Riddle: what’s worse, an endorsement by a greasy political bagwoman, or the endorsing of a perjurer, a confessed thief, and a desperate office-seeker?
I don’t know, and I don’t need to.
Here is our lobbyist mayor, the ethically challenged Jennifer Fitzgerald endorsing the equally unspeakable Paulette Marshall to her fellow female Republican cohorts.
Birds of a feather, right?
Whoa! What’s this? Endorsing a non-Republican?
There are two things we may discern from this cozy relationship. The first is that Fitzgerald thinks she can get her scuzzy self re-elected without local party help, and second, more importantly, Curt Pringle, for whom Fitzgerald plies her wares, is betting the farm on the Chaffee Crime Family.
This week FFFF and local hero Joshua Ferguson do battle in a courtroom with the defenders of incompetence and opacity – the City of Fullerton, represented by in incomparably stupid and corrupt law firm Jones and Mayer. The Voice of OC outlines the details here, so I’ll let it go at that, other than to remark on the sad state of affairs when a citizen is sued by his own government in retribution for what they did.
According to Voice of OC, our old pals the Florentines, pere et fil, are at it again.
The family goes way back
This clan of scofflaws has a long history of violating Fullerton’s municipal code so it should be no surprise to learn about their most recent hi-jinks.
Apart from rumors of arson and arboricide, FFFF readers have been treated to the Florentine saga of scandalous sidewalk theft, illegal dance floors, and operating in violation of the requirements of a conditional use permit.
The latest offense, which came to light at yesterday’s Planning Commission meeting is an application for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) amendment that was not authorized by the property owner, a guy named Mario Marovic. The Fullerton Municipal Code explicitly requires property owner authorization for a CUP. Instead, the actual application form was digitally modified to show that the Florentines themselves could now authorize the amendment. The person who signed the form, Joe Florentine, the junior member of the gang, claims he has no idea how the form got altered.
Domer. Just following orders…
Once something starts giving off a bad odor it’s pretty certain that it’s only going to get worse. Many questions need to be answered, pretty damn quick: Why did the planning department process an application they must have known violated the law? Why did our crack City Attorney Dick Jones decide to accept the strange legal reasoning of Florentine’s lawyer? Did the City Manager, Ken Domer, direct the Planing Director to ignore the law? If Domer did, was it on orders from Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald, who has been running interference for scofflaw bar owner in downtown Fullerton for eight years of mayhem?
I just saw this little gem on Youtube. If you think Pike County, Ohio is any worse than California, guess again. The fat, cowardly shit-stain swine who stars in this in-house video “resigned” but is subject to all sorts of criminal repercussions. In our state, this video would have been hidden and it would have taken legal recourse just to get an illegal brush-off by somebody like Jones and Mayer. Fat Fuck also has a couple of buddies watching him in operation. No dopubt two of the “good cops” we keep hearing about.
And if you think this sort of thing couldn’t happen in the Fullerton jail, you should think again – or better yet do some internet searches on people who have been physically brutalized by our boys in blue. And never forget the Fullerton jail death of Dean Gochenour, whose happy jailer and Brady cop, Vince Mater, smashed his DAR because, well, not because he was afraid of evidence getting out. Naw, it was just anger management issues.
Our esteemed City Council appointed lobbyist-councilcreature Jennifer Fitzgerald to be the new mayor a couple weeks ago. Supposedly it’s her turn again. How and why Jan Flory was appointed Mayor Pro Tem is anybody’s guess, especially since Bruce Whitaker and Ahmad Zahra have been on the council longer without appointment – supposedly the criterion for getting the job.
Zahra and Jesus Silva Quirk are no doubt angling to grab the mayor titlee when they run for re-election in 2022. They aren’t too bright, but they’re smart enough to count in four-year increments.
But the nasty machinations of our talent-free council are not the point of this post, merely a rolling introduction. What I really want to share is the completely self-serving and fraudulent mayoral bio Ms. Fitzgerald has placed on the City’s website, the first two paragraphs of which I reproduce here:
Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald was elected to the Fullerton City Council in November 2012 and served as Mayor Pro Tem in 2014/2015 and Mayor in 2015/2016. In her first three years in office, Mayor Fitzgerald played a key role in several significant accomplishments, including a $3.5 million retroactive refund of water rate overcharges, public safety reform, a substantive increase in funding to repair the city’s aging roads and water infrastructure, and adoption of new transparency measures for public employee labor negotiations.
Mayor Fitzgerald represents the City of Fullerton on the Board of Directors for the Association of California Cities-Orange County Chapter and she is a Member of the Board of Directors for the Orange County Taxpayers Association. She is a former Metropolitan Water District Director, Past President of the North Orange County Chamber (formerly Fullerton Chamber of Commerce) and past Member of the Board of Directors for the Fullerton Historic Theater Foundation. Previously, she served the City of Fullerton on its Planning Commission and General Plan Advisory Committee.
It’s pretty bad that Fitzgerald is trying to take credit for the water refund she fought tooth and nail to minimize. It’s worse that she is trying to get gullible folks to think she has done anything about police reform , when in reality she has been an ardent defender of cover-ups for eight years – including hush-up settlements and even being implicated in hiding the drunk hit-and-run perpetrated by her buddy Joe “Wild Ride” Felz. The unkindest cut of all may be her bragging about “increased funding” for street and water infrastructure that she and her comrades let sink into a deplorable mess – the worst in Orange County.
At least this go ’round she omits her oft-repeated lie that she has balanced budgets, but her re-election campaign material will no doubt rectify the omission. I’ll be checking into that.
And finally I direct your attention to paragraph two, wherein the tone deaf Fitzgerald blithely recaps all the public money laundering agencies she has consorted with, peddling her wares as a lobbyist for one of the greasiest operators in OC – Curt Pringle.
Most of you, dear Friends, probably only know Fullerton City Attorney Dick Jones as the marblemouthed, incompetent, prevaricating boob whose own failure to protect City secrets has led to a city-attempted crack down on the First Amendment. You may recall he was also the stooge who sanctioned the illegal water tax in Fullerton for years.
But Mr. Jones’s manifest talents for acrobatics along the tightrope of ethics are well-known across the county.
The cities of Brea and La Habra buy much of their water from a “private,” non-profit middleman called California Domestic Water Company, an operation that wholsesales water to its municipal customers. The cities get to appoint their own board members to this corporation which has been fighting efforts to make these same members report their financial interests. And guess who is the Chairman of this Board? You guessed it – the ubiquitous Richard Jones, Esq. who also happens to be the City Attorney for La Habra.
So far so semi-benign, right? Except that California Domestic Water has a wholly-owned subsidiary called Cadway. And not surprisingly, the Cadway board is comprised of the exact same members as Cal Domestic. Oh, and, yeah, it just so happens that Cadway is a for-profit venture that also deals in water sales and trades in conjunction with Cal Domestic, and that paid out over $100,000 in five years to former Brea City Manager, and Cadway boardmember, Tim O’Donnell. It seems that Cadway rewards its operatives with bonuses for increased volume of water sold to its customers – the people of La Habra and Brea – an obvious conflict of interest that landed O’Donnell in hot water with the Fair Political Practices Commission for non-disclosure, and a paltry $500 fine.
Hopefully, The Voice will keep digging into this matter, including digging into what sort of benefits have accrued to our own City Attorney, Dick Jones.
A long-standing tradition of inveterate and knee-jerk police apologists here on FFFF is to suggest, with no subtlety at all, that they sure hope the cops or “fire fighters”come a callin’ when we are in need of them. Behind the hostility of the threat there lays a vague sense of entitlement that only a long-standing monopolist could love.
But is this the sort of talk that should be emanating from the mouth of America’s top cop, a lawyer who has sworn many times over to defend the Constitution? Apparently our AG William Barr thinks so. At a recent cop fest he uttered almost verbatim the same veiled threat to “communities” that don’t offer police their proper respect and deference.
Wow. It’s not enough for this bloated and corrupt sack of crap to turn looking the other way for his boss into a full-time job. He has now found it necessary to threaten citizens just like so many anonymous commenters on this blog.
Word has seeped out from the once hermetically sealed walls of City Hall that we may not have Richard “Dick” Jones, Esq. to kick around much longer. It would seem, if the rumors are true, that Good Ol’ Dick has had enough of screwing the taxpayers of Fullerton with his pettifogging, self-serving legal advice and is “retiring” with all of his ill-gotten spoils.
Where there’s smoke…
Well, possibly not all his spoils, because he must believe his “I Can’t Believe Its A Law Firm” will have some residual value after Mudslide oozes off.
Now I don’t know about you, Friends, but a collection of lawyers that includes Kimberly Barlow and Gregory Roosevelt Palmer doesn’t seem like it could be worth very much to me; but Jones is supposedly pitching the continued services of his collection of miscreants, so he must plan on keeping his name on the letterhead and probably receiving revenue thereby.
Let slip the dogs of law…
Will our city councilcreatures keep this gang on retainer? After the abysmal performance of Jones in the pas it’s hard to imagine anybody wanting them around, at all. Of course this is the same gaggle that has kept Jones, et al., on the clock for over twenty years – and that’s a lot of bungling and cover-ups.
It seems Fullerton has a new problem. According to Councilmember Bruce Whitaker, the City Attorney lied when he publicly proclaimed last Tuesday that the City Council voted 5-0 in September to initiate legal action against Joshua Ferguson, David Curlee, FFFF, and a bunch of Does to be named later.
Here’s how it is described by the Voice of OC’s Spencer Custudio:
Meanwhile, there are questions in Fullerton about how the City Council first authorized the lawsuit against Ferguson.
At the Nov. 5 meeting, City Attorney Dick Jones said the councilmembers voted unanimously to file the lawsuit against Ferguson and the blog.
“In an effort to clarify any Brown Act violations, the fact that City Council on Sept. 17, 2019, met on a motion made by Mayor (Jesus) Silva and seconded Mr. (Ahmad) Zahra, on a 5-0 vote, the City Council approved the filing of a writ to seek a temporary restraining order against the main defendants,” Jones said.
But, that unanimous vote is wrong, according to Councilman Bruce Whitaker
“When they say I voted to approve this lawsuit, I say that’s not true,” Whitaker said.
In fact, Whitaker was the only dissenting vote when the Council majority doubled-down on the lawsuit during the Nov. 5 closed session portion of the meeting.
I never took Truth in law school…
Somebody is lying, and if I had to guess it is our City Attorney Richard “Dick” Jones. At this point I’m now wondering if a vote took place at all back on September 17th. It would be just like Jones to try to create a September “vote” to cover his wide expanding ass, when no real vote even happened.
Silence is golden…
Still, for somebody who claims he was maligned in public by his own lawyer, Bruce Whitaker was pretty damn passive when Jones made his comment about a unanimous vote. So who’s telling the truth? Who knows? But I bet it isn’t Dick Jones, who is neck-deep in the lawsuit his own incompetence caused, and by which he is actually profiting.
The shy City rodent finally emerges from its hole…
Yep, just as we surmised, the City of Fullerton illegally ignored California’s Brown Act – a law made to protect us citizens from our own government. I posted here about the secret agenda item and the lack of reporting out, as required by law.
Staying awake…helpful, but not required.
So a recap: on September 17, 2019, the City Council of Fullerton, hiding behind closed doors, both raised the subject of suing FFFF and Fullerton citizens, and then took action – both without a whisper to the public about what had happened in this filthy little Star Chamber.
Another good month’s billing of the suckers!
How do I know? Because in a Voice of OC story today, our grossly overpaid and incompetent City Attorney, Richard “Dick” Jones, said so. Here’s the proof:
And at this Tuesday’s Council meeting, Dick Jones, head city attorney, disclosed that the Council voted Sept. 17 to sue Ferguson over the documents.
It was the first time the city publicly disclosed the closed session vote, as required by state law, despite the vote happening nearly two months ago.
“In an effort to clarify any Brown Act violations, the fact that City Council on Sept. 17, 2019, met on a motion made by Mayor (Jesus) Silva and seconded Mr. (Ahmad) Zahra, on a 5-0 vote, the City Council approved the filing of a writ to seek a temporary restraining order against the main defendants,” Jones said.
I’m a bird, I’m a plane, I’m a lawyer. I’m a lawyer!
So two months after the violation, and with the local and national media getting wind of the unconstitutional lawsuit travesty, our esteemed City Attorney decided he’d better get his client to, you know, follow the law. In this case, the City has felt zero compunction about labeling us as unethical thieves while they themselves are completely incapable of doing anything competently or ethically.
