The Fullerton Harpoon, Author at Friends For Fullerton's Future

February 23, 2009December 30, 2009Downtown Fullerton

Harbor Blvd.: Open for Pedestrians

Think of all the great people-oriented downtowns in Southern California. Old Town Pasadena and Orange. Westwood Village and San Diego’s Gaslamp section. Visit downtown Santa Monica or cruise PCH through downtown Manhattan Beach or Laguna Beach. Have you been on the main streets Beverly Hills or Balboa Island?

Think of the great people-oriented shopping and entertainment districts. Can you name just ONE that does NOT allow parking, passenger loading, valet service or even handicap access on its main business street?

There is only one: Fullerton.

After nearly a century of easy, convenient parking on Harbor Blvd. (called Spadra until 1960), parking was removed in 1982. The traffic engineers held sway then, and were more concerned about increasing traffic speeds than the survival of downtown businesses.

Now, 25 years later, their mistake needs to be rectified. Let Harbor be Harbor. Let it be a living, breathing people street by restoring access along Harbor Blvd! Let it be like Pasadena’s Colorado Blvd. or many other pedestrian oriented streets in thriving downtowns.

Downtown entrepreneur Sean Francis (Slidebar, Continental Room) has a plan to restore access on Harbor Blvd., between Wilshire and Commonwealth. This plan is supported by hundreds of signatories to a petition requesting a hearing before the Traffic Commission. Designed by KOA Engineering (who has done extensive work for the city) this plan would free up room for parking, loading zones, valet bays and handicap access in front of Harbor Blvd. businesses—while keeping 2 lanes of traffic.

This plan has been bottled up by mid-level City staff so far, but deserves a hearing before the Traffic Commission and City Council. And it deserves support.

Harbor Blvd. Parking Plan

Think if you owned Branagan’s.Your address is 213 N. Harbor, but when new customers find it, they can’t park there, or even stop to unload their kids or elderly grandmother. They must make a right on Amerige, another right into the rear parking lot, then try to find your rear entrance. This would all change with Sean’s plan. Opening Harbor would not add new parking spots, but it would allow room for valet service and passenger unloading. That convenience would mean a lot for business owners and their customers—as well as the general ambience of Harbor Blvd.

“Harbor Blvd.: Open for Pedestrians!”

Let Sean (who’s paying for the design study out his own pocket), your elected officials, your appointed traffic commissioners and the Downtown merchants know that you support restoring parking on Harbor Blvd.

A street is more than just a traffic pipeline. It must also serve the community through which it passes. Let Harbor be the street it once was—the kind of street it is yearning to be again!

February 22, 2009April 18, 2009OC's Fourth District

DALY DEFIES TOUGH TIMES; OPENS NEW OFFICE. GOVERNMENT OUR ONLY GROWTH INDUSTRY

by The Fullerton Harpoon13 Comments

Very recently OC County Clerk Tom Daly opened a branch office in downtown Fullerton. Now, while some may think this is a good thing, we here at FFFF are caused to wonder about the expansion of the Clerk’s premises while the County is in major financial retrenchment mode with lots of folks getting pink slips. Fullerton has done just fine without a Clerk/Recorder branch office for over 120 years.

Now the Clerk/Recorder gets to pay rent every month for its posh new digs while already occupying space, bought and paid for, at the County Civic Center.Is the opening of this office and the soon-to-be announced candidacy of Daly for 4^th District supervisor coincidental? We think not. Winning Fullerton is key to winning the 4^th and it sure looks like Daly is trying hard to raise his visibility level in F-town. If not, why did he wait until his seventh year in office to make this move?

Oh, we truly are cynical, aren’t we?

Rather than expand his physical presence in the County, Daly ought to be figuring out a way to computerize the Clerk/Recorder function completely thus saving people the hassle of having to go his offices at all, wherever they may be.

February 6, 2009January 4, 2010Dick Jones

CHINESE WELCOME YEAR OF THE OX; FULLERTON OBSERVES THE YEAR OF THE OX, TOO

by The Fullerton Harpoon14 Comments

The Chinese calendar has recently ushered in the Year of The Ox, which seems appropriate in Fullerton given the recent clumsy effort by City Council bovine Dick Jones to attack Orange County Register editorial writer Steven Greenhut – for doing his job.

It seems that this prominent statocrat has held a grudge against Greenhut since he helped expose the closed-door public employee pension spike at the end of last summer. And so Jones, with his council colleague Don Bankhead in tow, attended a Chamber of Commerce function in which Register publisher Terry Horne was the guest speaker – and proceeded to publicly attack the Register for the damage done to his sterling reputation by Mr. Greenhut.

Horne, to his credit defended Greenhut’s professionalism and integrity against the odd effort by Jones to defend his own honor – something some Council observers thought he had abandoned after about three months on the Council. Jones is used to getting his own way, and it probably came as something of a shock to him that it’s a lot easier to bully the public from the council dais than it is to push around a newspaper publisher.

Rather than criticize the Register, and by extension Mr. Greenhut, Jones would do well to search his own conscience to find out why he consistently places the welfare of city employees ahead of the taxpayers and citizens of Fullerton.

February 4, 2009April 18, 2009Dick Jones

CITY COUNCIL TURNABOUT STICKS IT TO OLD GUARD

by The Fullerton Harpoon11 Comments

In a surprising move Pam Keller and Sharon Quirk performed a U turn at last night’s council meeting on the subject of commission appointment process. At the “first reading” of a new ordinance the proposal was defeated 3-2, with the support of Shawn Nelson.

Although previously supporting the jettisoning of direct appointments and replacing it with the old, cumbersome interview process, both Keller and Quirk, upon reflection, decided that exercising individual authority and accountability is part of the responsibility of being elected to public office. We commend them for making the right choice.

As expected, council mastodons Bankhead and Jones refused to emerge from Fullerton’s last ice age, and vociferously defended the old interview process in which retired government statocrats such as themselves had a disproportionate amount of influence choosing appointees of like mind and temperament.

The process of filling “at-large” commission seats will now be handled in special council sessions, in public. To which we respond – bravo! Transparency and responsibility!

Someday, perhaps the council will simply abandon these at-large seats and operate with five member commissions, each member of which responsible to his or her elected representative. In the meantime we congratulate the majority of the council for doing the right thing.

January 31, 2009April 18, 2009Dick Jones

FULLERTON CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO EMASCULATE SELF

by The Fullerton Harpoon16 Comments

On January 6^th, a 4-1 majority of the Fullerton City Council perpetrated a strange act of self-mutilation, with Shawn Nelson dissenting. It decided to revoke its policy of selecting people to serve on commissions and committees. Instead of individual councilpersons being able to choose direct appointments, they returned to the old system whereby a couple of councilpersons and a commission member conduct interviews and make recommendations for approval by the entire City Council.

So effectively a majority of the City Council chose to disempower itself by abdicating the ability to choose their own direct representatives on commissions.

Now why would politicians give up direct appointment for the diluted old groupthink process? A good question, and one only partially explained by the typical Fullerton city councilperson’s fear of actually exercising the power the electorate has bestowed upon them.

Historically, the old system of interviews meant that certain candidates could be effectively weeded out or ignored altogether. And what was the profile of these undesirables? Independence and a willingness to question the bureaucrats in City Hall were likely character traits; or, to put it another way, the process effectively ensured the type of person who was selected. The latter was inevitably chosen for his or her willingness to be a team player, to go along with the recommendations of “staff” and who could be counted on not to ask embarrassing questions and expect coherent answers.

Furthermore, since the commissioners were not directly accountable to anyone they were even more likely to identify with the staff department that oversees its respective commission, than with any elected official’s policy. This fact may comfort those who find politics distasteful, but it results in a diffusion of authority – a vacuum into which bureaucratic inertia will inevitably insinuate itself.

Appointing people who are safe who through personality type, or can be relied upon to run with the herd in order to protect their business interests would certainly appeal to Dick Jones and Don Bankhead – retired Air Force doc and cop, respectively. It was the retired bureaucrats themselves who always had a disproportionate influence in this system since they had ample time to the interviewing.

We associate this sort of corporate thinking from men once in uniform. But what of the two avowed liberal members of the Council, Sharon Quirk and Pam Keller? Liberal women might not be expected to adhere to the lockstep logic of military teamwork. To them we may attribute a liberal, process-oriented view of things in which the more convoluted an operation is in masticating its material, the more digestible the product must be.

And finally, we must note that the practical consequence of this council’s castration will be to deprive current Council pariah Shawn Nelson with the opportunity to make his own direct appointments to commissions; and since he might actually appoint people likely be independent-minded and represent the taxpayers instead of the bureaucracy his colleagues will certainly be gratified by denying Nelson this prerogative – even if it means depriving themselves of the same privilege.

January 23, 2009December 28, 2009CSUF

CSUF FACULTY HOUSING PROJECT LAYS BIG EGG

by The Fullerton Harpoon13 Comments

What do you call a government project that destroys an historic building, creates an eyesore, accomplishes none of its goals, can’t pay for itself, and requires no accountability on the part of its perpetrators? That’s right gentle readers! A BOONDOGGLE.And so it is with the much ballyhooed University Heights Project meant to provide subsidized (oops, “affordable”) housing for needy CSUF teachers. The University sank millions into this venture by buying property from the BPOE and building them a new lodge on the site of the original, totally Rat Pack cool building. Well, the old building is long gone, the new butt-ugly building is done, and cheapo cookie cutter stucco tract houses jam the ridgeline.

Only problem is nobody wanted to buy these boxes on dinky lots. A covenant that would keep the properties restricted to CSUF personnel was way too limiting for buyers in a plummeting real estate market, so nobody was buying in.

At first sales were restricted to CSUF employees as per plan. Then they were opened to any public employee. When will they be for sale to anybody? Occupancy of one kind or another has been pegged at about 40% although a quick drive through is reminiscent of a trip to Calico or Rhyolite. The word on the street is that the bank has pulled out because the deal can’t pay for itself.The architects of this miserable failure have yet to suffer any of the consequences that a private real estate developer would. Let’s see if we can help. First, there’s Milton Gordon, President of CSUF who must be wondering how come nobody has called him out on this yet. And of course let’s not forget our dear friend Fullerton City Council member and all around buffoon Dick Jones who actually did take credit for it (link to video) ironically unaware of the true fiasco unfolding up on Elk Hill.

There is an object lesson here of course that will no doubt be lost on educrats and befuddled local electeds: stay out of the housing business and kill policies that encourage tax-payer purchased housing subsidies for public employees.

January 14, 2009December 28, 2009Don Bankhead

15th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT FULLERTON RECALL

by The Fullerton Harpoon19 Comments

This year marks the 15^th anniversary of the event that has shaped Fullerton’s political landscape ever since: the Fullerton Recall of 1994. Three stubborn, entrenched councilpersons chose to side with the bureaucrats over the citizenry and imposed an unnecessary utility tax on the populace. Well, the citizenry struck back. Common folks, many of who had never taken any part in municipal politics banded together and began a yearlong recall effort that eventually ousted A.B. “Buck” Catlin, Molly McClanahan, and Don Bankhead.

The event was seminal and pitted the old, statist interests that had run Fullerton since the beginning of time and the barbarians who had very recently arrived at the gate. The statists of both political parties looked on in horror as the Outsiders assaulted their citadel. For them it was indeed a contest of good (them) versus the evil of untutored and unwashed common folk.

The resulting recall, the determined effort of those recalled not to leave office, and the ultimate repeal of the utility tax were formative events that created a permanent citizen political presence and a resolute effort by the statists to regain control of the city. The middle of the road Chamber of Commerce Republicans were thrown together with the Fullerton do-good Democrats who had newly discovered their dedication to the City Hall bureaucratic apparatus.

The fact that the old guard managed to secure its position by the re-election of Bankhead and the election of “conservative” empty suit like Godfrey, Jones, Clesceri and Wilson, and outright liberals like Quirk and Keller has shown just how stubborn political interests resist real change. Fullerton has failed to elect a representative who wasn’t beholden to vested interests, and who was willing to challenge the authority, or even the competency of the city manager and staff.

There is hardly any way to gauge the level of animus that some of the old guard, especially the leftists, have nurtured toward those they deem rabble. Will that change with the emergence of a new generation of politicians?

We hope that new leaders will be able to start seeing issues through their responsibility to their constituents more than their affiliation with the apparatchiks in City Hall and the vested interests that have been so cozy with incumbents over the years.

The Recall was memorable less for what it ultimately accomplished than that it demonstrated, for a brief, shining moment, at least, that in a democracy the people can exercise their sovereignty.