Fullerton’s illustrious ad hoc Budget Sustainability Committee was treated to a marathon “we’re cut to the bone” presentation by the City’s department heads last Tuesday night.
One of the interesting concepts for revenue enhancement, albeit one-time, came from our Director of Public Works Stephen Bise.
It seems that over time, unrefunded “engineering” fees from City permit applicants adds up. Currently, the City has about $700,000 in such fees sitting idly in a Public Works account. According to Bise some of the fees were collected way back in the 1990s. The City Council would have to put its seal of approval on the deal and a notice to the rightful owners of this money would have to be made.
Similarly, funds gathered from contractor bonds and not claimed piles up, too. Bise reckons that ampount is $145,000. Presumably the same process for keeping that dough would be deployed.
This situation begs the obvious question: what responsibility does the City have to notify its customers that they have positive balances; or better yet, why can’t the Public Works Department simply write checks and return the money to its rightful owners before it piles up? There seems to be an unwritten rule that the money belongs in City funds (gathering interest at least) until such time, if any, that the owners request reimbursement. It really is a form of indirect “taking.” These individual amounts may be small, but as Director Bise indicated, are substantial in aggregate.
Apparently Fullerton made a grab of these bond funds a few years ago that had accumulated up to 2016. That amounted to $800,000. The next decade’s worth is now on the table, apparently. Can the Council resist seizing this cash? I wouldn’t bet against it.
As to the process of notification I admit my ignorance. Are such notifications made to the real owners or their heirs and assigns? I wonder. It would be so much easier to put a public notice in a “newspaper of record” where virtually nobody would ever see it; and then put it on a Council Agenda, posted 72 hours before the meeting where even fewer people would see it.
This blog has introduced Mr. Derek Smith to our friends. He is the appointee of “Doctor” Ahmad Zahra to the so-called Budget Sustainability Committee. His qualifications? Well, none are apparent. But we do know that Smith is (or was) the political lobbyist for the union that organizes cannabis store employees.
We already knew that Smith’s union was bankrolling a PAC for the benefit of Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo’s scampaign in 2024 to the tune of $60,000, $4000 of which went to The Councilwoman Shana Charles Self-improvement Fund.
And now thanks to detailed reporting by Mr. Duane J. Roberts, a true citizen journalist, we know that the union in question, UFCW Local 324, was up to it’s neck in schemes to bring legal cannabis to Anaheim. Roberts’ post is a must-read, for it details the close alliance between Anaheim’s crooked cabal and the union. For several years Smith and his union worked closely with disgraced Anaheim Chamber of Commerce head Todd Ament, Anaheim fixer Jeff Flint, and the Mayor, Harry Sidhu.
For the cabal the dope incentive was money, and lots of it. Money that would go to the cabal leaders, the Chamber of Commerce, and campaign funds of the later-convicted Mayor. For Derek Smith’s union, the promise of a Labor Peace Agreement (LPA) that would eventually cover even part-time workers was the goal.
First this association of strange bedfellows tried to get the City Council to go along. Then they began the process to put the issue on the ballot, with proposals written by the cabal, and then by the lobbyist for the Long Beach dope cartel; they were submitted by a UFCW Local 324 employee, and then a local realtor and insurance salesman, Belal Dalati, respectively. Both were eventually retracted, but not without threats, according to Roberts.
Left unreported by Roberts was the role of Melahat Rafiei, the acknowledged queen bee of OC dope lobbying, and a player deeply involved with Anaheim’s cabal. She later went to jail after she was busted by the FBI for wire fraud; Harry Sidhu did a prison stint, too for destroying evidence; Todd Ament pleaded guilty to fraud and his buddy Jeff Flint left town – for a while. Nice people, right?
While none of the Anaheim MJ activities were illegal, at least as far as can be discerned, the whole episode gives off a real bad smell; and in the middle of it was Derek Smith’s union.
Anybody who thinks Ahmad Zahra was ignorant of what was going on in Anaheim and with Rafiei (whom he recommended to at least one Fullerton businessman as a necessary contact) is pretty credulous. And his appointment of Derek Smith to the budget committee comes into sharper focus.
The fact that the self-righteous clamorers who have decried the appointment of Tony Bushala to this committee have diligently ignored the appointment of Smith is telling. Bushala’s political involvement is a disqualification; Smith’s political history is assiduously ignored – just like the Fullerton Observer Sisters relentlessly ignored the Scott Markowitz conspiracy and the massive contribution by Derek Smith’s union to a pro-Jaramillo political action committee.
Both Zahra and Charles are beholden to the dope lobby, but they still need another vote to revive the 2020 marijuana ordinance approved by Jan Flory, Jesus Quirk-Silva, and Ahmad Zahra. They won’t get it this year.
The Fullerton Boohoo claque has made a big deal about how Tony Bushala is unfit to be on the ad hoc Budget Sustainability Committee. His disqualification? He is involved in politics. He is a “rent seeker” in the words of Tender Young Elijah Manisserro, who remarkably is not ashamed at being a dedicated Marxist in the 21st Century. Bushala has a conflict of interest, these people keep bleating.
Tony’s real offense is that he has money and is willing to spend it to keep aggressive imbeciles like Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo from getting into office; and for that he has gained the animus of the Damascus Dodger, Ahmad Zahra and his small collection of sycophants.
But Mr. Bushala is not the point of this post. Rather it is another member of the Committee, one Derek Smith.
Mr. Smith is Ahmad Zahra’s personal appointee to the group, and has a lot of interest in Fullerton’s budget. Why? Because he is the political lobbyist for the local union that represents marijuana dispensary employees. He is part of a coalition that has been trying to get these places legalized in Fullerton for years. Their point man is Ahmad Zahra who doesn’t seem to see a contradiction between dope use and his alleged Muslim convictions.
In the the 2024 District 4 election Smith’s union funded a political action committee dedicated to electing Cannabis Kitty. He funded it to the tune of $60,000 which included a $4,000 payment to Andre Charles, husband of councilmember Shana Charles. How come? To elect the pro-cannabis candidate who would re-instate the old dope law repealed in 2021.
That’s a lot of political activity, activity that has received zero scrutiny by the Fullerton Observer Sisters, Sharon and Sickia. Come to think of it, the delicate rose petal Elijah Manissero has never mentioned it either. How’s that for hypocritical “transparency?”
Moreover, Brother Smith is not an accountant, or a business owner, or a entrepreneur. Instead, he is a dedicated union functionary, virtually the last person I would want on a municipal budget sustainability committee. The apex of Smith’s business experience has been blowing through $60,000 of his members’ dues on Jaramillo. Did he know about the fraudulent Scott Markowitz campaign? I wonder.
Applying the rhetoric and logic of Fullerton’s boohoos would immediately disqualify Derek Smith from the Budget Sustainability Committee. Will anybody apply it? I wonder.
In the meantime Ahmad Zahra the eager messiah of marijuana in Fullerton has once again raised the topic. The issue isn’t dead as far as the dope lobby is concerned.
A couple months ago FFFF revealed the District 5 candidacy of one Jozef Maldonado. I didn’t know anything about the guy except that he had stood up at a council meeting to attack Mayor Fred Jung. That was telling and now the evidence is in.
Maldonado has a campaign website wherein he touts his vast, two-year experience on the Parks commission and shares how he championed the Trail to Nowhere and the useless UP Park projects – an aggregate waste of three million dollars of public money. He includes this unintentionally hilarious brag about his alleged contribution to the UP Park:
“And when conflict arose over a proposed pickleball court conversion, he brought both sides to the table and turned tension into trust.”
Wow! What an accomplishment. Tension to trust. Well, the pickleball courts are there so somebody lost.
Anyway, what’s really revealing is Jozef’s slate of endorsers, a veritable Who’s Who of Fullerton Boohoo and Fullerton Angry.
Ahmad Zahra (unemployed immigrant fraud)
Shana Charles (and her unemployed husband, Andre)
Ruthi Handcheck
Aaruni Thakur (friend of Scott Andre Charles and Scott Markowitz, some say)
Angry Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo
Angry Eye Doctor Anjali Tapadila
Steven Sherry (who starts every sentence with “Member of the Transportation Commission.”)
Soon we will probably see Jan Flory, Karen Lloreda and Diane Vena added to the list and hosannas from the Kennedy Sisters and the Fullerton Observer endorsement committee.
I once speculated that this guy could be another Democrat Party plant – like Tony Castro meant to drain votes from Oscar Valadez; and Scott Markowitz, there to take gringo votes from Linda Whitaker; in both cases to benefit the favored Dem Central candidate. This is obviously not the case. But Maldonado’s position in the community seems very thin; and Valadez has both a long-time business and a family with deep roots in D5.
We do learn that Jozef will be marrying his fiancé Ryan at the Hunt Library in November, after the rigors of the campaign, I guess. The point of sharing that information escapes me, other than to reveal he is gay without branding himself by it, like his endorser Ahmad Zahra.
When a misleading City of Fullerton agenda proclaims: “Introduction of Special Fiscal Audit – Grant Thornton Risk Advisory Services.”
I assumed, wrongly, that somebody had already been hired to look into the misdirection of funds into the General Fund Reserves that should have gone some place else, a fact that has caused considerable embarrassment to our severely and habitually underinformed City Council. I also figured this firm was going to talk about what they found.
But no.
In fact, the firm of Grant Thornton Risk Advisory Services were brought before the council by the City Manager, Eddie Manfro, simply to make a sales pitch for their services. And what services.
Step one is to be some sort of forensic accounting exercise, a fishing expedition to explore the world of Fullerton’s accounting regime to see what, if anything, is amiss. Nobody said anything, but there must have surely been some internal squirming when the company rep kept using the word “fraud.” And that included our Finance Director and recently anointed City Treasure, Steven Avalos who was sitting in the pit.
The second phase of GTRAS’s endeavor was to explore how the City might improve efficiencies, save money, and help address Fullerton’s grim fiscal situation. Why this all-purpose company was suggested for this task seems odd, the two tasks having nothing to do with one another.
I’ll address the first project first. Why is it necessary at all to delve into Fullerton’s accounting with an audit? We have been told that there were seemingly honest bookkeeping errors – embarrassing, sure and it did alter the already dire projection of General Fund reserve draw downs, but fear not, all was well. The councilmembers kept talking about transparency and public trust, but what does that really mean? Is this serious or just a political pantomime?
Consider the following facts. GTRAS was picked by the City Manager under his own authority and just brought to the council to give them a chance to ratify the decision. That’s a sole source contract, and the public has no idea how much they will be paid, and won’t without a PRA request. Will added scope to the $100,000 contract be reviewed by anybody except the City Manager and Steven Avalos? If some sort malfeasance were actually discovered – purely by accident, of course – would offender(s) names be published? Is any of this going to discussed in Closed Session because it touches on employee issues? Who knows? The Council approved the deal, without knowing whatever it is or might be.
As for the second part of GTRAS offer, the City Manager announced that would be returned to the Council for approval of a $130,000 deal. At least someone might get the chance to ask some pertinent questions, such as why is this “economic development” effort needed, given that Fullerton has highly paid staff who enjoy employment as economic developers. What have these people been doing and why do they need outside help. These people have been on the payroll for years. What have they accomplished?
Sunaya Thomas, in charge of economic development, was in attendance. Her presence at the meeting was an almost begging of the question about her own success in this endeavor, the effort of bureaucrats that never even pays for itself.
I wonder if GTRAS will actually suggest something that might help, outside of taxes. Personally, I doubt if their suggestions would even pay for their own service. That we will probably never know because no one will talk about it. This will be an agreement with no metrics for success or failure, just more electronic billboards and hotel occupancy taxes. Staff reductions? Getting rid of all our brand new “firefighters” and ambulance drivers? Don’t be ridiculous.
Anyhow our brave Council voted unanimously to proceed down this dark corridor, protesting their sincere desire to pursue those most elusive prey: transparency and public trust. No one said much about accountability. They never do.
At tomorrow’s Fullerton City Council meeting, agenda item #1 features a report by the firm of Grant Thornton Risk Advisory Services. They will present what the City is calling a “special fiscal audit.”
What does that mean, and what are the results? Unknown because there is no staff report – not even a little introductory prose. This is in keeping with former City communications regarding the recently revealed erroneous assignments of millions into General Fund reserves – money that was supposed to go elsewhere. The last post FFFF did on this subject in March pointed out the condescending gobbledygook press release that emanated from City Hall. I believe this “audit” was commissioned to address the big errors and allay fears that some sort of malfeasance took place.
I hope that Messrs. Shawn Stewart and Charles Mayes (CPA) of Grant Thornton will present something real simple. Like maybe a diagram, or a flow chart to explain how these bogus transactions took place. Where did the money come from, where did it go, and when was it fixed? One hopes there will be no verbal or logical gymnastics to dodge assignment of responsibility. Does one hope in vain? And of course please let us know:
What are the true balances in General Fund and Capital Improvement Reserves.
Item #12 on the agenda is a report on staff vacancies and retention recruitment efforts required, as usual, by a nosey and intrusive State legislature. I’m not sure what the purpose of the law is, but the information contained in the report is worth considering. According to staff there are currently 65 vacancies, two thirds of which are non sworn, general public employees. 65 vacancies is about 10% of the total labor force.
In past years the vacancy rate has done as high as 25% in Fiscal Year 21/22.
Here’s the issue. How many of these vacant positions are included in the current 25/26 budget deliberations? All of them? Some cities use a “vacancy factor” in their budgeting – an estimate of how many vacancies will be unfilled in the fiscal year. Does Fullerton do this? They should if they don’t.
I also note that the labor force in Fullerton is up 7% since 22/23 even as dire predictions of the structural deficit were publicized. Why did this happen? The architect of past city budgets, City Manager Eric Levitt quit and took a higher paying job in San Bernardino last year so no answer will be forthcoming from him.
As an example of a recruitment the staff report includes this graphic from last fall:
An Associate Planner goes for $84K to $108K per annum – not counting benefits and pension costs, of course. If those are generally calculated at a modest 25% we can assume this Associate Planner will cost the taxpayers around $120,000 a year, which I think is fairly reasonable.
If we assume the average total cost of those 65 vacant positions is, say, a conservative $100,000, then we are looking at an annual cost of $6,500,000. That closes a lot of budget deficit, right there.
Pro sales tax advocates will claim there is a vital quality-of-life issue at stake, as if the number of public employees in City Halls guarantees such a concept; these vacant jobs are key to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in Fullerton. The same alliance of cops, “firefighters” and local City Hall camp followers who pushed Measure S in 2020 will claim it to be so. These are the same folks who get guaranteed defined benefit pensions, step pay increases, etc. They make no sacrifices and are rarely asked to do so. That task falls upon the citizenry.
Here’s a video of a couple derelicts stealing or vandalizing Fred Jung campaign signs.
Fullerton has a long history of anti-democratic sign thefts, including Roland Chi’s proud papa in 2010.
The most famous instance was Pilferin’ Paulette Chaffee, in 2018, who was actually charged by the then DA, Tony Rackaukas. The nauseating Pilferin’ Paulette is now on her third campaign for office since she had to quit the City Council election in disgrace.
Sometimes it has almost been funny. In 2022 such was the unearthing of Raccoon Boy, a local low-life employed by Ahmad Zahra to swipe opposition signs in 2022. Is Raccoon Boy back? I doubt if he could afford a beat up 20 year old Crown Vic or even a gallon of gas to make it run. He couldn’t afford a dog leash, either, so for now he gets a pass.
This sort of thing will keep happening, of course, so let’s see if we can identify some of these miscreants and hand them over to the long arm of the law.
On Tuesday the Fullerton City Council voted 3-2 to expand the finalists for the trash hauling contract from three to six. Staff had recommended solely negotiating with EDCO of Signal Hill and points south, even though the difference in scoring between the top three was de minimis, as they say. As a back-up recommendation staff requested the City work with the top three as finalists.
Councilmembers Jung, Valencia, and Dunlap voted to include three more for continued negotiations, including Valley Vista, and our current hauler, the giant Republic Services. For Mayor Jung the critical qualification was cost. Naturally, the obstructionists “Dr.” Zahra and the absent Shana Charles voted no.
Included in the “supplemental agenda” materials were an email to the Council and a written statement from Mr. Jeffrey Otter, Treasurer for the Craig Park East Homeowners Association, and a professional engineer, to boot. Mr. Otter gives his take that the process pursued by the City has inherent risk, legally, cost-wise, and in terms of negotiating weakness.
Otter goes into more detail in a written statement presented to the Council wherein he repeats his email conclusions and requests an independent “Cost of Service Analysis” to identify rate correction factors across various types of properties; in other words comparing oranges and oranges. His own analysis identifies the most overall cost-effective firms: Valley Vista, NASA and EDCO. He thoughtfully provides his own backup materials and data. Of course his diligent efforts will get him nowhere.
Otter also identifies an interesting fact. EDCO’s Marketing Director is a person named Duron. Apparently Fullerton’s Solid Waste and Recycling Specialist is a woman named Michelle Anna Duron. Is this just a curious coincidence or a possible familial conflict of interest? When asked who was on the evaluation committee the Stephen Bise, the City Engineer identified himself, Richard Armendariz, Assistant Director of Public Works Maintenance; Jerome Joaquin, Public Works Administrative Manager; Olivia Martinez, Environmental Services Coordinator; and Kim Chaudry, Senior Management Analyst. No Duron, although Michelle Anne Duron’s contribution to the overall process no doubt have provided influence.
I can’t find a Duron on ECDO’s dismal website, but Octavio Duran is identified in the EDCO proposal thus: Mr. Octavio Duran, Director of Market Development, has 15 years of EDCO industry experience and will oversee direct engagement with the City of Fullerton. His primary office is in Signal Hill. Mr. Duran will spend approximately 30% of his time on the transition and 25% on an ongoing basis.
So go figure.
Anyhow the dance is far from over. Valley View has incurred the wrath of Fullerton Boohoo because they contributed to the Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform PAC who torpedoed the odious Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo in the 2024 election, an act that should bestow honor rather than opprobrium.
Marvelously, Zahra and Charles seem to think that Valley Vista’s political involvement should disqualify Jamie Valencia from participating in the process because the PAC caused her election, even though they didn’t give Valencia a nickel – a species of childing logic not worthy of an adult. I note in passing that Charles got $4000 from the cannabis workers union PAC in 2024 and wonder if that disqualifies her to vote on pot issues.
Some have questioned Dr. Ahmad Zahra’s claim that he quit his life as a man of medicine for a life as a filmmaker. But this claim is no longer in doubt.
A Friend has forwarded this image of the extraordinary Ahmad Zahra that clearly shows the good doctor from Damascus as a big time Hollywood cinematic auteur.
So there you have it. Who are we to argue with our own eyes?