Item 18 on tomorrow’s ridiculously packed agenda are proposals to put a streets and infrastructure tax on the November ballot. One includes a 15 year sunset clause and the other has no sunset at all. The no sunset option in DOA, I’m sure. The tax increase is projected to produce $15,000,000 a year.
The 6.5% sales tax increase is supposed to be restricted to infrastructure, meaning it needs a supermajority (66.6%) of voters to pass. A general tax would only need 50%+1 to pass; but that option seems to have no chance of a majority to put it on the ballot, and is not being considered. Since the August 4th meeting is cancelled so the politicians can attend the cops’ feel-good National Night Out party, this is the last chance to get something on the November ballot.
The people of Fullerton have finally had enough of bad roads that only seem to get worse. But will 67% vote for this? I don’t know. People hate bad roads but a lot of them also hate taxes.
The ad hoc Budget Sustainability Committee did not recommend this infrastructure tax increase. Two members did support it, and only on the condition that the current budget requirement for infrastructure spending remain in place, thus avoiding the usual budget switcheroo. But the idea couldn’t get a third vote. Still, the existing requirements for infrastructure are not being deleted in this ordinance, so at least there’s that.
I am extremely skeptical of Fullerton’s bean counters to keep everything straight, especially given this years accounting fiascos. The language of the proposed ordinance requires an annual audit of the funds, but we know how this goes.
I see the potential for several departments – police, fire, parks stand out – as trying to lay claim for capital project billing using these new funds. The Engineering and Public Works personnel will be the biggest employee beneficiaries since they already generously charge their time to capital projects. Does their current subsidy by the General Fund remain? I sincerely doubt it.
On the happy side, the ordinance would require 75% of the new funds be applied to streets only. Water/sewer and airport expenditures are explicitly verboten using this money, likely because they don’t need it. Still, the plan is only as good as the accounting.
On Tuesday’s jam-packed agenda (more on that later) one item stands out: consideration of approving TEFRA bonds. It’s been continued from the June 16th meeting.
TEFRA stands for Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, and authorization permits a little-known statewide housing agency to issue bonds that will provide $180,000,000 for an unknown non-profit entity to buy and remodel two huge apartment complexes over by Cal State Fullerton. The projects will subsequently be partially restricted to low and medium income renters.
The staff report goes to great pains to explain that the City is in no way responsible for the debt incurred; see, it’s more of a procedural formality that the municipality puts its stamp of approval on the debt issuance.
Anyhow, questions were asked by the Council in June about the impact to property tax revenue, and as usual that inquiry was met with blather:
Since the County Assessor is the guy who grants tax-exempt status on 501(c) “affordable housing” the City itself has no part in that, and so staff explains that this action, per se, won’t lower tax revenue. But that’s a distinction without a difference, for clearly one purpose for investors in these acquisitions is to harvesting the benefit of lowered property tax. It’s gotta be in their development pro forma. The staff report says a little about possible lowered revenue, later on:
In other words two huge apartment projects will inevitably generate less of the property tax than they generate now, but still require all of the city services, from infrastructure to police and “fire fighters.”
And that’s not all, Friends. The units thus restricted will not count towards Fullerton Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) quota – the idiotic number coughed up behind closed doors by the unaccountable bunglers at the Southern California Association of Governments. Here’s how the staff report explains it.
Well, that’s a kick in the head. So we still need another 13,000 units, per the SCAG quota. I have no idea what the City’s “affordable housing goals”are and I don’t see a reference to a supporting document that substantiates any of this.
To me this is a lose-lose situation unless your mission in life is to support the Affordable Housing Industrial Complex by subsidizing a tax reduction. It isn’t just about providing “affordable” housing. It’s about taxpayers ultimately paying more for municipal services to satisfy some hazy “goal” somewhere.
Fullerton’s Observer boohoo brigade will no doubt rejoice at this endeavor because, ya know, a housing “crisis” requires public subsidy and taxes really will fix everything. And doing something, even if it makes no sense, is still doing good.
Congratulations, Fullerton. The infamous Trail to Nowhere, or as it is called in City Hall circles, the “UP Trail Phase II,” is now six months old.
None of its adherents inside of City Hall or in the hallowed and self-righteous pages of the Fullerton Observer will ever follow up to actually see if has been a successful expenditure of 2.5 million bucks. The bureaucrats who will be hard at work looking for their next boondoggle will never give it another thought; nor will the cowardly City Council that approved the waste, caving into a gaggle of local fools. It was all for la communidad and when top-down patronizing government is hard at work, money is no object.
But I will keep reminding FFFF.
Because I happen to drive down Highland Avenue and often Richman Avenue I get periodic glimpses into what all that money bought. And what I have seen is precisely what this blog predicted all along. It’s almost always empty. And that makes a lot of sense because it starts in the back of Independence Park and dies at Highland. It doesn’t even connect to Phase I – a deficiency so obvious that you would have thought someone on the City Council might have noticed. If they did they didn’t say a word in objection.
Obviously the community, the supposed beneficiary of this largesse doesn’t use it. Why would they?
In her grant application to the State of California, now retired Park employee Alice Loya bragged about connectivity. There isn’t any. She dreamed up 105,000 anticipated users annually. The users so far could probably be counted in the hundreds. The trail was going to be a miraculous incubator for redevelopment of the surrounding area. All lies. And a plankton colony could have seen it. But not the geniuses in City Hall. Or they didn’t care.
Even as we are being asked to make sacrifices because of their inability to run the City, we have yet another facility without the means to maintain it. Other parks were already suffering from neglect, and of course Hillcrest Park, what should be the crown jewel of Fullerton parks continues to be intentionally neglected through institutional apathy. Its bare hillsides are a testament to that neglect.
And the case of Hillcrest is ironic because many of the casual users are Latinos – just the sort of folks the Trail to Nowhere was meant to patronize. However, a sense of irony is not one of the qualities one associates with government agencies who talk a good talk, but in the end always opt for the park project that will give them something to do.
Last night the Fullerton City Council held a special meeting. They called it a budget workshop, but it sure turned into a lachrymose affair. The weepy speechifying seemed more than a little rehearsed.
The meeting itself was more or less a rehash of previous meetings. Of course it should have been scheduled for July 7th but that would have interfered with the “community” budget sessions that week which staff claimed had 30 attendees; the survey that went out elicited about 70 responses. 100 out of 150,000 people. They had to admit that statistically, the responses didn’t mean much.
In an almost miraculous turn of events, staff cut the earlier projected deficit all the way down to $3.8 million. How, you ask? By eliminated vacant positions and jockeying some funds around.
Staff presented three scenarios: A, B, and C, in least to most draconian order, all draconian, of course. Option C basically kept the reserve funds around $16,000,000 by not using them in the next three years. None of the options involved laying anybody off or negotiating pay cuts with the unions. Keep that in mind, because the weepy handwringing that followed would make you think personal catastrophes had occurred.
Department by department got up to sing the blues to a receptive council. Goddamn, you’d think we were in the Mississippi Delta. The upshot was that nary a single department head had the grit to proclaim they’d get it done no matter what. No, that would be bad form.
I learned a couple of interesting facts. A police corporal – a corporal, mind you – costs $300,000 per year; and an Associate Planner is currently subsidized by the General Fund to the tune of $70,000 a year. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the latter, the amount is shocking. It either means that Planning fees would not be sufficiently recovering costs, or that someone was projected to be costing the public an awful lot for general, non-billable time in City Hall.
I would be remiss indeed if I didn’t mention the good offices of consultant Grant Thornton, who, by means of a change order, presented a completely useless report whose “conclusions” were a summary of perfectly obvious statements. It was maddening to watch the consultant read off the Power Point slides, verbatim. I wonder how much that cost.
Public comments were highlighted by an extremely angry woman named Jody Vallejo, Chris Norby (who again touted the services of the Sheriff’s Department and the sale of surplus property), and a call in from the funny little boy-man Dominic Moonbeam
Won’t look you in the eye while you’re trashing him…
Then to the Council. Mayor Fred Jung read an odd and uncharacteristically long oration in which he took personal responsibility for the City’s budget situation and yet defended some of his more dubious votes and noted that Placentia’s privatizing their paramedics did them no good since they too, were having a budget crisis, a very strange and illogical statement. He offered that the unanticipated ICE intrusion into Fullerton was somehow responsible for some contribution to Fullerton’s financial woes, but gave nothing to support that claim. Overall, I couldn’t really figure out what in the world he was trying to communicate, although if I heard rightly he did seem to suggest at one point that a general sales tax was needed.
Shana Charles and Ahmad Zahra blathered on and on. I had to leave off to get a couple of frosty beverages. I did get back in time to watch “Dr.” Zahra compete with Jung to take responsibility for the situation, and that was pretty entertaining.
Jamie Valencia in happier times…
Fortunately, Jamie Valencia had little say other than to point out the relation between budget problems and municipal credit ratings; she emotionally and awkwardly read a prepared statement about the crisis, but reminded attendees that she’s only been around for a year and a half.
Why is this man smiling…
Nick Dunlap concluded the speechifying with a soliloquy that included the claim that somebody in the Sheriff Department confided to him that contracting with Fullerton for police services wouldn’t work and that the City would owe the Federal government an untold fortune if the Fullerton Airport were redeveloped. I think both these claims need to be substantiated.
As usual everybody sang the praises of “economic development,” the talismanic chant of those who are either extremely ignorant, extremely cynical, or extremely desperate. Just because it’s been an unproven bureaucratic activity in the past is no reason to doubt its efficacy in the future; it must be protected, even nurtured! No one said anything about proving that economic development even pays for itself. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Needless to say, everyone also sang the praises of “police and fire” the ruthless and untouchable combination of unions that makes or breaks candidates and whose member suck up 70% of the General Fund.
A Manfro All Seasons…
The three-hour weep-fest ended in the usual way a morass of confusion out of which the City Manager, Eddie Manfo is supposed to make a final agenda item that will lead to an approval of the budget, now two weeks late. He pleaded for some direction about how to come back but got none. Oh, well. Eddie’s services cost us at least $400,000, a year, even more than a police corporal, so he ought to be able figure out something plausible.
In the end Manfro asked if it would be okay if the budget decision were made in August. Nobody said no. Then they all stood up and went home.
There is something special about overweening political ambition. It gives off a distinct odor and that smell isn’t appealing. It affects people of all ages but is particularly redolent among the youthful and the elderly. Kids may be excused, somewhat, for giving olfactory offense, being callow and everything. In time they may even grow up to be employed members of society. But in the old the stink is unforgivable.
And so we come once again to the shallow, desperate and almost comical campaign by Paulette Marshall for the North Orange County Community College Board.
FFFF also knows this aged miscreant as the photobombing publicity hound who pops up in almost every picture taken in Fullerton. Her equally loathsome husband, Doug “Bud” Chaffee made her his “ambassador” to the County’s 4th District, a move concocted to keep getting her mug in civic group pictures.
Anyhow, Paulette has never let a moral code restrict her political ambition and she is at it again. Her campaign website features, among a litany of images, some where she is seen posing as a philanthropist sponsor of some kind.
See anything wrong?
Yep, Pilferin’ Paulette makes it appear that she is already on the NOCCCDBoard, not that she is a mere candidate. And I’ll bet the farm those sponsorships and her little self-congratulatory signs were paid by by her own political campaign.
If you think about it, this is a sort of theft, too – stealing the public trust, in a way.
The train of thought was slow but it sure was short…
I’m not going to pretend that the choices are good. Another candidate is the almost militantly stupid and inarticulate Jesus Quirk-Silva, whose political ambition to jump from his at-large incumbency, created the return of Jan Flory.
Not bored Board member Brown
Both of these awful choices seem to suggest that the NOCCCD incumbent, Jeffry Brown may be the best choice, given the options. He’s never stolen anything like Mrs. Chaffee, or skipped out on a teacher job to work for a politcal lobbyist like The Jesus.
A week or so ago the Fullerton City Council reviewed the solicitation for a new garbage hauling contract. Again. FFFF shared the last instalment of the drawn out saga relating how “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra went bonkers because two of the companies offered big upfront payments recouped by a higher CPI multiplier.
The meeting droned on and on and finally the Council went along with yet another temporization – cutting the number of eligible responders to three – CR&R, Republic, and Valley Vista. Republic was told to eliminate its upfront payment plan and revise its fee schedule. The process will now drag on until September, a move that will surely benefit Republic, the current hauler.
Noticeably absent from the final three was EDCO – the original preferred vendor of city staff. Why they were not given the same chance as Republic to delete the big cash offer and rejigger their numbers is unknown. What is known is that Republic, the company that came in dead last in the first round of staff analysis, moves ahead with several nice comments from some of Fullerton’s Left Guard who seem to be terrified of change.
CR&R, you may remember offered what looked like a $4 million gift for the City to pave a few potholes. But companies like this don’t work for free and surely they can lower their fees by getting rid of the Trojan Horse gift. That’s nothing but a hidden tax, right? Just better hidden than EDCO’s or Republic’s.
Valley Vista will surely never get more than three votes since they contributed to the Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform PAC that went after Fullerton Boohoo darling Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo in 2024. Zahra and Charles won’t vote for them because of this political involvement although they certainly wouldn’t mind had Valley Vista given money to the dope lobby’s Working Families for Jaramillo PAC. The Fullerton Observer Sisters like to remind their readers about the bad, bad folks at VV.
But Valley Vista doesn’t need four or five votes, only three.
The Council also decided to let its members talk to vendors directly, something that they had prohibited themselves from doing, apparently. Will the they share who they talked with, and what about? I wonder.
Anyway, let the death march continue. Sure it’s a big deal, but there’s no reason this shouldn’t have been locked up a long time ago.
Right now it looks like Ms. Charles, the sanctimonious and self-important gasbag representing District 3 on the Fullerton City Council has no competition for re-election this November.
I suppose this is a testament to the apathy of the electorate because there should be at least one person willing to challenge the otiose uber-leftist whose constant stream of self-righteous and ignorant bullshit almost demands an opponent.
A visit to the City Clerk’s webpage listing candidate committees shows no one except Charles in the Third District.
This doesn’t mean that a non-committee candidate isn’t running, or that a potential opponent isn’t waiting to file the forms necessary to raise funds like a serious contender. But time is almost up. Candidates will be able to “pull papers” to run in just a few weeks. If they haven’t announced yet, at this late date, it seems unlikely.
Why?
Charles has taken lots positions that would undoubtedly be unpopular among responsible, taxpaying citizens outside the Fullerton Boohoo echo chamber. Let’s put aside her flip-flops on issues like the downtown noise regulations and the issue of private publications on city property. Instead, let’s focus on issues that would be pretty damaging to Charles once voters learn about them. They involve wasting money, or trying to. A lot of it.
First is her steadfast support of handing over $200,000 of public funds to support illegal aliens harassed by ICE. You can feel sympathy for people snagged by the ICE goons without wanting to use public funds to pay for their groceries.
That can’t be good…
Then there is the embarrassing matter of the so-called boutique hotel, where the Council approved massive entitlements on a property and then “sold” it for peanuts to build a massive and harebrained project on Santa Fe Avenue. The worst part was deeding over the property to a couple of inveterate con men who, after many years, haven’t turned a shovel of dirt on the site and never will. Providentially, that approval was Shana Charles’ very first vote.
Green means green. One way or another…
How about the issue of her income from the marijuana lobby – gained via her husband’s effort to get Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo elected in the 2024 D4 election. Her tribe is always blathering about the evils of money in campaigns; Jaramillo got $60,000 of Washington DC lobbyist cash working for her and $4000 went right into the Charles family wallet. Would the residents of D3 like a dispensary on State College?
I don’t want to forget the disastrous Trail to Nowhere that cost $2.5 million and has virtually no use. FFFF predicted that over and over again, although it wasn’t hard for anybody to foresee. The last half dozen times I have driven down Richman at various hours, I have yet to see a single user. Charles was stupid enough to fall for all the bullshit peddled by staff; either that or she knew it was nonsense and didn’t care. Does it make a difference?
Spinning, spinning…
If there is a tax on the November ballot Charles will have to take a stand. Spinning won’t help. She won’t get her 13% general sales tax increase, but there could be two 6.5% special sales taxes to vote for, infrastructure and “public safety.” Opposing these would send a signal that she doesn’t care about fixing the budget deficit she helped create: just a couple years ago she bragged about hiring more people.
She has to run on the state of the City and that state isn’t good. She’s been there for four years with nothing to show for it except foolish positions and non-stop, rambling lectures.
Update: a well-informed reader pointed has out that 7/7/26 was removed from the calendar in December 2025 because staff determined it was too close to Independence Day.
I have no idea why it wasn’t so designated on the CC’s schedule found on the City website – until this afternoon.
This does beg the question as to why the meeting wasn’t rescheduled as an official hearing to make determinations regarding the budget and find out the status of the search for a new money-raising consultant. There seems to be almost no sense of urgency about the fact that the City still doesn’t have a budget for this fiscal year.
The Kennedy Sisters weed out comments and commenters on their blog that undermine their own partisan narratives. They have no problem, apparently, in letting stand crap that attacks the objects of their hatred. Fred Jung is accused of “unsavory” business practices, romantic infidelities? Really?
Let the lecture commence…
The following has been snipped to share the sort of “journalism” that takes place in the hallowed precincts of the Fullerton Observer:
AmyI think it’s clear what Jung stands for. Not through his inscrutable persona or his public statements, but from his actions on the dais: he stands for Jung, and Jung alone. He seeks power, connections, money. He seeks to climb the ladder politically and somewhat professionally. I believe he deliberately obscures his real job and income source because to do so would reveal more than he would like and invite scrutiny into what could be unsavory business practices. It is clear that he does not stand for the people and that his intentions are not for – and are often diametrically opposed to – the good of the people who elected him to power.
Matt Leslie My earlier reply to Amy’s comment above hasn’t been published, so I’ll try again. Amy, what evidence can you present to justify your belief that Fred Jung has engaged in possible “unsavory business practices?” I think this malicious online speculation about Mr. Jung’s private businesses reflects a certain frustration with the recent audit that found no fraud in the city’s budget on the part of Mayor Jung (or anyone else), despite Jung’s detractors displaying PAC sponsored signs and banners that baselessly suggested otherwise.
FK + TKI’m sure it didn’t help that he was dating Tammy Kim, an Itvine City Councilwoman who was charge with 11 felony counts. He was married the whole time. I agree with the other commenter that the article lacks real metrics, but I agree with the Author, Jung is in politics for Jung.
RobWhat a tired trope. Blaming Tammy Kim means you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re too lazy to make a real argument. It also lets him off the hook way too easily. If that were true, I suspect Jung would not have lost so badly. She still has formidable relationships with the Democratic Party and labor, and has helped campaigns across OC for years. Jung lost because of Jung. His campaign, his decisions, his record, his baggage.
Matt LeslieWow, now an accusation of personal improprieties from a completely anonymous commenter. Is this what the Observer now allows on its site?
I wonder if the this garbage is okay with the guard old and new, of Fullerton Boohoo, who believe the Fullerton Observer is actually an objective journalistic endeavor, but woi, in reality, will believe almost anything.
I decided to watch the afternoon Fullerton City Council session about hiring a new trash hauler, yesterday. When it came time for questions directed to staff I learned a few things.
First, I realized the extent to which Ahmad Zahra blames one individual – Tony Bushala – for every thing he, Zahra, doesn’t like. And it’s got to the point where anything attributable to Bushala is something he, Zahra, doesn’t like. Even when the attribution is based on his own baseless paranoia and suspicion and egomania. It’s embarrassing.
That’s a mighty fine thing you did, Anthony…
This accounts for his outbursts yesterday to staff and special council about the origins of the upfront payment to the City by a couple of RFP respondents, EDCO and Republic. As noted here, the idea was mentioned by Mr. Bushala several months ago at a Budget Sustainability Committee meeting and that was it. There is no demonstrable tie between that brief occurrence and any of the trash haulers, except in the febrile brain of the dodgy “doctor” from Damascus. Nada. It was never mention in the first round of RFP submissions.
When Zahra couldn’t get staff or the lawyers to agree with him and condemn the notion of a big initial payment he became agitated and began a completely unprofessional diatribe.
It was good stuff for the handful of his Fullerton Crazy claque in attendance who also faithfully believe any nonsense peddled by Zahra and who remain completely incurious about Zahra’s own string of malfeasances starting with immigration and marriage fraud to get into the country.
I am gratified to know that Zahra is a reader of this blog. It’s really too bad he can’t learn anything from it. He is not the least bit opposed to hidden taxes, per se; quite the contrary. However what he and his pals really love is an officially adopted tax, out in the open, when the community proves it is worthy of the higher paid city government that the new revenue buys.
Of course it didn’t seem to occur to Zahra that his admission about the FFFF post undermined his conspiracy theory that Bushala was somehow, somewhere tied to the new proposals by EDCO and Republic.
I observe that a third proposal, by CR&R offered four million bucks, upfront for street repair. This appeared to be seen as some sort of a philanthropic gift. It was seen as such by Councilman Nicholas Dunlap. This is naiveté or dumbness. Nobody works for free, and the cost of that four mil is obviously wrapped up in CR&Rs rate structure that would obviously be lower without their apparent upfront largesse.
The City’s special council mentioned that a lawsuit described as a precedent by opponents of the upfront payment idea was not really precedent since the matter was returned to a lower appeals court where the matter was settled without adjudication. According to this chap an upfront deal repayment would have to be legally justified based on the value of the franchise and that would be his job. I’m confused by this since the proposals by EDCO and Republic do not involve in-lieu franchise fees at all, but rather describe one-time monetary payments, exclusive of the in-lieu fee. This needs clarification.
