A Modest Proposal
I am going to make a modest proposal to the City leaders of Fullerton regarding the disposition of the grant money from the State Natural Resources Agency.
From what I understand, the main impediment to diverting the grant to the UP Park reconstruction is that there isn’t enough room on that site for the 168 trees that were promised along the Trail to Nowhere. The State thinks it’s real important to their mission to plant trees that will absorb greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide.
I know a place that easily accommodate those trees. It’s called Hillcrest Park, a 100 year-old park that is used by everybody in Fullerton, and that regularly serves the underserved population people seem to care so much about.
Hillcrest Park has been abused, neglected, laid waste by the City for at least 60 years.
Historic elements have been removed, non-conforming materials introduced, and worst of all, trees have been allowed to die and have not been replaced.
The denuded northern and western slopes have been permitted to erode. A good deal of the landscaping that was done when the wooden stairs to Lions Field were built has died and is overrun by weeds.
So how about this proposal: Divert the grant money to the reforestation of Hillcrest Park. Instead of planting trees along a trail that doesn’t go anywhere and nobody would use, let’s help restore Hillcrest Park, Fullerton’s first official Landmark.
There is plenty of time to effect this proposal. The grant money stipulates that it must be spent by fall of 2025, almost 2 years from now. So how about it, officialdom?
As a Fullertonian born at Saint Jude in the late 50’s that still lives in Fullerton I would support this common sense proposal. Any elected officials that view this site, of which there are many, care to move this forward ?
What a great idea. Maybe even work in some preservation work and get rid of the Hugh Berry era “additions.”
Unlike the Trail to Nowhere a lot of people use Hillcrest Park. And every time I go there many Latinos are there enjoying the place.
Common sense would be to keep the promise of the Bicycle Master Plan passed in 2012 and build the class 1 trail. The money is there, the public support is there the planning is there.
And keep building them. Google maps routes you through them any time it makes sense.
Common sense aint so common. There is a master plan for Hillcrest that requires trees and money. Are you suggesting Hillcrest should NOT be considered as a compromise? It is not worthy enough in your eyes? That bicyclists are more important than the rest of us?
Billy, don’t bother with that poor dumb bastard. He’s still fighting a war he didn’t know was over. Like that Japanese soldier on the island.
The “bike master plan” is a nonsense. It shows paths going where they physically can’t. No one in City Hall has ever taken it seriously and for good reason.
No it is not reasonable or in any way acceptable for council to ignore ITS OWN, PASSED bicycle master plan. That’s failed, incompetent government. A plan such as this is a promise to the citizens of Fullerton.
We should all have a big issue with promises made and promises broken.
Of course they can change the plan, fix errors. That would be attending to the plan.
I don’t see the logic of advocating for ignoring city commitments.
The obvious conclusion is to scrap the stupid bike plan that shows impossible routes and see if anybody even cares enough to do it right.
It is right, in that it is the committed-to plan. Doing it right is delivering.
“Scrapping it” makes sense to people that don’t want a bike plan, couldn’t give a shit about bicyclists. Because you will just keep ignoring it and then scrapping it. Rinse and repeat.
How about delivering?
Ten people care about the dumb bike plan. The other 149,990 couldn’t care less. And they certainly wouldn’t care if a defective plan were shit-canned.
The bicycle master plan and the California High Speed rail plan have about the same chance of ever being what they promised…
Hear! Hear!
I don’t know about bicyclist but I know I don’t give a shit about you.
Hoogie, you truly are an ignorant, insufferable twat.
What if it doesn’t make sense? Ahaha. Caught in your own illogic.
JRH has no sense at all, common or otherwise. He’s simply an insufferable twat.
What a great ideal.. Finally someone with some common sense.
Its like you have no idea how grants work, and it shows with all the other articles. This is for a low income green improvement grant. You cant just move money to a different project or a different part of the city, hillcrest is a high income area the grant wouldnt be able to be used there. Common sense would be to know how grants work, honestly someone can make a blog debunking all these articles and would make alot of money from it
Hillcrest Park is used by lots of low-income Mexicans, or at least you would assume they are low income because of your built-in liberal bias.
Either way big government concludes it to be so and they use Hillcrest Park so win-win. More trees for everybody.
Good idea. You should start a blog doing exactly that. I know at least one guy will follow you. He posts here cuz nobody as ambitious as you has stepped up to the plate. I think even Bernard might pay you a visit. Whata ya gonna call it? “Friends for Fullerton’s (Alternative) Future”?
If there are any discrepancies with the application of the grant money being used at Hillcrest Park, Staff can simply employ the same standards that they did in the original application and just flat out lie. They should assign that to their Deceiver in Chief Sunayana Thomas.
That’s true. The State doesn’t care about how the money would be wasted (obviously) and they don’t care that it was wasted. This agency id jus flush with cash – even as California stares at a 70 billion dollar deficit.
So let’s tell them Hillcrest Park is in DTF, that it is next to a transit station and that a million people visit it every month.
I’ve been looking at those bare hillsides for years and years, wondering why stabilizing the slopes isn’t a priority.
The City spends millions fixing the fountain and building a useless bridge and getting rid of the duck pond and ignores the worst problem in Hillcrest Park: complete neglect of the landscaping. They natter endlessly about abstractions like “urban forest” yet refuse to see the disconnect between their slogans and their own actions.
Hopefully Jung or Dunlap or Whitaker will pick up on this excellent idea. The other two are hopeless.
Those three probably won’t pick up on it. Someone might want to go to a council meeting and mention it.
Fullerton is doomed to a slow, painful death.
I like this idea a lot. Plant trees where they can actually do some good.