s appointees supported a half-cent special infrastructure tax, but not a general sales tax. Zahra and Charles’ appointees rejected a special sales tax and pushed for the one cent general sales tax.

One committee member suggested privatizing the Water Utility; another suggested borrowing from the deep pockets of the new (or old) waste hauler. Another idea was creating a business district to pay for the Downtown Fullerton deficit. Innovative concepts for a City on the edge of insolvency that got no traction. T he committee how disastrous budget cuts would be to the public, especially to the hallowed halls of “public safety” that sucks up the lion’s share of the budget. Service levels, donchaknow.

I don’t recall anybody discussing mandatory salary reductions. Maybe I missed it.

Which leaves the City with no viable tax path forward even getting one on the November ballot. Other revenue generating ideas went nowhere, including selling off real estate, particularly that where Water Fund activities are going on. Other ideas, such as selling the boutique hotel site aren’t practical because Council and staff and City Attorney have led to humiliation and fraud on the property and has seen it tied up in dispute.

Even as Fullerton’s “leaders” fiddled away their time, new information about huge accounting errors revealed the situation was even more dire than previously imagined.

It would be dereliction not to remind Friends that our illustrious City Council actually agreed to hire a bunch of ambulance drivers on credit and a dozen new “firefighters” at the behest of the their union even as the budget crisis loomed on the near horizon.

June 19, 2026June 19, 2026A Step in the Right Direction

Wilshire Avenue Hosts Party

by Mr. Peabody43 Comments

Yesterday the site of the former infamous “Walk on Wilshire” was home to a big party. The street was closed and lots of people set up chairs to watch World Cup soccer on a screen attached to a truck. A Friend sent over some images.

I don’t know anything about this get together – such as who organized it, etc. But one thing I do know is that it proved Wilshire can be closed for special events and then reopened.

This is what many people were saying all along as Fullerton’s Boohoo idiot brigade and the Observer nitwits clamored for permanent closure as an F-U to automobile traffic, and of course to residents and businesses in the 100 block of West Wilshire. Fortunately a modicum of intelligence prevailed and the wingnuts Zahra and Charles couldn’t get three votes to keep the street closed.

Put the bollards up, take the bollards down. So simple. So cheap, and so damned commonsensical. And of course nobody ever said that individual “parklets” couldn’t be utilized either, except that by the time City staff was on it as make-work, the clusterfuck naturally occurred.

So yesterday a few people were no doubt temporarily inconvenienced – instead of a lot more people being inconvenienced, and worse, all the time.

June 17, 2026June 21, 2026Behind Closed Doors

Grant Thornton Reports

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy26 Comments

A couple months ago the City of Fullerton hired Grant Thornton to investigate a handful of financial transactions that resulted in an vast overstatement of the city’s General Fund.

Last night they reported on Task 1: investigating the awkward General Fund balance fuck up.

As expected was the conclusion that no nefarious intent was involved. Just some good old fashioned negligence and/or incompetence (these were not used by Grant Thornton who was completely diplomatic).

But all you had to do was read between the lines and the conclusions were, and are, damning.

According to the consultants these few transactions were the only thing they looked into; they were not hired to perform a full forensic audit. Well, okay. But the conclusions that they drew, and that informed their recommendations should have been perceived as a serious indictment of how the City’s finances operate, were accepted by a clueless city council without a whimper.

One transaction alone, the $2.9 million from redevelopment, should have sufficed to alarm all involved. The funds were moved without a concomitant debit to at least a temporary holding account – a basic principle of accounting called double entry book keeping, a fundamental concept of Accounting 101. It’s only been around for 600 years.

The big recommendation was to hire a competent Chief Financial Officer – a CPA knowledgeable in government accounting. There’s another $300,000 per annum. It seems like the budget and reporting reforms recommended by our consultant may not be able to be applied to the upcoming budget due to lack of time, which just seems so typical of Fullerton Futility.

The little that Grant Thornton did delve into suggests a fundamental failure of practices and procedures that is the result of years, if not decades of organization entropy because of lack of managerial leadership. When we consider the completely unqualified City Managers like Chris Myers, Joe Felz, Ken Domer, and Eric Levitt – appointed for reasons of political maneuvering or convenience – things start to make more sense. Combine that with the fiscal and budget responsibilities being rolled up to Administration Directors whose professional accounting abilities were (and are) dubious, you get a process running on inertia.

Naturally, nobody at the meeting had the courage to say any of that, although the Grant Thornton folks sure must have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how not to say it.

Grant Thornton has decided that someone else should perform Task 2 – the generation of revenue to bail the City out of its fiscal embarrassment. They say it will save the City money to hire somebody else with a better “wheelhouse” to perform this task, a generosity foolishly lauded by one councilmember, but that begs the question of why Grant Thornton was hired to perform the task in the first place, a question whose answer will not be forthcoming.

My guess is that GT doesn’t want to have anything to do with talking about new taxes and there’s an end to it.

June 17, 2026About Us

Say What, Observers, Part 2

by The Fullerton Harpoon7 Comments

The other day I wrote a post wondering why the Fullerton Observer was advertising an upcoming issue that had already been decided by the Fullerton City Council on May 5th, to wit: denying an appeal for a condo project on the northwest corner of Harbor and Hermosa, previously rejected by the Planning Commission. An alert Friend pointed out that the issue had been forecast for 6/16/26 on the 6/2/26 agenda.

Hmm. It was. But the Observer Sisters said nothing about what that item said.

Here’s all that the forecast said: RESOLUTIONS TO DENY APPEAL FOR 111 WEST HERMOSA DRIVE. In other words, Silksia Kennedy passed along information not advertised by the City, by iimplying that the appeal was ongoing. I figured at first she got her information from either “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles, the two boobs who voted to approve the appeal. Now I’m pretty sure she did.

Anyway, the item is returning for approval of a Resolution that will substantiate the denial by the Council majority. Our crack City Attorney has determined that an official Resolution stating necessary findings is required by State housing law, which seems pretty unusual to me, but whatever.

But those of us who have watched City staff manipulate councils over the years know well that an issue is never dead so long as the bureaucrats in City Hall are attached to it. In this case, Lo and Behold, another option is being presented, too: a Resolution approving the appeal! You read that aright. Maybe Siaska Kennedy was right after all, and the item is ongoing.

It seems that the developer, City Ventures, that wants to cram 32 units on little more than an acre, contacted the City on 5/19/26 with a last ditch proposal to do a traffic study to demonstrate the safety of their project in exchange for approval. Of course, the appeal approval Resolution is filled with all sorts of scary “facts” and findings that are meant to undermine the Planning Commission’s denial, and even the Council’s previous decision which should have been decisive. That should have been that.

The approval resolutions seem like a laundry list of issues presented to the developer on a silver platter to be used against the City. Jones and Mayer hard at work.

This is government by bureaucracy and I can only hope the Mayor wasn’t paying attention when this agenda and staff report were created.

And now of course all the usual monkeys will tumble out of the branches, orchestrated by Charles and Zahra and tender Elijah who thinks somebody owes him a house. Getting a job would do more for him.

What’s ironic about Fullerton Boohoo’s attachment to this project is that it only dedicates 5 “affordable units, and a mere 32 units overall. A tiny fraction of the 13,000 new units Fullerton Boohoo has bought into.

I hope the neighbors will show up for the hearing to defend the denial Resolution, and I hope the commonsense City Council members, if they say anything at all, have the courage to defend their previous position, although given past reversals I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

June 14, 2026June 14, 2026About Us

Boutique Hotel Remains in Limbo; But Johnny and Larry Have Been Busy

by Mr. Peabody23 Comments

Warning: Conceptual only, not to be taken seriously!

The City of Fullerton’s foray into boutique hostelry remains a big mystery to the public, partly because the public doesn’t know much, if anything about it; but mostly because the City staff doesn’t know what to do with their boondoggle and the people who voted for it – business experts Shana Charles and “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra certainly aren’t talking. Come to think of it, neither are the two councilmembers who voted against it – Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap.

Zahra’s Fullerton Transparency claque and the Fullerton Sisters are silent as the proverbial tomb.

The facts of this disaster hardly require another distasteful regurgitation, so I won’t do it, except to remind Friends that the City deeded over part of the Transportation Center parking facility to TA/Westpark for a pittance, given that they also change the entitlements making it worth 10 times what they sold it for. TA Partners is Johnny Lu and Larry Liu a couple of Chinese con men who had already pleaded guilty to fraud in LA County and who were in the process of going belly up on a huge loan in Irvine.

You may remember that the original grant deed that was recorded by Johnny and Larry was different than the one they recorded later, and the property description in the second recorded deed fraudulently includes the east end of the Depot loading dock now under leasehold by the Bushala Brothers, Inc., whose clock is ticking on their agreement. What a fiasco.

And it may be getting worse. That seems hard to imagine since the property was handed over three and a half years ago and nothing has happened. The hotel and attached mega apartment is supposed to be complete by October 21, 2026. My recollection is that the hotel and the attached mega apartment was supposed to be done only a few months from now. How many legally required milestones have been missed remains a part of the Big Sleep.

Meanwhile Johnny and Larry are said to have taken out a loan against their Fullerton real estate. I guess someone was willing to bet on the come, or just as likely, wasn’t – ahem – fully informed. Which deed was used to describe the lender’s collateral? Must have been the most recent one that includes the loading dock.

If some new loan fraud took place we can add that to the legal entanglements between TA Partners and the family of the original brainstormer, Craig Hostert, now unfortunately deceased. The agreement with the City should have excluded TA from creating debt on the property with permission from the City. But Fullerton, being Fullerton.

This comical boondoggle is now well over 7 years old and still there are no signs of official communication about the state of this mess, let alone resolution. Is staff trying to find a replacement to keep the embarrassment alive and save face for the disaster? Who knows?

June 12, 2026June 16, 2026About Us

The Steven Sherry Experience

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy48 Comments

Fullerton Boohoo comes in all shapes and sizes, but its members share one thing in common: a desperate drive to support Democrat Party candidates. Fullerton Forward, the brain child of someone called Steven Sherry is no exception. “Building a Better Future for All Fullertonians” is Sherry’s slogan #1. Slogan #2 is about “values”:

But you can forget the high-minded rhetoric. Fullerton Forward is really about helping the sort of candidates who pretend to profess this credo – brain-dead Democrats – the tax ’em then help ’em out via government ilk. These were the same sort of hypocrites who cooked up all the bullshit pretexts to keep Jesus Quirk-Silva on the City Council a few years back.

We met Fullerton Forward a few weeks ago as Sherry orchestrated a comical People’s Council meeting with limited pizza. The Fullerton Observer wouldn’t say who was behind the get together that attracted the cream of Fullerton Crazy’s crop, and that appointed immigration fraud “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra as the People’s Mayor.

According to the Fullerton Forward website, an individual named Linda Gardner is on the group’s 3 person “advisory council” whatever that title may mean. Here’s her bio:

Linda “…has been active in local and state politics for many years, serving as President of Democrats of North Orange County for six years and continuing to be an active member. Linda has actively worked on campaigns for California Governor, Senate and Assembly as well as Fullerton City Council and major propositions and recalls.

Linda is currently a Delegate for the California Democratic Party. She is passionate about positive change for the future of Fullerton.”

Sherry a former Democrat lobbyist, boasts about himself:

For over a decade, he has also worked in political campaigns, founding his own consulting firm, NewWave Strategies, in 2020. Through his firm, Steven has raised millions for clients nationwide and built highly effective, resourceful advertising campaigns.

Most of this is undoubtedly made up, and after you finish this post you may think the same thing.

This guy looks an awful lot like the under-employed Andre Charles, husband of the insufferable hot air bag Shana whose employment history is sketchy, at best.

Anyhow, Fullerton Forward has finally submitted the necessary Form 460 required of political action committees after the June primary. This document is instructive for lots of reasons.

First, we can see several of Fullerton’s cyphers who contributed – like the failed Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo, who sued the City so she could get elected; and our old friend, the pathetic election fraud participant, Diane Vena, who endorsed Jaramillo then signed the nominating papers of the phony candidate/confessed perjurer Scott Markowitz. We see you angry liitle eye doctor Anjali Tapadia; and you too, developer shake down artist Elizabeth Hansberg; Aha, over there, indignant front parlor antique, Karen Lloreda, recalled from the Dana Point City Council, and come to Fullerton to roost in the municipal rafters.

Sherry raised almost $17K, which looks okay. But wait. There are only two main contributors:

As we will see, one is frequent Council irritant Helen Higgins, and the other is some dude named Joel Maus, which means “mouse” in English. I have no idea what his motivation is. Maybe he’ll drop by to tell us. He’s the $5K “small business” moneybags.

Like Andre Charles, Mr. Sherry seems to believe that personally doing well by doing good is his life’s path. How’s that? you ask.

Because according to the Form 460 Schedule E, Sherry paid himself almost $6000 for the campaign he ran against Fred Jung in the primary, a campaign that only lasted a couple months. I won’t even share the percentages of Sherry’s cost versus the totals he spent and raised, because the Form 460 Schedule E totals don’t add up to the total expenditures listed on the Form 460 top summary.

The best part of Sherry’s activities, with his name almost obscured, was this remarkable payment he made to himself: $4560.80 for “fundraising.” WTF?

I love the amount this honest and transparent political action committee paid to scofflaw Mario Marovic for holding their fundraiser at “Madero 1899,” even as his fake Irish pub across the street still illegally squats on the Commonwealth sidewalk. Did the dummy Sherry list the cost of the Big Fundraising Party twice, somehow? If so, the numbers still wouldn’t add up to the summary page, so it hardly matters.

Naturally, Sherry paid his tribute to the Democrat Party of OC – $500 on April 27th – confirming the purely partisan nature of his new plaything.

By the way, I’m informed that Sherry’s self-serve creation is also now the object of an FPPC complaint, dealing with illegal campaign sign disclosure rules.

Finally, we are we really to believe somebody who spent a lot to raise a little, and who, as treasurer and “Executive Director” of a PAC can’t seem to add, has “raised millions for nationwide clients?” Yeah, sure, Steve, whatever you say.

Almost half the money raised came from only two donors. If I were on that “Advisory Council” I’d be asking some serious questions of Mr. Sherry. Of course that won’t happen.

June 11, 2026June 11, 2026Ahmad Zahra

Say What, Observers?

by The Fullerton Harpoon12 Comments

REVISED 9:18AM

A week ago the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters passed along a confused post about the City Council reviewing an appeal of a Planning Commission denial of the 32 unit project at Hermosa and Harbor, such appeal occurring on June 16th.

Except that the appeal hearing already took place back on May 5th.

It’s not unlike the Fullerton Observer “amateurs” to post stupid, befuddled, or erroneous stuff, but this is perplexing even to Observer observers.

It looks like an old post has been carelessly updated, but why? My first thought was did somebody like Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles want this to come back – maybe because it wasn’t officially “tabled” as an issue? This has happened before. The agenda for the June 16th meeting hasn’t been published yet, so it seems possible that somebody alerted the Kennedy Sisters that this was returning for some reason. Our first sharp-eyed commenter below point out that the issue was forecast in the 6/2/26 agenda for the next meeting to pass a resolution defending the appeal. Why? I don’t know other than this is a due diligence exercise. Maybe this is where the Sisters got the idea of a rolling issue.

It looks like mostly just another Observer gagglefuck – a garbled post carelessly published by the Sisters. Sadly, Fullerton Boohoo/Fullerton Self-righteous will no doubt exercise another “we need housing” circus to embarrass the Council majority and to take a shot at the hated NIMBYies in north Fullerton.

June 2, 2026Boohooism

ABC

by The Fullerton Harpoon56 Comments

Anyone But Connor. Connor Traut, that is, the nebbish, desperate political carpetbagger, hack and descendant/acolyte of the corrupt Anaheim Cabal gang.

His mentor was the unspeakable Jordan Brandman, another young political climber who never held a job in his life that wasn’t handed to him.

Here’s the thing: vote for Jung, Espinosa or Shaw, if you vote at all. North Orange County has the ability today to be rid of the Connor Traut Experience once and for all. If by some chance this “establishment” Democrat gets elected we won’t be rid of his incessant political adventures for another 40 years as he bobs back and forth between Sacramento and the County Hall of Administration – making sure there is no government accountability every slimy step of the way.

Here’s a thought, Connor: get out of politics, get a real job that you earned, if you can, and support your family making a contribution to society. Don’t end up like your mentor, Jordan Brandman.

May 30, 2026Ahmad Zahra

Queen For A Day

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy7 Comments

Back in the 1950s there was a TV show called “Queen for a Day.” Typical American women got to compete for the stupid title and probably won some housewife-drudgery prize like a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner.

“Dr.” Ahmad Zahra got a similarly useless tile the other day, when a dozen Council irritants selected him as “The People’s Mayor.” Except that Zahra didn’t even get a useful home appliance. Instead he got a Fullerton Crazy diploma in a plastic frame.

May 29, 2026May 29, 2026A Step in the Right Direction

Traut Hit

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy9 Comments

An anonymous Friend sent in the image below from a mailer hitting the Gomer Pyle look-alike Mayor of Buena Park, Connor Traut.

It seems to have been promulgated by a PAC, but that’s all I got. Is this in support of Tim Shaw of La Habra, or to help Fred Jung? Or was it just sent out by somebody that really dislikes the desperate for office carpetbagger, Traut?

I’m sharing this hoping someone can fill in the details.