On The Agenda – April 6th, 2010
Here we are in April with no real change in the City’s business practices. View the agenda for April 6th.
In the Redevelopment Agency’s Closed Session we find three properties being negotiated for. Everyone’s favorite land Czar, Rob Zur Schmiede, wants to spend your money to buy 345 E. Commonwealth, 147 W. Santa Fe, and 324 W. Valencia. What could our Czar want with these fruited lots? Certainly the transaction will bring tremendous revenue to the City’s general fund, will it not? NO. Once again, we get the short end of this stick, too. Hopefully, one of our Friends can enlighten us with details as to what the Czar has planned.
In the Open Session, the Council will consider an appointment to the Parks and Recreation Commission.
There are 7 items on the consent calendar. Aside from the minutes there are a few items worth commenting on.
Item 2 seeks to raise the speed limits on a few streets. I noted on my March 16th comments:
“Now you get to punch that gas pedal and really feel the wind in your hair! Item #15 seeks to change the speed limits on Sunny Ridge and Pioneer Avenue. The PD asked Traffic Engineering to conduct a traffic study. The results: RAISE, that is correct, the speed limit! Here is the breakdown:
Pioneer Ave (Sunny Ridge to Gilbert) Increase from 25mph to 30mph.
Pioneer Ave (Gilbert to Parks) Establish a speed limit of 40mph
Sunny Ridge Dr (Malvern to Pioneer) Increase from 25mph to 35mph
Sunny Ridge Dr (Pioneer to Roscrans) Increase from 25mph to 30mph
All other speed limits remain unchanged”
Why do you suppose the PD would want to raise the speed limit? Surely they aren’t concerned with traffic congestion. The text of the ordinance states that these speeds are “…for the safe operation of vehicles…” Perhaps it is because the PD cannot enforce the speed limit with radar at their currently posted speeds. Raising the speed limits to as much as 40mph would likely result in more citations which equal more revenue. So, maybe don’t punch that gas pedal too hard.
Item 3 could change the way the City does noticing for public hearings. It seems the newspapers are just too expensive. Staff will have four places to post notices of public hearings: City Hall, Maintenance Services Yard, Museum, and the Main Library. It’s odd that they would use the main library (all of about 150 feet from City Hall) and the museum (about two blocks over from City Hall) for the notices. It seems a broad approach including certain parks or perhaps schools would have been considered.
Council wants Fullerton designated as a “Recovery Zone”! Read item 4. The Redevelopment Agency, lead by everyone’s favorite land Czar, wants to go after some financing opportunity available if only council adopts this resolution. This looks to be a 30-year bond worth initially $2,705,000. I’m not much of an accountant so someone needs to do the math and find out what it will really cost. It sounds like another way to waste our money. After passing this resolution, we will all need to get checked into recovery… We can start with a few council members!
Item 5 states that the PD wants the City to accept some federal and state grant funding worth $93,782. The individual grants vary and all have strings attached. Some include $44,652 for DUI checkpoint-related costs, body armor costs that have doubled and approved of at an August 5, 2008 council meeting, and an FBI reimbursement of up to $12,680 in 2009-2010 and $16,903 in 2010-2011 for overtime, training, and equipment for an officer to be assigned to the Orange County Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory.
Item 6 is a maintenance declaration between Engineering, the Land Czar (a.k.a. Redevelopment Agency), and the Walter N. Johnson Family Trust. The idea is to get the alley to be maintained by someone other than the Engineering Department which is broke as is the alley.
Pay more for your water! Item 7 says that Engineering wants you to pay more for your water so they can fund the city’s League of Cities slush fund? WTF? Approval of this item gives staff the go-ahead to mail out notices of a PROPOSED rate hike. According to the staff summary, the proposal is for a $2 per month per customer increase in the service charge. So, if we take every residential water meter and add $2 each for each month, staff thinks it will add up to $700,000 in to the Water Fund for the 2010-2011FY. If my math is correct, which it rarely is, that means we will have 29,167 water customers paying an additional $2 per month for a 12-month period. Good luck Bankhead and Keller when the voters find out about this little scam!
Item 8 of the Regular Business is the Land Czar’s recommendation to Council that they re-agendize (it’s a made up word on the agenda, likely means “to place on the agenda again”) the proposal from the Business Improvement District’s consultant Urban Place. The proposal is for $3,100 for “initial Business Improvement District explorative community outreach.” Give me the $3,100 and I’ll give you a shiny report with glossy photos and a little exploration of reaching out to the community…
You have to love the way Item 9 is stated: “AFFORDABLE HOUSING RFP SELECTION CRITERIA DISCUSSION”. It’s quite laughable if you consider that the Council and Land Czar always say we need more affordable housing. Doc HeeHaw likes to proclaim that by golly it’s the law. In the unlikely event you believed old Doc, he likes to lie. Affordable housing quotas aren’t law, they are the strings attached to some of the silly grants our city staff chases after. Remember, Doc’s best years, if he had any, were gone long before he set foot in the council chambers. Anyway, if you think council needs to have certain selection criteria for their affordable housing RFP’s, then chime in.
And lastly, old Doc made news when he Hee-Hawed is way off of the Vector Control Board’s meeting last month. Item 10 states: “Recommendation by City Clerk’s Office: Appoint a representative to the Orange County Vector Control .”
The key word is REPRESENTATIVE. I’m sure the OCVC Board will be happy to have anyone but Doc around. I would really like to know what set him off. Maybe we could do it at the next council meeting and get him to quit…
In summary, if tax dollars were turds, this agenda might represent more waste than even the Orange County Sanitation District could handle.
As always, if you have any information to contribute or if you feel I missed something important, please give us your comments.
I live in the area outlined in item #2. Raising the speed limit is dangerous due to the fact that sunny ridge is a narrow, winding street that has blind spots. sunny ridge also fronts a large park where many families go with their young children where it is a common event to see a young child/toddler run into the street to get a ball. I have lived off of sunny ridge for eleven years and have seen at least ten accidents where cars take the turns too fast and hit block walls or other cars coming in the opposite direction.
I don’t see the nexus from water rate hike to League of Cities. Obviously, if you cut out the League membership and activities, which I believe were estimated at about $75,000 per year, that would mean they would only need to raise rates by $1.79 per metered customer bringing the total to $625,000 + $75,000 = $700,000. That’s a good start but we still need to dig up $625,000 from other city sources.
How about the parks? The parks in my neighborhood are overwatered. On a hot day you’ll get wet laying on the saturated grass. Surely cutting our water usage in the parks by 10% wouldn’t have an adverse effect on the aesthetics and would save the city money.
How about the City lease Amerige Park to the OC Fliers for $150,000 per summer? The last I heard, the Fliers were paying $250,000+ to Cal State Fullerton’s athletics department per summer.
I think there are cuts that can be made and innovative solutions to employ that would help fix the water system issues which are very real.
I can’t believe how poorly written is the agreement to item #6. No legal counsel sign off? Looks like the Zur-meister and Johnson are hiding something. Is Hoppe in on the shenanigans?
I think Hoppe wants to take the maintenance burden off of his engineering budget and let RDA and Johnson deal with it.
Greg, speaking of our pars, what is the cost to our town for the richman community center? It is duplication of services. Instead of subsidizing the whale’s salary at this center, just put up a bi-lingual website at this park and access to the internet/computer. it would be cheaper.
I would have to study that a bit, but on the surface it sounds more efficient which equates to lower cost and better use of our money.
Next time you see a council member ask him/her how much the city pays into the water fund for the water it uses itself (irrigation, public buildings, etc.).
Also, raise $700,000 and $70,000 goes directly into the General Fund via “in-lieu” franchise rip-off. Still waiting for an explanation of that. Too bad the Harpoon is gone.
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2009/water-water-everywhere/
Speaking of Harpoon…where did he/she go?
We heard there was an accident on a fishing trawler.
Increased water rates + in-lieu fee = tax increase + recall?
Recall? where do I sign?