City Hall Proposes Screwing Residents, Yet Again – Stimulus Edition
Fullerton recently was “awarded” more Federal Debt ($25Trillion and counting) by way of a $34,000,000 stimulus with the requisite strings attached. While it’s true that this $34M could pave a lot of roads, fix a lot of infrastructure and solve a lot of problems – City Hall wants this money to be used solely for salary & pension needs.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting the pitch was made to “make whole” the staff who so bravely took a 5% pay cut when budgets were put into peril by the State mandated lockdowns in response to covid-19. This item was continued until the money is actually in hand.
Despite the item being continued, let us do away with this nonsense right here and now. Government is not supposed to be a job’s program. The entire purpose of government is to accomplish things the government won’t let us accomplish alone such as policing powers, infrastructure and the so forth.
When the government CEASES those activities, they don’t “deserve” your tax money. They haven’t earned it. The entire lie of the “social contract” is predicated on you paying taxes and getting things in return and we have a clear cut case of you getting nothing from much of staff and them still demanding their tribute.
The best example of this is the Parks Department. As far as I can tell, all of the parks were closed back in March of 2020 due to State mandated lockdown orders. The play equipment was roped off, all events were cancelled, youth sports went on hiatus, etc etc. There seemed to be zero actual parks activity going on in Fullerton for the better part of a year. Sure, the City laid off the part timers but what was the rest of staff doing?
Fuckall apparently because at Tuesday’s Council Meeting, City Manager Ken Domer ALSO wanted to get approval on a $236,000 “Parks Master Plan”. He manipulated the staff reports to bury the important point that the Parks and Rec Commission unanimously voted 5-0 against this “Master Plan” with a member of the Planning Commission voicing opposition as well.
Alas, we need a “Master Plan” because staff doesn’t know how to contact people online, hold surveys, get feedback and figure out how to do their jobs.
The audacity here is rather stunning even to a cynical individual such as myself.
Despite having a year sabbatical from actual work where staff spent their days attending pointless Zoom meetings to pad their hours, they couldn’t be bothered to spend any of that year figuring out what was wrong with our parks department.
They took a 5% pay cut from the City and took a near 100% work cut for themselves. Now they want their 5% back because they are hero and deserve, meanwhile we’re still not fully back up and running as a City AND they want us to continue to outsource their jobs because, well, screw you, that’s why.
To add insult to financial injury, City Hall didn’t bother to help most of you out. Did they pro-rate your business licenses since it was the threat of their police keeping your business closed? No. Did they cut you a break on your property taxes? Of course not. Hell, the schools refused to educate your kids and still demanded you pay up but that’s a different post for a different corrupt bureaucracy.
The point here is that government is a trade of taxes for services. That’s the deal. It’s City Council’s job to make sure that we residents get our end of the bargain at the best rates possible and while too many on council refuse to understand this basic principle of government – their ignorance (or willing corruption) doesn’t change the dynamic of how this is supposed to work.
If City Hall is closed, salaries need to reflect the lack of services and hours being delivered to the residents of Fullerton. If parks and events are closed, likewise the same reductions. If the City is enforcing State mandates that shutter businesses and lower capacities, the City needs to return a percentage of the taxes and fees extorted out of these businesses who are being handcuffed and given nothing in return.
It’s long overdue that City Hall realized that their job is to do their jobs and not simply collect a paycheck while dicking over the residents who fund those very checks.
Let us not forget to mention that some economic illiterates here in Fullerton are actually proposing back pay for the jobs that weren’t being done. You may have lost your business, may be facing eviction once evictions are allowed to resume, may have lost customers and clients – but hey – it’s City Hall who had to do nothing for a year that’s really suffering.
As for that $34Millions in BidenBucks – money is fungible. If Fullerton can screw us on in lieu water fees to prop up the heroes for a generation and then shaft us on the return of stolen money – council can cut & shift funding so that this money goes to where the Feds demand without the citizens of Fullerton getting shafted once again in favor of, as Ken Domer would have us believe, apparently useless staff.
Fuck these crooks and their government lockdowns. Let them all survive without a raise on their $150k compensation plans. Useless sponges can go to hell.
Some of this money should be used to gently reopen and restaff the Museum, and provide for a Thursday Beer Garden.
You don’t need money for a beer garden. All the city needs to do is get out of the way.
Fred Jung put up resistance to postpone this. Whitaker, as usual hemmed and hawed, but went along. So did Dunlap. The other two boobs were in on the steal.
What would really have pissed me off is having this agendized for public hearing at all – this issue as it relates to labor agreements should have been aired out in closed session. But clearly Domer wanted to apply pressure to the three no voters by going public.
And then there’s the previous council who agreed to reimbursable cuts. They should have been permanent.
If there were any doubt about the two-tier system we live in, the COVID cleared that up. The public employees were protected and everybody else was at risk of losing businesses and jobs. And were public employees given bailout money? Oh, hell yes.
FULLERTON succumbed decades ago. Look at the general fund allocations, over the years. the answer is in the pie chart.
Didn’t council agree to use 50% of all new revenue for roads & infrastructure?
The American Rescue Plan of 2021 can only be utilized for COVID-19 related expenses, like reimbursing employees that took a pay cut. Not saying that this is the right thing to do, but it is very possible that Fullerton will not be able to accept all of this money (or will have to return most of it) if they did not have any increased expenses related to the pandemic. They would not be able to justify to the federal government that this funding should be used for the roads, since this problem existed for years prior to their current condition today.
Fake News! This isn’t a purchase from Kohls. Nobody gives back money to the federales.
And how does reimbursing employees constitute an “increased cost?” Get a clue.
Repaying the employees is not an “increased cost.” The City negotiated salary decreases (in lieu of layoffs for full-time employees) and it was only because of the pandemic. Now that they are able to seek reimbursement from the federal government, they can bring the employees back to the “pre-pandemic” salary levels. I am not saying that this is the appropriate decision to be made, but it will be an approved expenditure of these funds.
When I said that they could seek reimbursement for increased costs, this could be the cost of paying for PPE; paying salaries for employees that job loss was directly related to a position that was deemed non-essential, which translated to a loss of services; etc.
This money will not fix Fullerton’s problems, it’s only meant to bring Fullerton back to its standing before the pandemic started (which wasn’t great).
Bloated union pensions are a pre-existing condition. Let them go bankrupt.
Winner winner chicken dinner!!!
If the city goes bankrupt I think they still have to pay their pension obligations. What’s that like over $350 million?
The idea of parks for the common person arose in the first industrial revolution where agrarian workers tired of their lives being at the whim of nature flocked to urban centers where factories ensured weekly pay. The downside was urban areas not prepared for massive influx of people who found themselves living in packed tenements in squalid conditions. Parks offered nature and fresh air to these tenement dwellers. It is ironic that city of Fullerton population bloomed in the 1950’s and 1960’s with its massive construction of housing tracts where each house came with decent sized front and back yard. Parks and Recs may best serve percentage of population who live in apartments, condos. This may sound heretical to Fullerton’s city council, but why not base budget for Parks and Recs on percentage of Fullerton’s population living in apartments and condos.
We have a Parks Department that is useless, a “museum” that almost nobody goes to, an Engineering Department run by a PR person that couldn’t build a birdhouse, a police department that keeps killing people just ’cause, a pretend fire department that chases ambulances to accident scenes, a mismanaged airport run by little dictators, and a Planning Department run by a conga line of incompetent, cowardly tools. On top of this pyramid of pointless pinheads sits the Banjo Boy, Ken Domer who couldn’t run a pop stand, elevated by Fitzgerald as a supine lackey.
I know! Let’s go along with a tax increase!!
Fred Jung seemed like he understands the trick that Domer sucked the prior weak ass council into agreeing to . Dunlap backed him up. Whitaker doesn’t have to cower to the majority now. He can do the citizens right by refusing to give back pay for work that was never done.
I notice that all these hot issues are never put to a referendum or even mentioned in the sappy Newsletter.
They wait till late at night to talk about these issues and then they vote on them.
For instance, homeless. Why are we building more stuff for them when we already settled the lawsuit?
The common thread seems to be that all these issues involve taxpayer bucks being acquired and then distributed to potential donors.
Fullerton City Con-cil meetings, a rich tradition.
Cheers homies.
Anyone happen to catch the street repair “study session” the other night? What a complete waste of time. 3 hours of my life I would have better spent watching reruns of The Facts Of Life. I did enjoy the Jung/suspected wife beater lovefest. Oh, and when Casteneda was cut off by Whitaker was also a highlight. Besides these two, there wasn’t much else. No real hope or any type of plan was put together to fix our streets. It’s not hard to understand where we are when you see who is in charge.