Union Pacific Park to Reopen!
After years of being fenced off by the Parks and Rec. Department, the Fullerton City Council voted to reopen the Union Pacific Park in the 100 W. Block of Truslow Avenue. The park, brainchild of former Parks Director Susan B. A. Hunt, cost several million dollars to be acquired and built in the early 2000s but was almost immediately shut down due to soils contamination. The City failed to perform its due diligence in purchasing polluted property and building a park on it. Adding insult to injury, the park became a magnet for anti-social behavior. So the fence stayed up.
And up. For almost 20 years.
And yet somehow this long-running civic embarrassment became the all-important anchor for the foolish trail project that City staff kept promoting. While the trail screamers were lamenting south Fullerton’s park poorness (more on that later) they never bothered to reflect on the City’s shameful history of incompetence delivering open space at the UP Park.
Mayor Fred Jung decided enough was enough and at the last City Council meeting suggested that the the fence around the park be removed and the park opened for a neighborhood whose patronizing patrons say is “desperately needed.” Well, good. More open space for the community to desperately enjoy while the UP Park ad hoc Committee, the same committee that was ignored during the trail propaganda saga, can figure out what its future is. Councilmen Nick Dunlap and Bruce Whitaker agreed and the motion was approved 3-2.
It will be interesting to see if Ahmad Zahra will give up on keeping this park fenced off. Remember, he was the one who desperately wanted to illegally rent it out as a private, fenced and gated events center. And remember too, that to him, even to question park maintenance costs in his district is “offensive.”
God, I remember Zahra and that idiot Quirk-Silva trying to jam through that fish farm/wedding chapel nonsense. The hilarious thing was that he got the same idiot “mothers” all riled up to support the permanent closure of the park to a fenced off PRIVATE BUSINESS with zero parking. Same language – greenery, beauty, oxygen for the kids. Same wailing crap for a 100% different use.
And this is what the Fullerton boohoos claim is popular sentiment.
The Observer crowd can’t complain about this. More open space for los ninos!
No, no. That’s not the right liberal narrative. You have to spend money for the “underserved” or it isn’t the right gesture.
“trail screamers”
You guys are so hilariously, over the top, full of shit that you cry brown tears… over the possibility of a park opening!
Parks can’t do it! Why do it? You have to ow the lawn. Impossible! Bike paths no way! Who rides bikes? Trails… to nowhere! Which is obviously impossible, but no matter.
Have to complain about something.
Haha. You lost.
Read the post, idiot. The park IS re-opening.
How could they reopen it? My god, the maintenance!
The only people who would use that “trail” are the anglo gentrifiers in SOCO walk taking their dogs out to take a shit on your bike path. Good to see that’s how you want public money wasted. But you do you, girl.
1.78 million that would have gone to that trail. Not now! It will go to some other city.
Tragedy avoided, huh?
“Anglo” gentrifiers or the “bad guys” referred to below. No middle ground?
Have you ever been to a park or trail in Fullerton?
Every kind of person there. But mostly just people out getting their exercise, yes walking their dogs, riding their bicycles.
Real fucking hellscape.
Haha. You lost. Again. No private events center for you either! Loser.
You can still go take a shit on it, along with the gentrifiers’ pooches. And they can have some really good conversations with you on their level.
Please pay no attention to us. I am sure nothing good will come of it. If we knew what I was talking about we wouldn’t have this awful headache.
Thank you Mayor Jung, and councilmen Dunlap and Whitaker for showing real wisdom.
Even the former City Manager, Chris Myers said this was a fiasco.
That’s saying a lot, considering what a fiasco Myers was.
No kidding.
I said what? I must have been sober.
It’s fun in a real maudlin sort of way to think about how many six-figure pensioners were responsible for buying this land in the first place: Jim Armstrong, Susan Hunt, Gary Chapulsky, F. Paul Dudley and Robert Hodson.
We must be paying a million bucks a year in retirement trampoline money to these 5 nitwits.
So sad. The Fullerton Observer doesn’t seem to think the Bushala canning of the crummy trail was a good idea. No one named Bushala is on the Council last I checked, but reason and facts are beyond the Observer these days. Keyboard and public comments tough guy Bernard may pull a muscle typing all his comments with his best pal Zahra whispering in his ear.
Of God, the horror perpetrated on the underserved community by not giving them a an expensive piece of shit so they can be ever grateful to their non-Latino masters in City Hall!
I’m glad the shitty UP Park is no longer held hostage by city staff.
It was held hostage from Day 1.
Does anyone remember when UP park was initially opened? The restroom was a hotbed of drugs and prostitution. A police nightmare. What will be different this time? Just askin’…
The Rick Lloyd Crane $75,000 to design toilet is gone.
“The restroom was a hotbed of drugs and prostitution.”
Did you have to relocate? Just asking. Don’t want to inconvenience anyone. Especially the police to enforce the law. I mean that’s a giant park how could they figure this out.
Haha. You lost.
We are really becoming so incoherent I despair. And by despair I mean we’re not gonna pay Dr. Schwartzman anymore.
What will be different this time is more homeless and bigger piles of trash.
What will not be different is the city’s ability to control the criminality.
But you don’t understand. If you open something up all the bad guys will go away. That’s the Hoogerhustled Formula.
So, close all parks and trails since then you will solve homelessness and “bad guys.” Winning!
Bad guys are still somewhere being bad even without landscaping and lighting in the alley that would have been a trail. Maybe even the fucking alley.
Haha. You lost.
You win. No trail. GOOD LUCK holding onto your majority. This vote will hurt Dunlap and Jung. Time to reap the whirlwind
Dunlap and Jung are shoo-ins. Whirlwind? How a bout a gentle breeze stirring in Egleth’s powder room?
Ew.
Ew, indeed.
“Bernard” owns “David” on comment section
Bernard has his head up Zahra’s ass.
Then “David” is a damn fool for engaging that obnoxious wheeze bag.
Fullerton is the Detroit of the West.
Truly Terrible cities. Besides all that, how’s Homeless Heaven been treating you?
Homeless Hell and it’s better here than living in Fullerton!
Diane Vena wrote the Observer Op Ed. She is a former public school teacher draining $137,508 from the California with her “educator” pension. Not sure she should be lecturing anyone.
So where are the Tilapia going ?
Tilapia? Is that the name of the lady who goes to meetings and cluelessly opines about bike lanes and biking trails?
Zahra stands out as the sole council member possessing genuine foresight. Bushala is the mastermind behind everything bad that happens in Fullerton. I wish he would take some guidance from Zahra.
This vote has hurt Jung and Dunlap while empowering Zahra and Charles. Who turns down money from the state?? I guess Bushala’s goal is to make sure Jung and Dunlap don’t get re-elected.