Now, What About Our Water Tax Refund? Part 3: The Big Lie And The Big Dippers
Of course everybody in City hall knew the dirty little secret. The illegal 10% water tax that was hidden by the confusing name of “in-lieu fee.” Year after rancid year the City Fathers and Mothers – from daffy and angry liberal spendthrifts like Molly McClanahan and Jan Flory, to supposed conservatives Dick Ackerman and Chris Norby blessed the scam and put their imprimatur of approval upon it.
Of course they knew, or must have suspected, that the 10% was nothing other than a greasy rake-off that made their jobs easier and rewarded their friends in the bureaucracy. And they knew, or must have suspected, that the various City departments were already charging directly to the Water Fund – in direct contravention to the purpose of the original Resolution that created the”fee.”
This means that because the City departments were already charging to the Water Fund, that cost too jacked up the tax. Double Dip.
And all that free water wasted by the City over the years? You guessed it: the cost jacked up the illegal water tax. Triple Dip.
The fee was set at 10% of gross water revenue, meaning that every time the commodity cost of water went up, or transmission cost went up, so did the absolute amount of the tax itself. Quadruple Dip.
Naturally, the water tax itself was considered to be part of the gross “cost” of the water works, meaning that as the absolute value of the 10% increment rose, so did total of the tax!! The true amount of the tax was 10% of cost plus 10% of the 10%!!! Which is why the tax was actually about 11% of the true cost. Got it? Quintuple Dip.
The defenders of the Old Culture of Corruption and its slimey shakedown want you to believe that everything is pretty okay, that no harm was done, and that refunding any part of this felonious rip-off would just be a big waste of everybody’s time.
Wrong. Accountability and responsibility have their cost. Sooner or later you have to pay the piper.
i want my money back. Lets get this show on the road.
“i want my money back”……….. Hmmmmm
Not so fast, Kathleen!
I believe that all money in question should be first deposited into my (third party) personal account and then, I will fairly disburse the funds among the parties as I see fit.
I would probably purchase 10% bearing 10 years Fullerton Municipal Bonds to double your investment.
Hmmmmm…..You’re a funny guy!
according to the report from the office of independent review the same bad behavior would be repeated inside the Fullerton police department because disciplinary action was nothing more than a reprimand. Lets go to city hall and demand that there must be an attempt to repay the water funds which were illeagaly taken. To just sweep the thing under the carpet like some of the city council members want to do would be to encourage the same behavior to be repeated.
Excellent and concise summation. May I suggest that somebody belongs in jail for misappropriation of public funds?
How about Jim Armstrong, Chris Meyer, Joe Felz, and the City Attorney through the who period in question: Dick Jones Esq.
Oh yeah, and the arrogant Flory, too.
“May I suggest that somebody belongs in jail for misappropriation of public funds?”……….. Hmmmmmm
“Book’em Dano”!
Misappropriation is what it is.
Class Action for Fraud anyone.Keep ’em in Depositions a long time.
Obviously there is not a D.A. to do the job.
RICO.
These officials may think they are above the law and can escape on some ill-begotten notion of immunity or statute, but they are far from above the law.
Rudy, yep from your mouth to um not sure whose ears?
“Now we all know that a citizen’s committee is incapable of figuring out things on its own” joe,I am glad we actually agree on something! So do you feel the same way about a police over site committee too? As you said citizens committees can’t figure anything out, so why would you want them involved in policing? Please answer me that!
If the choice is between idiots and crooked idiots, I’ll take the idiots every time. So yeah. I mean no.
Actually the line was meant from the perspective of a professional, supercilious bureaucrat. Ironically, since most citizen committees are packed with stooges I would share this sentiment.
However, the Water Committee (at least the majority) seems to have cottoned on to the in-lieu fee scam.
By the way copper, the word is “oversight” not “over site” which sounds like a description of Google Earth.
I knew that comment was facetious, but that is a quality lost on our dear, GED pals at FPD.
The dullards down at Fullerton Police Department shouldn’t be spending their compensated time on the computer trolling this “site” and pissing off the locals.
Instead, they should be investing their time in front of a computer coming up with e-tools like this web site that the LAPD has designed to better interact with and inform residents of crime in their community.
http://www.lapdonline.org/crime_mapping_and_compstat
F-lover as she can see by the last few posts no one is trolling this blog anymore!! No one care about the water issue or anything else you fffffers have to say! Just look how many people have commented on the last dozen or so posts!!! It’s the same ol idiots just rambling back and forth with each other!! Haha oh how the time has changed!!!
“oh how the time has changed!!!” to what, towards where, for whom? the only constant is change. who benefits from this change?
FFFF blog has revealed the long-time corruption of fullerton PD, the apathy and obfuscation committed by fullerton city council, irrational city manager appointments, city council persons being whined and dined on developers’ yachts, city council persons using tax dollars to pay for their costly junkets to Long Beach of all places, the destruction of downtown Fullerton from a place of civility into a den of drunks
Yeah. No more trolls. Care to rethink that statement TROLL?
Yes, it’s very funny how all the obscene, irrelevant comments have dwindled. But your pals will be back wnen the topic of the OCSD comes back!
“Just look how many people have commented on the last dozen or so posts!!!”
But we are still reading it.
Fail.
Facetious is lost on the capricious?
Well it finally happened. Yes the decrepit water main broke in front of my house. After about a half a million dollars worth of equipment showed up it was repaired after 15 hours but not before approximately 50,000 gallons of water secretly entered the sewer system without paying its share of the “sewer use fee”. The black square covered in decomposing cold patch-the fourth black square on my street guaranteed to yield skinned knees or worse to the neighborhood skateboarders, is tastefully flanked by dig alert’s graffiti. I am waiting for the saw cut and finish. Not to be outdone by the high pressure sodium street light whose tired ballast fires on and off (ostensibly to save energy) labors to continually discharge a tranquil glistening over the evaporated slurry coat that general services applied a few years back. Was this an effort to attempt to hide the disintegrating circa 1950’s pavement beneath paid for 300 times over by our taxes? Those black squares are all over the place. After a 6 or a 7.0 earthquake this place is gonna look like Fountain Valley in 1865 with artesian wells springing up every 2 blocks. Our infrastructure is heading toward ruin and our leaders with the exception of Bruce are taking us there by the hand if they cant even manage to begin to address what could be a potentially deadly situation with the most critical element of life on the line- our water supply-. We have 1 crew for these breaks? Fullerton has untold miles of cast iron pipe that have been corroded by the salt laden imported water laden with caustic disinfectant chemicals added to our water supply. The brittle pipes are encased in concrete which after 50 years (the half life of most pours) have long begun to disentegrate. These were all conveniently laid parallel to fragile sewer lines in either expansive or alluvail soils or worse yet, liquefaction zones. Shut your main off and live a day dry. Try it you’ll like it. It may become a reality for an extended period of time. I remember when Fukushima went and the AQMD pulled their radiation monitoring stations offline. I asked the city if they had a radiation detector and was told by all departments no. I doubt they have contingency plans for a water emergency if they couldn’t spring a few hundred bucks for a rad alert inspector. Folks get yourselves a couple of extra trash cans from home depot for 15 bucks and fill them up. Get your self a water filter. You just might need them someday. You can call me what you want but just don’t call me if you need anything. You have been warned.
My understanding is that the FFFF answer to every problem is to cut revenues and eventually declare bankruptcy, so good luck with fixing all of that.
Your “understanding” is your own propaganda, dimebag.
Yes and his solution must be to increase taxes so as to maintain the exponential increase of the HDL and triglyceride levels of those who have bequeathed this legacy of debt and decaying infrastructure to me and my children.
Criticized on FFFF for propaganda! It’s like the pot calling the carrot black. Go read your own blog, “Cameron,” and see how much the idea of sweet sweet municipal bankruptcy gets celebrated by your regulars.
“It’s like the pot calling the carrot black”………. Hmmmmm
Your hate and racism against African American brothers is unacceptable here!
Calling African Americans “black carrot” is a hate crime and you should be disbarred #256598
I am informing BAR.
I can’t help but think that the assumption by many who come on FFFF is that the $27,000,000 in illegal revenue is sitting in some institution ready to be repatriated to defrauded ratepayers. It’s gone, it is no more, it’s sitting in the investment accounts and real estate invesntments of retired cops, firefighters, and recently retired administrators.
I’ve lived on the same street in southwest Fullerton for over 25 yrs and have witnessed the sidewalks go from being in pretty good condition to now so bad that there are at least 8 separate places (and it’s a small block) where there is dangerous uplifting.
“I’ve lived on the same street in southwest Fullerton for over 25 yrs”…….. Hmmmmm
Time for a Sunset Community HOA.
“Cameron” says on an earlier part of this series that “Fullerton has lots of money.” I’m surprised, because I’d think he’d want to get rid of anything “uplifting.”
Your “understanding” like people made George Soros millionaire by collecting their abandoned property in 1940s Hungary. Now, instead being prosecuted as a criminal he is your filthy rich friend leftist.
I thought FFFF answer was for Fullerton’s municipal employees to reduce their salaries, pensions, benefits to align with the depressed economy
http://www.ocregister.com/news/reported-382910-fullerton-park.html
Sheriffs have helicopters, which is one of the biggest deterents to crime, making the job much easier and faster.
Citizens watchdog should be filing a bar complaint against the city attorney on this matter along with conflicts of interests, breach of fiduciary duty.
http://fullertonstories.com/location-found-for-permanent-homeless-shelter-in-fullerton/
What good and kind people who live in fullerton and work/support the fullerton Collaborative.
Since Kelly thomas was beaten to death in full view of the public by fullerton PD, the pillars of Fullerton’s society have worked so hard to help the homeless.
too bad, these same pillars did nothing to stop the fullerton PD pattern of civil rights abuses committed against the good people of fullerton, including the homeless that eventually led to the beating death of homeless kelly thomas.
In fact, some of these same pillars gave out awards to the Fullerton PD for their outstanding police-community relations program.
Here comes the obvious question, Rusty Kennedy. When fullerton Police Chief McKinley was your colleague on the Orange County Human Relations Commission, why your commission seemed so unaware that McKinley’s police force was abusing the civil rights of fullerton’s community?
The homeless shelter will be used as a positive photo-op for our pillars of the community.
and it only took the murder of homeless man by fullerton PD to get an empty furniture store turned into a shelter
It is a grand location far enough away from where most of the so called “pillars” live. The photo ops can be shared with Fullerton’s own silent clergy, silent members of academia, silent city hall employees, silent chamber of commerce members, silent feel good limousine liberals, silent phony conservatives, silent members of the FPD and all the rest of the silent public whose silent catharsis could only come through a pill, a bottle or a bong. May God help this silence is deafening town as we try to move forward in the absence of silence and may the good people of Fullerton NEVER take their eyes off of the ball. For those of you that have remained silent, may I remind you all that it is never too late to do the right thing.
Great right next to an elementary schoo and across the street from a single family neighborhood.
Who asked anybody in the Chapman park neighborhood? Does the Fullerton City Council even know about this?
Looks like Nelson’s trying to prove he can do something – one way or another.
Calling Mayor Bruce Whitaker! Are you asleep at the switch?
That was a response to Mike Wagner
There is another ideal location that would cost a lot less if anything to the city. A factory burned down a number of years ago next to the armory where the homeless stay during the winter.It is the lot on basque and commonwealth. This location is next to where a lot of homeless people are accostomed to staying during the armory off season across from hunt branch library. The city has been using it occasionaly for extra parking as it is near thier city vehicle storage site.It would be an ideal place and is on a bus route , next to the dog park and the library.It is just a few minutes to the downtown transpartational center on the octa bus #26, unlike the other site which would require 2 buses to get to downtown fullerton. I would suggest for a low cost shelter to put up some army baracks on the site like the ones they have in costa mesa near trader joes. And let people familiar with the homeless and run this thru church groups which are familiar with helping the homeless like some of the other successful homeless ministries in the south county. There is no reason to spend millions when there are already low cost better alternatives.
if this location would work well for a community garden that the homeless could participate with if it doesn’t work out for a shelter.
nuff said