Karma Can Be A Bitch
The topic of drinking and driving has been in the Fullerton news the last few days. We all know the story involving City Manager, Joe Felz, by now so there’s no point in rehashing the details. Instead, I want to direct the Friends’ attention to the irony that surrounds us in life, sometimes almost like there’s some sort of cosmic plan.
Way back in August, 2012 at the start of the fall election campaign, Fullerton City Councilmen and candidates Travis Kiger and Bruce Whitaker, along with Greg Sebourn voted to turn back a $50,000 grant from the state to pay for those ridiculous DUI random checkpoints that are probably the least effective ways to corral drunk drivers.
Let’s let Fullerton’s in-house shrew, Jan Flory, herself a candidate that year, fill us in from an August 30, 2012 facebook entry:
OKAY, so let’s get this straight, our Tea Bagger councilmen (Kiger, Sebourn and Whitaker), voted to reject a $50,000 grant and send it back to the state because it was to be used for DUI sobriety checkpoints that they believe are unconstitutional. They did this without walking across the street and talking to Police Chief Dan Hughes, or Captain George Crum who wrote the grant application.
Whoops! They find out after the fact that $146,222 in additional grant funds were tied to the $50,000 for the sobriety checkpoints, soooo, if the $50,000 is rejected, then the $146,222 has to be turned back too. It’s not like our understaffed police department could use the money, right? Maybe they thought the state would know how to use the money better than we do at the local level. Massive miscalculation!
Miscalculation? Certainly, but not by Kiger, Whitaker, or Sebourn. The fact of entangling grant funding (if in fact it existed at all) was never shared with them by their own $200,000 City Manager, Joe Felz, or by $200,000 Police Chief Danny Hughes, both of who were just sitting there during the meeting. Why not? Possibly because they had every reason to try to embarrass them and help get Flory elected. The consequent to-do with a MADD mob orchestrated by the FPD, and quite likely with the approval of Felz and Hughes themselves, was quite entertaining. Whether they knew about a link at the time, they sure found out fast, so fast that one might suppose a little back-room political shenanigans.
So now, let’s return back to late August, 2012 and hear again from the vinegary Flory as she regales us with her demagoguery :
Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) caught wind of the ill-considered action and showed up in force at last Tuesday’s council meeting to ask the Tea Baggers to reconsider. During public comments, many family members described the devastating loss of the death of a loved one at the hands of a drunk driver. Particularly moving were the tearful remarks of Jon Wilhite, who survived the horrific crash that killed his three friends, Nick Adenhart, Courtney Stewart and Henry Pearson in April 2009.
Now that’s a genuine and heartfelt sentiment, right? And now we know: Flory demands sober streets!
(But wait – irony alert!) Who were some of Flory’s biggest supporters and drum beaters in 2012? You guessed it. Downtown booze peddlers! And why not? In undeniable fact, Flory was one of the main architects of downtown Fullerton’s Culture of Inebriation, Puke and Public Urination. They make the profit on drunks while everybody else pays the price.)
In fact, other Fullerton folks were curious about the sudden linkage of the completely separate grants and the fact that nobody informed the City Council of this “fact” that now appears to have been no fact at all. Here’s Jack Dean, Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers, trying to get a straight answer from an Office of Traffic Safety bureaucrat:
From: Jack Dean <JackDean@fullertontaxpayers.org>
Date: Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 1:17 PM
Subject: 2013 OTS Grants to the City of Fullerton
To: Julie Schilling <julie.schilling@ots.ca.gov>
Dear Julie,I read with great puzzlement your email message below stating that the City of Fullerton would not be able to receive the $146,000 grant it was awarded for its Selective Traffic Enforcement Program without it also accepting the $50,000 grant it was awarded for a Sobriety Checkpoint Program.The grants appear to have been applied for separately by different individuals within the Fullerton Police Department, and also awarded separately. Nowhere do I see any linkage indicated.Were either of the grant applicants advised of linkage between the two grants? Were any city staff informed of such linkage or made aware that the receipt of one grant would be contingent upon the acceptance of the other?
I would like to formally request from you any documentation that states there is such linkage. And I would very much appreciate receiving it by the end of business next Monday, September 17th, because there is a City Council meeting Tuesday night and I would like time to evaluate it and perhaps ask you or Christopher Murphy some follow-up questions.
If you would like to discuss this request, please feel free to email me or call me at 951-515-8918.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Cordially,
Jack Dean, President
Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers
——————————————————————————————–
From: Schilling, Julie@OTS [Julie.Schilling@ots.Ca.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 11:21 ANI
To: GEORGE CRUM
Subject: 2013 OTS Grants
Importance: High
Captain Crum,
It has been brought to our attention that your City Council has approved your STEP grant for $146,222.00, but will not approve the $50,000.00 DUI Checkpoint grant. Per our director, Christopher Murphy, we will need to hold off on funding your STEP grant until further notice. The intent of the STEP grant is to coincide with the DUI Checkpoint grant. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), who is our funding source, and OTS have always maintained that checkpoints are a vital and effective tool to combat DUI deaths and injuries.
if you have any questions or need further information, please do not hesitate to Contact me.
Julie Schilling, Operations Coordinator
California Office of Traffic Safety
2208 Kausen Drive, Suite 300
Elk Grove, CA 95758
(916) 509-3018
julie.schilling@ots.ca.gov
——————————————————————————————–
Note the sneaky “it has been brought to our attention,” a deed pretty obviously performed by crumbly Crum, himself, but certainly never without clearance by Chief Danny and his boss, Joe Felz. As an aside, please note that Ms. Schilling of the OTS never cites how the grants are linked, only that that’s just the way she likes it. Hmm.
It took four years but at last an ironical universe has sent another opportunity for Ms. Flory to express her outrage toward drunk drivers. Tomorrow night in fact.
Kiger and Whitaker did make one massive miscalculation. They trusted Felz enough to keep him around, even as he was doing his level best to undermine them.
Cleaning him out should have been job one. Oh, well. Lesson learned.
It’s never too late to do the right thing.
It might be too late for Sappy McTree.
Will MADD, Flory, and Fitzgerald have anything critical to say about Felz’s alleged DUI tomorrow?
Or is parading out victims of drunk driving just a tool for scoring political points during an election season?
DUI? what DUI? He wasn’t drunk. Did you forge that part?
LOL! as you would say.
No, he just smelled of booze, hit a tree and fled the scene. LOL.
It’s like politics in 2016. It’s fun just taking 10% fact and then forming your own narrative. It does make the story look so much better though and it’s so much more fun to talk crap about when we form our own endings to the stories.
What’s the over/under on when they will release the video and audio? I’m saying they will wait extra long just to let everyone get really mad and form their own stories all the way to the end, then slam em with the video.
“It’s fun just taking 10% fact and then forming your own narrative.”
Like declaring someone’s not drunk without having administered a breathalyzer test? It’s amazing what you don’t find when you don’t look.
I don’t know why you guys are making such a big deal over this. Mr. Felz didn’t have that far to drive to get home. And everyone knows that anyone getting paid just under #300,000 per year can hold his own after a night of drinking.
An Uber would have cost Felz $5.15.
Chump change for moneybags McSubaru.
The unfortunate decision of prior City Councils to make Fullerton the drinking capital of the O.C. continues to haunt us in the form of out-of-control drunken behavior in our downtown area and its surroundings. This has included a number of tragic DUI accidents. Aggressive enforcement in our downtown area needs to be a priority for the safety of all.
Yeah, well that and the unfortunate decision* of the wise Fullerton polity to re-elect defenders of the downtown douchebag economy and to pass the absurd districting map that all but completely insulates it from serious reform.
* sarcasm, ‘decision’ implies there was thought or consideration
I think calls for “aggressive enforcement” have been falling on deaf ears, and now we know why.
Jack Dean, president. of the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers.
Point of clarification: Jack Dean is not only the president, he is also the only member.
By the way, Jack hasn’t been seem around too many council meetings for about three years now. He also drinks booze by the gallon, which is a good reason to be opposed to DUI checkpoints.
Travis Kiger. Now there is a name that hasn’t come up for a while either. You talking about the same Travis Kiger who sat on the council for all of about three months. What’s that, like six meetings? The same Travis Kiger who took his ball and went home the second he dropped from third to fourth place in the city council vote? The same Travis Kiger who cares so much about the city of Fullerton, he hasn’t been to a council meeting, or PC meeting, or even a Boy Scout meeting in Fullerton since being voted off the council? You don’t mean that Travis Kiger, do you? No wonder you don’t want to give your real name on this blog post. . Reality Is was being generous in his above comment when stating that 10 percent of this blog post is true.
Karna can be a bitch! Indeed.
You must be excited that FFFF is back!
That’s using a lot of words to actually say nothing!
Come back when you’ve got a point.
Maybe he’s just saying that even an allegedly drunk, friendless loser can see right through the city’s ginned up BS.
The big lie here Barry or Joe is that you have no idea on the full membership count of FACT.
Jack Dean a drinker? Bwahhahaa what a joke maybe Mr. Dean will sue you two for defamation? If Travis Kiger wants to watch meetings from home it is his call. Just because you two do not have lives and need to see yourselves on channel 0 to feel important doesn’t make you the good guys. Putting others down to raise yourselves up isn’t working. Give it up losers. Neither of you made it on council and I am betting you never will.
I am curious as to what comments Mr. Levinson or Mr. Imbriano had allegedly made about Jack Dean as they do not appear here on this thread. To what do you refer? BTW, Barry and Jack Dean have been friends for years so it is highly unlikely Barry would ever have made any such statements.
Let’s have my party at the SlideBar. Ron Thomas is paying.