Your Roads Suck & Measure S Won’t Fix Them
The City of Fullerton is spending your money to promote a new sales tax to you. They want you to vote yes on Measure S in order to raise the sales tax in Fullerton. Don’t be a sucker.
True, they’re promising roads and infrastructure and all of the goodies that government is supposedly designed to provide. The problem is that they spend exactly ZERO of your local taxes on these things right now.
Zero of your Property Taxes go to the roads and infrastructure.
Zero of your Sales Taxes go to the roads and infrastructure.
It’s the same with all of the fees and permits, licenses and so forth.
Despite taxing people in Fullerton to the tune of over $97 Million dollars, not one dime goes to the most basic of road work. Seems like we could fill a lot of potholes with +/- $97 Million dollars a year.
So how does our little amount of road work happen?
After the City squanders all of the tax money you give them directly, mostly on salaries and benefits, they then rely on OTHER government agencies to tax you further in order to do the terrible job they do on keeping your city nice. Remember SB1? When Newman jacked up the taxes on every gallon of gas you buy? Yeah, that was because your city government doesn’t actually care about your city and they use the State (where your vote barely matters) as bad cop to their incompetent cop.
Here’s a snippet from Fullerton’s budget to outline my point:
That “-” denotes exactly zip, zilch, nadda dollars.
The City Council of Fullerton cares so deeply about keeping your city nice that they can’t be bothered to allocate a single dollar out of the $97Million General Fund – a General Fund that comes directly from your property & sales taxes – to basic upkeep.
I cannot stress this point enough.
Oh they’ll promise that they pave “8 miles of road a year” or whatever hogwash they’re peddling during election season, but in reality they can’t be bothered to tell a single union “No” in order to keep the alignment of your car from freaking out.
So where DOES that money go? Here’s a chart that sums it up:
That is a chart from our own David Curlee showing Fullerton’s Property & Sales taxes that you pay laid next to the amount the City spends on Police & Fire. Notice how they line up? The Police Department eats every single dollar (and some) brought in to the City through Property Taxes and Fire eats all of your Sales Taxes. They don’t do that directly of course, they have accounting gimmicks and various funds to try and hide this from you but this is basic math minus bureaucratic bullshittery we’re showing you.
That’s right. That’s where ALL of your money goes and a large chunk of that is to pensions for guys who retire at 55 and will outlive all of us.
And along comes Measure S.
Much like Newman’s SB1 lie, Measure S is full of promises that require you to suspend disbelief and history in order to believe. The same city that prioritizes precisely ZERO of those $97 Million in taxes to keeping up our infrastructure NOW wants you to believe that they can be trusted to do the right thing with Millions more of your money if you give it to them.
Don’t do it. Don’t believe them. Don’t trust them. Don’t give them another dime of your money until they learn how to prioritize spending what they already take from all of us every year.
If you give them more money, they will absolutely spend every dollar on whatever strikes their fancy and when your roads still suck in years to come they’ll put their hat back in their hands and start the begging all over again. End this abusive relationship. They don’t steal from you because they love you, they do it because you won’t fight back.
Join the fight. Vote NO on Measure S.
If measure S fails, the City will be laying off (firing) more City employees. They squandered all that money and now City employees are losing their livelihood because the crooked City Council. I’m glad I moved on from being a City employee, but I still have friends and a family member that could lose their jobs because of it. Its time for another recall.
And why do they have to lay people off? Why can’t they trim the salaries of everyone a little, or the benefits?
Please.
Why would cops and firefighters take a pay cut to keep a librarian employed?
They don’t care about you or your quality of life. They care about what kind of toy they’re going to tow to the river this year.
Exactly. The very same people who have put us on a path to bankruptcy With their greed still demand even more money and resources. At least with the fire department we could restructure it like they did in Placentia and save an enormous amount of money every year that could be used to fix streets.
Their unions would tell them to. Because otherwise they would get laid off.
Police are greedy, self-centered pigs. Simple fact.
So the City is collecting more property tax and more sales tax than it ever has and it still isn’t enough?
Taxpayers are just an ATM to these people. Shut up and hand over your money or we’ll let all the rapists and murderers run lose on your street.
Embarrassing.
The Fullerton PD and City Council took everything I ever had or would have from me. Don’t let them Kill You With Taxes!
FFFF solution to fixing the roads – Defund the Police!
Pure genius. The libertarian right and the republican right arguing with itself, resulting in the conclusion that taxes are bad and the roads can fix themselves.
Hugerhuis solution to fixing the roads: give the cops more money. Pure genius. That’s why he’s a trough feeder.
“he’s a trough feeder”
Where did you get that idea from? Long ago I worked a couple aerospace contracts as a 1099 programmer for hire, but other than that, I’ve never been on a government payroll. Couldn’t have been much more than a year out of a 25 year career.
But even that… I was paid an hourly rate, and supplied valuable labor in exchange for that consideration.
Wow. Then you’re just a lackey who works lackeys for free. Don’t give it away sweetie.
That made no sense.
I am calling you a whore who doesn’t charge for her services. Sweetie.
My opinions are my own. No one pays me to share them.
Are you saying someone pays you to share your political opinions?
The liberal approach is to throw good money after bad without EVER fixing the problems in the first place.
Hey, isn’t this Hogerhuis guy the one who likes to toss around misogynistic slurs whenever he loses an argument?
Pretty sure I saw him drop the “C” word a half dozen times last week.
It’s not misogynistic when I say it, since I only say it to shitposting c***s that refuse to discuss the issues like adults. Nothing to do with gender.
Troll harder. You know you want to.
I used to be a fan of yours on Nextdoor, but your calling out nonsense as devolved into an ugly self-obsession of hearing yourself scream into a void.
Your vulgarity and just general ignorance related to the facts is disappointing. I don’t agree with most of what the bloggers here post, but I now agree with them more than I agree with you.
You need to stop. You’re just causing harm to your own reputation and more importantly you make those of us who’d like to stand up for the left embarrassed to even stand next to you.
“Your vulgarity and just general ignorance related to the facts is disappointing. I don’t agree with most of what the bloggers here post, but I now agree with them more than I agree with you.
You need to stop. You’re just causing harm to your own reputation and more importantly you make those of us who’d like to stand up for the left embarrassed to even stand next to you.”
Try being heckled on every post with anonymous cowards posting under your own name. Goes to your “reputation” point.
It wears thin. And in my opinion, you have to push back.
But you don’t like my tactics to respond, noted. I will say I didn’t bring the naughty words to this site. They’re a regular feature, yet here you are, reading the blog anyway. You have some tolerance level.
Maybe all you fans could give some of this advice to FFFF that is engaging in this organized trolling.
They are on top of any post I make instantly. They have tipped their hand as to knowing me by my IP address, not just my posts. This isn’t trolling, this is their way of suppressing any points of view they disagree with.
“just general ignorance related to the facts”
Well now you’re getting into opinion in the realm of unsubstantiated assertions at best, lies at worst. I support the factual points that I make with arguments.
We are misogynist and I know because we keep telling me to knock it off. Dr. Schwartz says it because Mom locked us up in the closet when she went looking for a fix so we needed somebody to talk to and voila. But we’re not sure that Dr. Schwartz is even real because I never get a bill or anything. And also I have no idea what voila means, so there it is.
Boogerhuis has Tourette’s Syndrome and calls himself the “c word” incessantly. The only difference is when he’s doing it to himself, it’s a fact.
I drive in Fullerton a lot for work, recently front end alignment and two new front tires. Front brakes are pulling to the left now too. Commonwealth in particular is catastrophic. The only road work going on is fiber optic to bolster transmission of 5G every 50 or 60 ft. Skip your useless cops, take the City Council into custody yourself and run Newman out of town on a rail.
Try riding your bicycle on these roads. Next to impossible (but performance-enhancing drugs can help).
S is totally unnecessary and I was further offended by the glossy 4-color “informational” Measure S promotional material I received in the mail yesterday.
Police associations all over the county are agreeing to salary freezes, hiring freezes and even slight reductions in salaries, and there’s no reason that sort of thing can’t happen and won’t happen in Fullerton. PERS pensions *have* been reduced for new hires and you can’t reduce PERS for old hires. But, again, you need to stay competitive or you won’t have anybody working for you, or you’ll be forced to hire unqualified people with questionable morals and ethics in order to have enough people to respond to calls.
As for Hogerhuis, the back and forth on this site is reminiscent of the train wreck of the debate last night. It would be nice if Hogerhuis would just stick to the factual elements of his generally decent initial comments and not respond to the name calling with same. Stick to the facts and reasonable debate in your initial posts and replies and don’t take the troll bait.
It’s not just bait. This is FFFF instantly reacting/posting to actively suppress opinions they disagree with. The harder they push at me with the nonsense the harder I push back. They have the power to block me if they want. More importantly they have the ability to a) Not abuse my name b) respond on the merits as I begin with EVERY TIME.
If that stinks up the room I suggest you take it up with the management for creating that atmosphere with their active trolling campaigns.
My normal mode is reasoned debate. But when they start with the shouting down tactics I send it right back X 2.
You do understand this makes you look like a toddler with no self control?
Hmmmmmm… who does that sound like? A misogynist without self control…
Keep runnin’ that mouth, friend. Hole is just getting deeper.
Oh…Oh…Oh…..Call on me! Me! Me! Call on me!!!!
It sounds like……our President.
🙁
Support the LIncoln Project.
https://twitter.com/projectlincoln
And monitor the Twitter account of Kellyanne Conway’s husband:
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d
Same thing happened to me when I first came here and regularly posted views that weren’t in lockstep with the majority of people here. People are entitled to differing opinions and to post them, and even insult you or me in the process. They still do it to me sometimes, but it just rolls off my back and I don’t take the bait. The trolling and name calling will be greatly reduced or stopped if you don’t respond in kind.
I only look at the post, figure out what their position is on the topic at hand, and respond only to their arguments relevant to the topic. I generally don’t get flamed or trolled here anymore, and hopefully people can better understand my side of the arguments as a result, even if they don’t agree with them. All the trolling is just noise and you’ll be a better debater if you don’t respond to it. Another reader as much said the same thing. Name calling and posting anything unrelated to the topic at hand only weakens your position and reduces any respect for whatever you have to say.
Just my two cents. I’m tired of intolerant people on both sides of any argument just making noise. Everyone should focus on calm, rational discussion with an effort to understand where each side is coming from and whether they have legitimate points to make, because most people have at least some valid reasons for whatever their views are. Society and politics in this country would be better off if more people made an effort to see and understand both sides of any argument/position without getting angry.
I’ll commit to starting out reasonable every time. But when FFFF decides to try to tax me, with active trolling, in order to get me and anyone with similar opinions to go away, I reserve the right to tax them right back, any time.
They can decide what atmosphere they want here, and they can make that choice over again every time they decide to —-post. Or not.
I think the atmosphere they want here is that everything goes. I’ve never had a post deleted or edited. If the complete freedom for anybody to post whatever they want, no matter how offensive (including your use of the C word) or insulting, is not to your liking, perhaps migrating to a website with a more civil atmosphere exists where posts are edited or deleted by moderators (which I hate) would be better suited to you.
So you approve of them s—posting to shout people down. And you like it so much, you’re advising me to leave rather than tax them right back.
Got it. You keep turning the other cheek. I’ll keep doing things my way.
No, I don’t approve of S-posting at all. However, I am a strong believer in the First Amendment. Go back and look at my initial appearance on this board when I began posting about the Kelly Thomas case, took the position that he wasn’t murdered (but it shouldn’t have happened) and defended *one* of the officers on scene, pointed out the politically motivated criminal prosecutions were a danger to us all (look at how far that has progressed on all sides), etc. I think it’s fair to say that people *hated* me and I was s*** on all the time.
There are lots of people who clearly disagree with a lot of my opinions, but calm, rational and reasonably presented opinions and facts eventually won me (and to a lesser extent, my profession) some respect among many of the haters. I think the same would happen for you as well if you toned things down and didn’t respond x2. Even your response to me, when I’m trying to help you, reeks of inappropriate anger.
It’s a bulletin board where people freely express opinions. It’s nothing to get angry about. This is not a board for sensitive people. I know this sounds like a parent talking to a child, but if you don’t respond to the bullying taunts, it will eventually stop.
This is the last of me trying to help. I wish you well.
“I know this sounds like a parent talking to a child, but if you don’t respond to the bullying taunts, it will eventually stop”
That kind of backhanded garbage doesn’t fly with me. I explained to you why I do things the way I do.
HAND.
I will also take this opportunity to point out that my posting name came from a cop-hating troll who posted as “Hot Roasting Cops’ Balls” trying to bait me. I stole from that and I’ve stuck with my current handle ever since. There are some positive things that come from trolls! Find the good in the bad!
+1, Jiu Jitsu
You mean to say you’re a counter-puncher.
I know another misogynistic asshole that says the exact same thing.
Don’t waste your time, CCCB. Your voice will never get through the others in his head.
” counter-puncher”
A good a term as any.
Stop using my name.
No.
I’m letting you know that I DO NOT consent to your use of my name to attribute posts to me that I did not write. I consider it an invasion of my privacy, and potentially criminal identity theft.
Hereby advising FFFF to keep track of any records, including client IP address that may be required in any future criminal or civil action.
I don’t consent to you being a misogynistic asshole, yet here you are inflating your own sense of entitlement.
Beat your chest all you want. No one really cares about your threats. You’re just damning future generations of the Hogerhuis clan to shame.
Oh. My. God.
What a baby.
This is a problem of your own making and this is how you propose to get out of it?
Are you really that dense?
To the real John Hogerhuis…..
FYI…..as a court certified expert in identity theft…..this isn’t it. It’s also not an invasion of privacy. The posts are clearly being made by a parody account with no intent that someone think the posts are actually made by you.
Chill out.
I knew it. Sooner or later we would resort to legal threats. Dr. Schwartzman keeps telling us to stop threatening him with a malpractice lawsuit and then I have to tell ourselves that Dr. Schwarzman is doing the best he can under the circumstances, one of which could be that he isn’t even real. But I don’t listen to us and we don’t listen to me.
“Hereby advising FFFF to keep track of any records, including client IP address that may be required in any future criminal or civil action.”
Paper tiger, running dog.
“forced to hire unqualified people with questionable morals and ethics”
Hasn’t this been the Fullerton PD hiring policy and SOP for at least two decades? It started with Sellers and went downhill from there. The Fullerton PD motto should be “Give us your poor, your tired, your fat and unethical yearning to be paid for incompetence and inflict pain and violence on the innocent”.
This is the same old, tired and fallacious argument Lackie, Dammierer and McGill used to threaten, intimidate and extort city councils across the state to get them to “pay up” to the “Heroes”. Nice city you have there, would hate to see it get violent and burn down. Sheesh!
IMHO, things have improved in the last couple of years. The downhill slide started before Sellers and got progressively worse. Takes time to clear out the debris from corrupt command staff.
Things sure aren’t going to change if you don’t pay competitively, and will only go downhill again.
They haven’t changed for the better with excessive pay and benefits either! In fact, things accelerated to worse as pay and unfunded liability for unwarranted pensions benefits both increased. Pay and pensions which were politically extracted by greedy police unions from corrupt, beholden or frightened politicians who promised the benefits “were already funded” and “wouldn’t cost a dime more”! The Public got screwed and it started with Police and Fire unions then spread like a STI to every public employee union — even Vector Control for heaven’s sake! Now, our backsides are raw and bleeding, they want us to pay more to “fix our streets”? No F-ing Way amigo!
Money isn’t the problem. Police union greed, manipulation, intimidation and deceit are the problem. Ban police unions, eliminate qualified immunity and establish community oversight boards so bad cops actually get fired. Watch things get better without paying a penny more.
No pay raises for cops and firefighters until pension contributions decrease… period! They’re already getting HUGE raises every year in the form of every increasing unfunded liability payments agencies and municipalities are making which are draining our coffers, causing us to cut other vital services and may ultimately bankrupt us! I don’t see Police or Firefighters lining up to GIVE BACK what they NEVER ACTUALLY EARNED in order to “save and protect our community”. Why? Because they are self-interested and care more about a huge pension and retiring to Utah or Arizona or their next boat or toy than they care about the solvency and survival of the community they worked for and alleged pledged to “protect and serve”.
Police officers *did* earn the pension. It was part of what attracted them to the department, otherwise why not go to another department that has a pension and other better benefits? If the new hires are overpaid, then people would be beating down the doors to become police officers. They aren’t. Nobody can find anyone to hire. Try to take away or reduce existing pensions and everyone quits. The salary itself isn’t worth it anymore. It’s also illegal to take away or reduce promised pensions.
A better argument can be made for reducing fire pay and benefits for new hires, because they *do* still have people beating down the door to get hired.
It’s a free market society. Supply and demand. The demand for police officers currently outstrips supply by far. It’s not an environment conducive to reducing pay and benefits. The city is being turned over to the homeless drug addicts as we speak due to a lack of police resources.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea of reducing overall funding to the police, as there’s TONS of calls that would be better handled by social workers and police officers would *rather* they be handled by social workers. However, you better have enough resources to respond to those “oh sh**!” situations, and right now FPD is on the borderline there based upon my conversations with street officers.
Police officers aren’t just paid for what they actually do, they’re paid for what the might have to do as well. What they might have to do can carry a very heavy price for the officers, and they should be compensated for that.
There is fuckall “free market” in this entire system. Taxing ME today because cops “earned their pensions” (which they bought with union influence in elections) that I never got a say in is the antithesis of the very premise of a market at all. This is just government extortion predicated on union lies that promised the horseshit 3% @ 50 would never cost taxpayers because the market was gonna be so awesome that it’d take care of it all.
Also, these cops roll up with 5 cars to just about any call. They tell us they need more resources and coverage and then all converge to stand around and search a drunk they already have cuffed on the sidewalk.
And then beat him up and murder him and face no real consequences.
No, you didn’t EARN 3% @ 50. It was given to you RETROACTIVELY and WITHOUT funding. I’m not opposed to public employee pensions — pensions that should be structured like private employers where each year your pension is based on what you earned that year — not a percentage of your SINGLE HIGHEST YEAR SALARY and certainly not 3% and certainly not at age 50. YOU DIDN’T EARN ANY OF THAT. It was given to you by stupid politicians that you’re thug police unions intimidated and threatened. It’s well documented and now even the law firm most of your Almost-Organized-Crime Unions used is now defunct and discredited because of all the ILLEGAL things they did. Police Unions using a law firm that commits crimes to get the police union members money they don’t deserve and didn’t earn — sure sounds like organized crime.
By the way, pensions CAN and WILL be reduced. When cities, agencies and the state ultimately declare bankruptcy because of the intolerable and unsustainable rise in pension contributions, the COURT will ORDER reductions in benefits. Cities will stop paying because you can’t get blood from a turnip.
https://calpensions.com/2016/09/26/in-a-first-calpers-may-cut-small-towns-pensions/
More of ^^^ is coming and YOUR pension is not going to survive without a material haircut. They will come and repossess your toys because your extortion racket will be dissolved.
I think they were attracted to the department by:
1) They couldn’t get a job anyplace else
2) They knew they could get away with anything.
Here, here! Well said. These parasites are the ones driving us into bankruptcy in the first place and now they want more money?? Vote No on Measure S. Break up the fire department like Placentia did and make the cops pay even more for their bloated pensions.
Great. So we can get in an escalating salary war with Garbage Grove and Anacrime.
Even though we often disagree with you, your efforts to try to engage on the merits of the issue is appreciated. Quaint, but appreciated.