Author: Disillusioned Ex-Hippy

Says the 4 year old as he spins around and waves his arms frantically for attention.

And so our new acquaintance, lively young fleur Elijah Manassero presented himself after the last city council meeting in another of those pre-written emails to the Fullerton City Council.

Earlier that evening the Council passed a new ordinance making bar owners responsible for the cacophony that emanates from their establishments. At the meeting, tender Elijah, pretending to be a big supporter of small businesses, claimed that the majority of the bar owners were already in non-compliance with the new regulations.

Of course they are are. They’re in non-compliance with the old regulations, too. That’s whole point of putting a stop to the amplified music free-for-all. Sweet Elijah’s conclusion to his “argument” is that bar owners shouldn’t be held responsible because of their…irresponsibility.

But back to the fragile sprig Manassero’s email. The comfy chair he was sitting in in the council chambers was still warm when he hit the send button for his missive to the council. Get a load of this:

Where to start picking apart this nonsense? You choose. But do linger over the part where the precious rosebud claims credit for media coverage of the issue thanks to his “platform,” whatever that may be.

Sometimes stuff pops up that you couldn’t possibly make up. The latest Fullerton Observer includes a piece co-authored by Curtis Gamble and Sankia Kennedy and features the headline I used, above.

To start off with I have to say I can’t think of two people less likely to come up with a potential solution for anything.

Poor Curtis Gamble is just a perpetually discombobulated fellow who takes an opportunity a couple times a month to polish his sense of self-importance at city council meetings, generally offering comments on things he knows nothing about. He presumes to advocate for the homeless, bus drivers, seniors, students, etc., etc.; people who would probably just as soon forgo his representation. Co-author Saska Kennedy is thoroughly annoying too, although she, like her older sister, Sharon, is propelled by the ideological dogma of the self-righteous and sanctimonious left.

Their “article” presumes there is a homeless crisis in Fullerton. And it offers that homeless seniors represent 20% of this crisis. Their potential solution? Use the Rancho La Paz senior mobile home park as some sort of permanent housing for the homeless, moving them into trailers as they are vacated.

I can’t conceive of a worse idea: a village of homeless people assigned property, not their own, to live in and presumably maintain. Somehow the pathologies of homelessness – schizophrenia, drug abuse, living in filth would be rectified by mobile home park living. Cooking, cleaning, job hunting, health maintenance all self-performed by the newly housed, one concludes. Of course professional do gooders from Illumination Foundation (as a for instance) will be on hand to dispense “behavioral” admonitions and the necessary modalities.

The biggest unstated obstacle, and one that Curtis and Skansia work really hard to ignore is the fact that the mobile home park has an owner. When last I heard, that fellow is a real estate and numismatist named John Saunders who has been villainized by Fullerton Boohoo for raising rents on his ground leases and who, I believe, is highly unlikely to go along with Homeless Village. Well, maybe he would if the City were to reimburse him for rents and maintenance costs and policing of the village. That would cost a fortune.

The article fails to mention that typically land, not the mobile homes are owned by a guy like Saunders. A trailer wouldn’t be available unless purchased by somebody for the homeless purpose, or just abandoned by the owner.

Then there’s the issue of joint sovereignty. The south half of Rancho La Paz is in Anaheim, not Fullerton, so there’s that.

When I was done reading this nonsense I was left wondering its purpose. Is it just gratuitous virtue signaling? A Big Idea hatched by the disoriented Curtis Gamble and advertised by the Kennedy Sisters? Hard to say. But one thing is certain. The piece projects the typical lack of pragmatism that is the hallmark of the Homeless Industrial Complex, so maybe it has a chance – if politicians can be seen to be throwing money at a problem absent results.

The August 19th Fullerton City Council meeting has a few sort of interesting items.

First, we have the Closed Session topic of Fullerton joining the class action lawsuit against ICE behavior on our streets.

This is interesting because it aligns with the “transparency” protest cooked up by the Kennedy Sisters long before the agenda was even published. Obviously Zahra and Charles leaked confidential attorney-client information from the City Attorney as to why this should be discussed first behind a closed door, as Harpoon insinuated in the linked post, above.

Anyhow, whatever happens behind this closed door will soon be leaked by Zahra and Charles to Fullerton Boohoo, some of whom will show up to blow three minutes (each) of everybody’s time with the usual rhetoric. But now the rhetoric will be about the lack of transparency of Jung, Valencia, and Dunlap.

Consent Calendar Item 12 is so poorly written it’s impossible to understand. Are “Downtown Parking Program Funds” just dumped into the General Fund (10) and then doled out to the appropriate downtown projects? The agenda report gives no separate accounting. If those funds are buried in the General Fund, why? Why aren’t they just placed in their own enterprise fund to begin with? Are downtown parking revenues being used to pay General Fund responsibilities? Typical opacity. Don’t expect anybody on the City Council to inquire, and don’t expect Young Elijah Manassero to demand transparency with his special brand of tender earnestness

Consent Calendar Item #14 deals with the usual pea-under-the-walnut shell budgeting for “Phase 2” work on the dismal disaster formally known as the UP Park – The Poison Park in FFFF jargon. The slow and incredibly expensive death march has begun with no mention of why the park was fenced off decades ago. The staff report just says “the park closed approximately 20 years ago” as if the park just decided to close itself. The City closed the park with zero fanfare because it was a complete fiasco from the beginning, a multi-million dollar monument to six-figure bureaucratic failure; a thing something nobody outside City Hall asked for or wanted.

The really bad part about this item is how the Council is being asked to transfer another $300,000 to the project. Why? More mission cost creep, of course.

Item 21 is the start of something big. Fullerton’s trash service contract is coming up in June, 2027 and staff wants to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP). The RFP solicitation document itself remains a mystery to the public because it isn’t attached to the agenda. Sorry.

These contracts with trash haulers involve huge amounts of money over the term of agreements. Hundreds of millions. Republic Services is our current “vendor,” grandfathered in from the old MG Disposal operation, if you go back far enough. Republic’s foot in the door may not help in obtaining future contract. It recently underwent a work stoppage by Teamsters workers in solidarity with Republic employees in…Boston. We were the ones affected.

Another Republic problem, apparently, has been their continued unwillingness to come to terms with the City about stuff required by a state mandate, as described in the staff report.

Oops. Making the City look bad to the pointy heads in Sacramento is no way to endear yourself to city staff. The inclusion of this episode in the staff report can’t be good news for the good folks at Republic.

Republic has, no doubt, been busy greasing the Fullerton council axle recently, and no doubt others will soon follow.