FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Author: Mr. Peabody
Mr. Peabody is a Child of Aquarius, a former hard drug user, and a devotee of lawn bowling. He abandoned a profitable career as an curb address number painter to fulfill a lifetime dream of mastering the zither.
Last Friday’s Small Business “Forum,” brought to Fullerton by the North Orange County Chamber of Commerce and featuring Councilperson Ahmad Zahra as “Master-of-Ceremonies,” didn’t attract a whole lot of turnout. Could it be that the NOCCC is seen for what it is – a useless toady for Fullerton City Hall, rather than an incubator for small business? Or maybe folks realize that the unemployed and unemployable “film director” Ahmad Zahra, is hardly the person to talk authoritatively on the subject of business, large or small.
In any case attendance was sparse.
Oh, no.
There seem to be about 20 people here, and half of them are wandering around, holding private conversations, or just walking away, even as Zahra, at the podium, is burnishing his credentials as an agent of economic development.
Maybe next time they’ll hold their “brilliant” and “dynamic” conference in a broom closet to enhance Zahra’s profile, and keep the City from further humiliation.
The audience will fit, but not the ego…
This forum is another wonderful metaphor for the City of Fullerton’s hapless “economic development” department, a function that can present no evidence that it actually pays for itself in new tax increment. In fact, if another metaphor, the ridiculous, money losing “Wake on Wilshire” is any indication, they never will.
And I still want to know: who approved the use of the City seal, and who paid for the hall.
That’s if you are Ahmad Zahra, the Fullerton City Councilmember who knows nothing about small business, but who does know a lot about self-promotion to people who don’t know better. Zahra likes to peddle his “economic development” wares, but is really just an unemployed parasite desperate for a paying government job. He doesn’t know anything about running a business large or small.
If you hurry you can make it to this morning’s “Small Business Forum” organized by Zahra, at the Fullerton Community Center.
This brilliant 2 hour event features the State Treasurer Fiona Ma who at one time was some sort of an accountant, but who has been a professional politician for a long, long time. She had to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit a while back that cost the State $350,000 but, like Zahra’s assault and battery plea, the details are consigned to secrecy.
Time to come clean…..
There are two panels optimistically labeled “dynamic” which seems pretty unlikely. One panel features a unionista and some stooge from the North OC Chamber of Commerce, an organization that stopped representing small businesses 25 years ago, instead currying favor with government agencies. What they could possibly discuss is anybody’s guess.
And I have a couple of questions. First, who authorized Zahra to use the City seal, and who is paying for the rental of the conference room at the Community Center?
According to a knowledgeable Friend I know, it is illegal to hold a political campaign event on City property. I don’t know for sure, but this certainly has the ring of truth. If so, Fullerton council candidate Matt Truxaw is about to break the law. He’s having a campaign event a week from today on City property.
The embarrassing, money-losing “Walk on Wilshire” is indeed public property and Mr. Truxaw is having an election party for himself October 3rd on that closed portion of Wilshire Avenue. Can’t get more public than that, even if it’s on a leasehold that grants no such right.
Uh, oh. Is Mr. Truxaw one of those limousine libs who doesn’t think the law applies to him?
Oh, right. He became an overnight Republican just to run for office and make Fred Jung spend some money.
It will be interesting to see who shows up to this event and who would be dumb enough to pony up any cash for Truxaw the Straw. Man.
Good news for 4th District Fullerton City Council candidate Jamie Valencia. The fire fighter’s union chipped in big time a couple days ago.
Scoring cash…
$5500 is a lot of campaign cabbage and must bring Valencia’s 2024 fall haul near thirty grand with another 6 weeks to go before the November election. It’s pretty obviously an endorsement and that’s another blow to Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, champion of Fullerton’s liberal establishment, whose campaign is heavily reliant on union backing. And that’s good news for Republican candidate Linda Whitaker, too.
Watching the Jaramillo scow drift with the tide…
Ahmad Zahra, desperate to create a majority that will let him be Somebody must be gnashing his teeth.
Scoring kush…
Having the support of both “police and fire” is a big deal, especially if you’re a rookie candidate going up against two individuals who’ve been around forever. The support may just be cash, or maybe it will mean mailbox and street corner help. The self-styled public safety unions don’t just support candidates, they use elections as a mechanism to remind the public they are out there.
FFFF has related how our Elementary and High School Districts are both putting new bond measures on the November ballot. The insatiable maw must be fed. The districts employ battalions of overpaid educrats with ridiculous doctorate degrees in education, pretending to be experts in this or that. But we are not permitted to delve into mystery of school budgets for waste and stupidity. The districts tried this last in March, 2020 with Measures J and K – and were soundly defeated.
School bonds are increases on your property tax bill, pure and simple. The debt and the interest incurred are paid off over decades, with everybody’s property as a form of collateral. We are still paying off previous bonds, of course.
It’s not just property owners who feel the bite. Landlords pass on the tax increases in the form of higher rents; retailers pass on the the cost of higher rents in the form of higher prices, a contributor to inflation.
Once again an organization called Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform has donned the mantle of opposition to these latest efforts to get into our pockets, and should be roundly applauded.
As usual, the advocates for these bonds – many out-of-towners – will plead that it’s all for the kids who need “state-of-the-art” this, or “world class” that.
They will follow up that with the myth of the “citizen’s oversight committee,” hand-picked gaggle of liberals who don’t know a shovel from a shitake mushroom, and have never held anybody accountable for anything.
Then they will argue that the cost is dinky – a Big Mac or a Starbuck’s latte a week. But in reality the cost of both bonds combined, will be many hundreds of dollars per year, or even more, depending on the assessed value of your property.
We may also be sure that the school districts will use our resources in their political campaign just like they did last time. That’s illegal, right?But hey won’t someone please think of the children?
Well, there she goes. Don’t worry. There’s more where that came from…
Well, let’s be honest. Downtown Fullerton loses well over a million bucks every year, subsidized by the taxpayers. The beneficiaries? The good folks who purvey liquor, blast loud music, enable drunk driving and escape any sort of accountability for their customers’ behavior.
Business is booming…
And so I unveil my concept for DTF branding. Introducing the Barfman theme:
It’s axiomatic that when government agencies get money from some external source they often display a casual attitude toward spending it intelligently. Thus we get boondoggles like the infamous Trail to Nowhere, paid for mostly by a State grant.
The latest example of this is an $800,000 grant handed to Fullerton by Caltrans meant to improve transit centers. Here’s the staff report intro:
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION The City received funding to enhance and beautify areas in and around the Fullerton Transportation Center (FTC) through a competitive grant application process. The City used the grant to work with a consultant to establish a downtown brand and wayfinding program to assist mass transit users navigate the downtown area and improve visitation. The FTC is one of the higher ridership stations in the region serving over 400,000 riders annually. The project would capitalize on visitors using both Amtrak and Metrolink services.
At the last council meeting Community and Economic Development Director Sunayana Thomas and ED underling, Taylor Samuelson presented the fruits of all their labor so far in their effort to expend the Caltrans largesse.
And what they came up with is mostly just comical. And unnecessary.
It seems that our staff thinks the the most important way to “enhance” the FTC is by installing news signs. But of course “signs” is far too simple a concept, which instead is called “wayfinding,” a term implying that people are just too stupid to know where they’re going while “navigating.” But of course we know this whole thing is just make work for our crack “economic development” team who don’t develop anything except our pension obligation to them.
Of course a sign is inextricably tied to the notion of “branding,” an advertising phrase co-opted by bureaucrats pretending they have something to sell. And boy do they think they can “capitalize” on visitors. Why branding downtown Fullerton has anything to do with Caltrans is beyond me, but I leave that to greater minds to ponder.
Here are some branding ideas displayed at the council meeting.
Legendary music history? Local charm? A carnation? Botanical attributes? Modern and timeless theme? WT everlasting F? We paid somebody for this nonsense?
And, of course, new signs, repeating the theme, just in case you didn’t get it the first time.
Naturally, the “brand” looks outdated even before it’s installed on the signage, and we can be sure that in less than ten years the reigning economic development experts will be calling for a new brand, the old being so embarrassing. But in the meantime, fear not. The signs will be printed on “retroflective” vinyl attached to rigid aluminum panels.
The funniest idea of all is the notion of a “gantry” sign spanning Harbor Boulevard, welcoming people to downtown Fullerton.
Superfluous gantry sign
Of course there already is a sign on the old UP bridge doing just that a few hundred feet to the south:
And how much is this nonsense going to cost the taxpayers of California? Check out the budget:
That’s $322,000, give or take, if you count thirty-one grand for some sort of mural. That’s a whopping 40% of the entire grant that is supposed to freshen up the Fullerton Transportation Center.
When you see this sort of circle wank, you really have to wonder if there is anybody providing any sort of adult supervision in City Hall when you look at footling crap like this.
Just when you imagine that those purveyors of idiocy, The Fullerton Observer, can’t get any more entangled in making the news, they excel themselves. And by excel I mean fraud.
Saskia sez why write about news when you can try to make your own?! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
A Friend sent in an image of the latest paper copy of the Observer showing an unattributed ad for the money pit known as the Walk on Wilshire.
It’s intentionally fraudulent.
The effort is intended to stir up support for the street closure that right now is on life support, having been given only a three month reprieve by the City Council in July, while the bureaucrats stumble around looking for plausible reasons besides self-interest to keep it going.
The scam here is to suggest that the businesses listed get some benefit from the Wilshire Avenue street closure that so far has only one dedicated participant after four years – Mulberry Street. That’s just an oblique lie. Some of these businesses aren’t even on Wilshire, or even close to it; and others inside the Villa del Sol have no practical proximity to the street even if they wanted to play along with this money-losing, make-work charade characterized as “business development.” There are even two salons listed, the connective tissue to WoW so tenuous as to be transparent.
And the worst part is, there are several business listed here who are actively opposed the the street closure. Their phone numbers are printed here, presumably so that Observers can call them up and harass them into supporting the continuation of this nonsense. Did the Observer obtain permission from these businesses to use as a prop in the propaganda campaign? Wanna bet on that?
Things never looked better for Fullerton.
This is the sort of behavior that has the hallmark of the Fullerton Observer over the years, amateurism blended with vitriol for anybody that doesn’t bend the knee to the bureaucrats in City Hall, and weird leftist ideology.
So, according to the article these ponies and their associated costs are to be paid for by the cops themselves. Their horsing around to take place in addition to their regular duties. This makes one feel less aggrieved about the maintenance cost, but I have to wonder if this implies additional pay since the union would not like their boys working for free. Perhaps this is considered to have PR value.
Believe it or not, Fullerton now has an equestrian cop unit.
What’s that you say? Why? Why the Hell on Earth?
Rhinestone Cowboys…
I don’t know why, but I know it’s true because Orange County Register thief/scribe Lou Ponsi says so. You may remember Lou from his role as apologist for the FPD after six of their gang murdered Kelly Thomas in July, 2011. Before that he gained local fame by stealing a story from FFFF and pretending it was his.
Horsies? Really?
Why, during the influx of an immense ocean of red ink Fullerton has assembled a horse troop is beyond me. Horses need to be fed, sheltered and given adequate veterinary care (one hopes), and the use of them on Fullerton trails is completely unnecessary. Five cops on ponies is five less than could be patrolling Fullerton’s streets. (See addendum, above)
Will these bold equestrians be patrolling the Trail to Nowhere? Of course not.
Maybe they’re there for riot control, since a 900 lbs. horse is a substantial deterrent to all those rioters Fullerton deals with on a regular basis.
Whatever the the pretext for this nonsense, one wonders if this deployment was actually approved by our City Council. It hardly matters, does it?
I love the cowboy hats. A true sign that the spirit of the Old West, despite Doc Heehaw’s plea for “New West” behavior, is alive and well.
It’s funny how, one by one, the advocates for the idiotic “Walk on Wilshire” determinedly reject common sense arguments against it’s continuance.
Gone but not forgotten…
The concept has been a money loser for the City. Who cares?
Created and perpetuated by “economic development” City employees as make-work for themselves, the thing is an economic sinkhole, just like the rest of downtown Fullerton, while the City suffers from a massive tsunami of red ink. Who cares?
Only one restaurant has deemed it worthwhile to fully participate in this financial disaster. Who cares?
The rights and interests of business owners elsewhere on Wilshire Avenue have been intentionally denied. Who cares?
The ability of motorists to use a public street bought and paid for by the public has been denied them. Who cares?
At the July 16th City Council meeting we learned what was valuable according to the advocates of this moronic scheme. It wasn’t really about “economic development,” because there isn’t any. It was all about the squishy, feel-good goal of a communal gathering space, as if this silly, blocked off space provided any better communal experience than private dining on the inside of a restaurant, or on the sidewalk.
The fact the that the Fullerton Observer has dedicated itself to defending this ludicrous scheme should be sufficient evidence of its idiocy. The real goal of this gaggle is to deny auto access to a public street; it’s the first small step to a utopia where everybody is poor, riding bikes and wearing Mao jackets. But that’s too nutsy even for them to propound openly. So they advocate for a “public gathering space” even though the “Walk on Wilshire” is not really open to the general populace at all.
What these people don’t acknowledge is that there is already a large public space in downtown Fullerton.
It’s called the Downtown Plaza, an acre of open space that already exists, and that can be used without any cost for those interested in the orgasmic experience of New Urban public gathering. There’s even a little parklet across the way. Here it is:
There it is. Take it.
There is absolutely nothing from keeping the City opening this huge space to public dining and permitting ALL the restaurants in Fullerton to cater their wares here directly, or through an on line application. There’s trees, green grass and blue sky overhead.
Bought and paid for…
Of course this would require almost no City involvement, and no project our economic development employees could put on their time cards. It was built a long time ago and, except for a few events goes mostly unused. But there it is. String some solar light in the trees, put out some tables and you’re good to go. There’s even a handy parking structure across the street.
Arbols y césped y cielo azure…
How about this as a “pilot” program: use the existing open space for that “al fresco” dining experience so beloved by Bruce Whitaker, and open up Wilshire Avenue to the people who want to drive on it, and for the businesses on Wilshire that need it for convenient access and parking.
Does this idea seem ridiculous? Why? At the very least it demonstrates the shallowness of the alleged arguments in favor of keeping Wilshire closed: the City doesn’t intelligently used the communal gathering space it already has.
And why not restrict outside dining to the sidewalks, where it belongs?
Café life. On the sidewalk.
Our City staff, and at least two of our City Councilpersons, maybe three if you count Bruce Whitaker, would rather shut down a public street to our detriment, but to their benefit.
