Some folks have been asking about the fate of the idiotic “boutique” hotel project that had morphed into a hideously overbuilt hotel/apartment hippogriff that is twice the allowable density permitted per the City’s own Transportation Center Specific Plan. Of course the project was never contemplated at all in the Specific Plan, so who cares, right? Fullerton being Fullerton.
In an act of utter incompetence the City actually rushed the approval to transfer of title to the land, before the deal had received final approval. Then they gave it away the land for pennies on the dollar.
Friends may recall our last October post in which we discovered that the new “developer,” one Johnny Lu of TA Westpark LLC, was way upside down on loans he had somehow leveraged on apartment blocks in Irvine and was in default.
You may also recall that Lu started shifting the property to different corporations, the first of which, a Delaware corporation, was non-existent. And just for grins, Mr. Lu changed the property description, too, when he later deeded it back to his California Corporation.
Anyhow, it looks like Johnny has finally created and recorded the appropriately named Delaware corporation in March – only two years too late, but, hey, not bad for Fullerton, right?
There has been nothing but radio silence from City Hall as to the status of Mr. Lu and whether he has met any of the stipulated deadlines in the Development and Disposition Agreement, but as we have learned in the case of the Florentine/Marovich sidewalk heist, contractual obligations mean nothing when the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones & Mayer is your City Attorney. Recently, cluelessly verbose Shana Charles indicated that the project was still alive and well. She didn’t mention Mr. Lu’s financial embarrassment, but then nobody else has, either.
And now for some sadly interesting news. It turns out the original Founding Father of the boutique hotel concept, Craig Hostert of West Park Development – the guy who sold the idea to Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, Jesus Quirk Silva, Ahmad Zahra, Bruce Whitaker, et. al. – died in late May.
Hostert
Poor guy. He went to his Reward after getting pushed out of his own scheme, and sticking us with the appalling, metastasized mess the concept has predictably morphed into; showing that once again, no bad idea goes unappreciated in downtown Fullerton. Being Fullerton, of course.
Last Tuesday the Fullerton City Council voted 4-1 to approve the ’24-’25 city budget. Whitaker, as usual voted no. The budget projects big deficits as we’ve already heard.
After that the Council was presented with “revenue enhancement” ideas – the same old nonsense that we’ve already talked about, here. At first these ideas were simply floated to make it look like somebody had given some thought to find other ways, however silly, to address the tsunami of red ink; but in reality the point was to push a general sales tax, a movement that had been subtly going on for many months.
However the proposals agendized last Tuesday did not include a sales tax this fall, a sure indicator that the City Manager has polled the Council and knows he doesn’t have the votes to put it on the ballot. But that didn’t stop Councilmembers Charles and Zahra from pitching and pitching and pitching the idea; and finally supporting each other to get the issue of a sales tax on the an agenda, pronto, in time to schedule it for the November election.
But before that happened the public was treated to some of the most blatant and self serving re-writing of Fullerton history I have ever heard.
If I knew what I was talking about this wouldn’t be Fullerton!
Shana Charles started off with long-winded blabbering that was irrelevant, self-contradictory, confusing, and erroneous. Of course – “decimated” staff, the ill-effects of right-sizing,” reduced response times – the usual liberal litany of problems were simply meant as an introduction to the sales tax proposal. Her complaint was that previous councils had made mistakes, not by exercising fiscal restraint, but by “cutting to the bone.”
Charles then lauded the wonderful benefits that the City of Placentia derived from it’s Measure U sales tax that saved it, having declared bankruptcy – a statement completely false. She failed to mention the fact that Placentia has saved millions by getting their “fire fighters” out of the paramedic business, an idea of which her Fullerton fire fighter union pals are terrified.
While patting herself on the back for very recent staff and service level increases, she failed to see the rich irony of her own incompetence on the edge of a precipice: a situation well-understood when she voted for last year’s budget.
More economic development, better wardrobe…
If Charles blathered nonsense, Zahra just lied about Fullerton’s recent fiscal history, most likely because he has been on the City Council for 6 years, and has his greasy fingerprints all over the budgetary disaster.
According to Zahra, our problem reaches back decades and only now is the Council addressing the problem. Of course our City Councils have made bad decisions over the years, but the current disaster is of very recent vintage and has also occurred while he has been on the City Council.
For several years in the mid and late teens Fullerton was dipping into reserve funds to pay the freight, even as Zahra’s allies Jan Flory and Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jesus Quirk- Silva were lying to the public about the budget being balanced. It wasn’t. In fact the City continued in its cavalier way until Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap joined Bruce Whitaker on the council in 2020.
Let me count the ways…
Zahra related how he, as a precinct-walking candidate, noted how people wanted better roads and how his predecessors had promised them, too, but that they failed. He didn’t note the fact that Fullerton’s public safety employees were hogging up bigger and bigger shares of the budget – as they still do.
The subject of Zahra’s failed 2020 Measure S sales tax came up, a sore subject, apparently, since his underserved constituents in D5 voted for it. So let us not stop from revisiting it, and right now! Charles chimed in that well she people she spoke to voted against it because there was no sunset provision, and, get this – because there was no oversight committee!
As an aside, I have to share that Zahra made an hilarious little speech about he could not support an infrastructure improvement bond because voting for municipal debt would keep him awake at night!
It’s not rocket science…
Bruce Whitaker made just about the only insightful comment of the discussion, namely: that cities can control costs but they can’t control revenue, an observation that flies in the face of the revenue enhancement propaganda, but that is perfectly true. As has been stated here before: nobody even knows if an Economic Development Manager even pays for himself in terms of incremental tax increase.
I will wrap this up by acknowledging a Zoom caller who actually did make a good revenue enhancing and who identified a huge fiscal problem: downtown Fullerton, the annual sinkhole that makes millions for the scofflaw club owners and that leaves the taxpayers with a $1,500,000 bill. He suggested a special assessment on these eager party entrepreneurs to pay for the havoc their booze and their customers cause. Not surprisingly, none of the council members even mentioned the problem. They never do.
The Fullerton City Council is holding a special meeting tonight – a 2024-25 Budget “workshop.” No work will get done but there will be shopping going on as staff begins its formal press to raise a sales tax.
There is a lot of self-serving verbiage about how well our City staff has performed its tasks up ’til now, but then the hard reality hits because budget numbers can’t pat themselves on the back.
There are some harrowing numbers in the proposed budget – including a $9,400,000 draw-down from strategic reserves. This means of course, that the budget is no where near balanced as City Hall apologists like Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory claimed when they ran the place into the red almost every year.
M. Eric Levitt. Will he save us from ourselves?
Let’s let our City Manager, Eric Levitt tell the tale:
“Financial Stability. The City has been able to over the last two years (for the first time in recent history of the City) to reach and maintain a 17% contingency reserve level. This budget maintains that reserve level; however due to an operating deficit, we will be utilizing one-time excess reserves this year and coming close to that 17% level in FY 2024-25 and below that in years beyond next year“
Read. Weep.
The overall picture gets even worse as the levels of reserves slowly dwindle away. After this year Fullerton continues to be upside from $7.5 to $8.8 million each year until the end of the dismal decade. We are not favored with the running reserve funds balances.
Infrastructure is supposedly a big deal. Which reminds me of a quotation attributed to Mark Twain: Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. But this year we are told, we can push get going on our deteriorating infrastructure along by borrowing! Once again let’s heed the words of Mr. Levitt:
“I have also put together a strategy to increase that funding level to closer to $14 million over the next four years through the use of financing. However, there are both upsides and downsides to this approach which will be discussed with you in more detail at today’s presentation.“
Now this should be a red flag: borrowing to perform maintenance, a basic accounting no-no. And what form will the borrowing take? Not a municipal bond, you can be sure, It would likely be by selling certificates of participation or some other dodge to avoid municipal debt restrictions. Here’s the table that shows our Maintenance of Effort (MOE) shortfall without financing.
Now we all know that interest payments are made by somebody, somewhere, and that somebody is you and me. We get to pay the interest on debt incurred by years of municipal mismanagement by people like Joe Felz and Ken Domer and Jeff Collier who get to sail off to a glorious and massively pensioned retirement at 55 years of age.
And finally, to circle back to the story lead, here’s a distasteful nugget carefully slipped into the City Manager’s report:
“Staff recommends City Council review options over the next year to stabilize the budget and ensure the City remains financially sound.“
Jesus H. There it is. Not quite explicitly stated, but we know very well where this is going. Another general sales tax effort, just like the ill-fated Measure S of four years ago. The seeds for this have already been planted, of course, in a nasty little taxpayer-funded fishing expedition in the guise of a community survey. Last November I regaled the Friends with this slimy maneuver, here.
How did things get so bad?
By the way, this is exactly the same process City Hall rolled out four years ago. And we will be told By Ahmad Zahra, Shana Charles and Vivian Jaramillo that if we don’t pony up we will be morally deficient.
Well, good luck Friends. This is going to be a long year and you can bet the farm that we will be asked to pick up the check – again.
“No more blood on Fullerton’s streets,” went the chant of a handful of protesters after the vote on last Tuesday’s Council Agenda Item 4. These folks were upset that the item, which was a statutory requirement that the City police department list its “military” hardware, on going running costs, and reaffirming policy to the use thereof, was passed on a 3-0 vote.
But you’re looking good, baby, I believe you’re feeling fine…
The protesters, such as they were. seemed agitated that the cops have these toys to begin with – surplus military equipment, some of it, and other weaponry that were included by the Legislature under the rubric “military.” And that’s okay. Ever since the war on terror began two decades ago, our military-industrial complex has been churning out hardware to attack, assault, disarm, kill, maim anybody that cause or accident put in the way of our military. So a lot of it, used or unused, has become surplus, and was bound to find its way into the hands of American police departments. That’s not okay.
Da! Is good…
Having the equipment – from projectile launchers to high caliber guns and assault rifles – has helped reinforce the notion of our own police as an occupying force, and is about the last mentality you want your cops to have, and leaves citizens feeling like maybe something sinister is at work. I get that.
The apologists for this item were quick to point out that the list of equipment – some of it very expensive to maintain – was for stuff the City already has, and wasn’t a shopping list, as they supposed the public speakers believed. Councilmembers Whitaker, Charles, and Zahra were happy to explain this, and reiterated the pro forma nature of the list and the policy statement. They seemed really averse to discussing the item at all, which is understandable for a politician in Fullerton; you don’t get ahead denying police their armored vehicles and, riot gear, and SWAT paraphernalia.
And so the the second issue that should have been discussed never happened at all.
A few weeks back, as Friends may recall, FPD cops killed an evidently distressed man in front of the McDonald’s on Brookhurst St. by blasting him in the chest with multiple “less lethal” projectiles – a distinction without a difference to the dead man.
Then there was the case of Hector Hernandez who was blown away on his own property defending himself against a police dog let loose by Jonathon Ferrell – who is still on the payroll. That settlement cost $8.5 million.
And just as importantly, who is going guarantee the proper training for this gear? Accountability has never been a strong suit of Fullerton’s governing personnel.
This is all certainly food for cogitation. But Fullerton, being Fullerton, nobody is going to do it, at least not anybody in authority.
Bruce Whitaker is serving his final term this year representing Fullerton’s Fourth District, and apparently his wife, Linda Whitaker, has decided to carry on the family tradition.
Here’s her recipient committee listing on the California Secretary of State’s website:
Mrs. Whitaker has been around politics alongside her husband in Fullerton and the County for 30 years, and so has institutional knowledge of how things go (or don’t go, as the case may be), and would be bound not to take staff bullshit at face value. The extent to which she shares her husband’s political philosophy remains to be seen, but I’m sure we could expect a conservative, anti-tax mindset.
Two Whitakers…
She has the Whitaker name going for her. Bruce Whitaker has been on the Council for almost 14 years and won the inaugural Fourth District election in 2020. In politics, name recognition is a big deal. Just as importantly, she will have access to County Republican resources to help her, directly; or, just as likely, in the form of independent political action committees.
Bad news comes in threes…
This bad news for Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, the choice of the Democrat officialdom in the Fourth District, and someone who has allegedly accused Linda Whitaker’s husband of racism. If she had been thinking about an easy path to victory, she’ll have to think again.
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the OC Democrats try the same ploy they rolled out in District 5 in 2022; namely, creating a fake candidate to draw votes away from Mrs. Whitaker. On the other hand, this is a heavily Latino district and a Latino candidate or two would certainly have the same effect on Jaramillo.
A couple weeks ago FFFF posted about Fullerton’s 4th District Council election this fall. Incumbent Bruce Whitaker will be incumbent no longer – finally termed out. One of the subjects was the candidacy of Ms. Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, a former City employee, former council candidate, and most recently an annoying presence at City Council meetings.
Well, it turns out the wheels of another Jaramillo candidacy were indeed in motion. Here’s an invite to her coming out party. Oops. Somebody doesn’t use spellcheck.
“Appetisers” for all…booze is extra.
Josh Newman and Sharon Quirk-Silva are taking time out of their busy schedules messing up California to be there, so Ms. Kitty must have the backing of the OC Democrat operation, although this time there will be no fake candidates created to protect an incumbent.
So the first battle line is drawn: do we want another former public employee on the Fullerton City Council? Do we want one who will certainly be willing to raise our taxes to support her pension? Do we want Ahmad Zahra to have a third vote to promote stupid vanity projects that will promote his “brand?”
Denial is a fairly common human condition, but normally it involves interpersonal relationships and fact isn’t always that easy to ascertain. It is also quite common in politics where one’s emotional beliefs and prejudices are set against somebody else’s. And then there’s the case when bald facts are staring you in the face and you just can’t allow the cold truth to intrude upon your fantasy.
Nowhere is the latter situation better seen than in the City of Fullerton’s attitude and actions involving the “downtown” area.
Business is booming…
It’s not real complicated. The City has known for almost two decades that downtown Fullerton was a money loser. A big money loser. And yet nary a word of complaint or criticism of the booze culture of downtown Fullerton has been uttered by the bureaucrats and politicians.
In 2017, the taxpayers of Fullerton were subsidizing the bar owners to the tune of almost $15,000 per liquor joint, each and every year. Three quarters of a million a year. Of course this was just for “public safety” as noted:
“We focused on the public-safety facets of this study alone, and did not include the development and maintenance services costs Fullerton audited. We illustrate below Fullerton taxpayers were effectively subsidizing bar and restaurant establishments – to the tune of about $15,000 per establishment – all to cover the costs of police, fire and rescue services provided to the establishments and their patrons.“
We know that maintenance and code enforcement and the legal services of Dick Jones and his I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm jack up the cost to well over a million bucks – $1.4 million being the overall cost previously discovered. And there are now over 50 bars.
Another award!
Think of it. During hard times and good, the taxpayers of Fullerton subsidize the likes of the Florentine family and the Marovic mob and the Poozhikala posse, while they make a fortune peddling fish bowls of booze to out-of-control miscreants and ignoring the law.
And still City staff insists on describing downtown Fullerton a glowing success story, a triumph to be built on; of course they aided and abetted in the charade by city councils that are marked by political cupidity, stupidity and a desire to look like they have accomplished something. Anything. For decades these people have crowed about their achievements in DTF, even as they desperately crammed more and denser housing blocks in and around main streets – hoping a captive audience would somehow help. It didn’t, and by the early 2000s the City decided an open air saloon was just the thing. And then the restaurants morphed into bars and then the bars morphed, illegally at first, into nightclubs.
I can keep this up all night…
As things got more lawless, and even some like Dick Jones lamented the “monster” he had created, the only thing that happened was that things got worse. Blasting noise, random violence, sexual assaults, human waste, mayhem, shootings, sadistic and pervy cops – you name it – caused no retrospection in City Hall about what had, and what was happening. It was all a big victory, and you don’t second guess a victory.
Well, things are looking glum fiscally for Fullerton according to last years budget projections and we will be told Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles that we must bear the burden of a new sales tax jack-up in order to keep the creaky old jalopy going.
I say fix the financial sinkhole that is downtown Fullerton before you stick your hands in our pockets.
And what anniversary might that be, Friends may be asking.
Not gone, but almost forgotten…
This Wednesday, March 27th, marks the one-year anniversary of a deadline date agreed to by the City of Fullerton and one Mario Marovic, a downtown bar owner. Not much of a deadline, huh?
Hey, that’s not yours!
By March 27th, 2023, Mr. Marovic was required to have started demolition of the so-called “bump out,” an illegally constructed room addition built by the Florentine Mob two decades ago on City property. Marovic had gotten rid of the Florentines, finally, but decided that the leasehold on the room addition was somehow ripe for the encroaching. So he began remodel work on the leasehold right along with the rest of the building that he does own.
Busted.
Meet the new proprietor, same as the old proprietor…
Well, the Earth has made an entire revolution of the Sun.
The City Council may occasionally talk about this in their hush-hush, top secret “Closed Session” meetings, but the public is not to know what is happening, even as our money and property are being frittered away. We do know that Marovic has threatened a claim against the City, but so what? Why would that be cause for the City to ignore Marovic’s breech of contract and seize the public property that Marovic encroached on illegally?
Staying awake long enough to break the law…
The reason could be that our esteemed lawyer, Dick Jones of The I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm, believes upholding agreements is not a winning strategy. Of course this third rate pettifogger has won so few cases for us, and has lost so many that we may feel confident questioning his judgment.
Or, it could be that the feckless and spineless City Council has been individually persuaded by Marovic that it’s in their best interest to ignore the deal, and that they should just let Marovic keep raking in the bucks thanks to a Conditional Use Permit that was contingent upon the removal of the room addition.
As the Friends know, Fullerton’s First, Second and Fourth City Council District representative jobs are up for election this fall. And while it’s a little early to speculate on who’s going to run and what the outcome might be, it’s fun to do a little introductory review.
Incumbents Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap are incumbents in the First and Second Districts, respectively. If they want to run again, and I haven’t heard they won’t, the power of incumbency is hard to beat.
Going, going, gone…
The Fourth District, currently represented by Bruce Whitaker will be wide open. Whitaker is termed out after 12 long years on the Council and his replacement will decide the balance of the Council if Dunlap and Jung run, and are re-elected. The current 3-2 division is based on ideological difference, the difference is between looking out for the taxpayers – at least once in a while – and doing whatever idiocy the bureaucracy wants to perpetrate.
Yes, I do so live here.
At this point the candidate pool seems weak. Last time Whitaker squeaked by past a dude named Aruni Thakur, a school board member who didn’t live in the district. Could Thakur do the (fake) carpetbagger routine? He had the full support of the unions and the County Democrat Party four years ago, but it wasn’t enough for poor Aruni, who was hammered with his carpetbaggery. With no incumbent this time around his political greed might pull him in.
Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo
Then there is a woman named Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, an individual who has made a nuisance of herself recently attacking the Council majority with the usual feigned outrage. Ms. Jaramillo is retired from “work” as a life-long municipal employee whose professional career started in Fullerton handing out parking tickets and graduated into being a code enforcement busybody. She would be a perfectly reliable yes vote for anything floated by city staff, and just the sort of running buddy Ahmad Zahra dreams about to support a sales tax. Word on the street is that the OC Dems are already behind her candidacy, which would preclude the aforementioned Thakur from getting involved.
Jaramillo’s other claim to fame, besides pestering the City Council these days, is suing the City in 2015 to create city council districts – very likely so she could run herself someday when Whitaker termed out.
So far no one from a more responsible philosophical perspective has raised their hand in D4, but as noted above, it’s still early in the year and filing doesn’t take place for almost another five months.
Lots of people have lots of cars. And the on-site parking plans of the 50s, 60, and 70s multi-family housing just don’t work anymore. We all know that. Even single-family neighborhoods suffer from the same issue – adults’ cars, their kids’ cars, and a garage full of crap.
In 2023 the Fullerton City Council directed staff to consider the issue of early morning parking prohibition, a device to keep people from parking on the streets overnight. The current situation is that certain streets with multi-family housing or old, pre-1940 houses have been granted a waiver. An applicant’s address could also get a one-year “hardship” permit with an extensive review process and a $250 permit fee.
After an 11 month gestation period, staff labored hard and gave birth to a “pilot plan” proposal that would keep existing street and individual waivers/permits, but that would make it easier, supposedly, to get a one year permit – with four one-year options.
The issue is Item #7 on the 3/19/24 Agenda consent calendar.
The staff report provides the usual entertaining history of a Fullerton topic, like downtown nuisance noise, that never seems to get fixed.
As usual there are options presented that are really just non-starters to make the desired option look better. Option 1 is to do away with overnight parking altogether – a surefire recipe for political disaster. Option 2 is to get rid of street/block waivers and also hardship permits, and let anybody apply for an overnight permit – another sure loser.
And so Option 3 (as described above) gets the brass ring, with the proviso that it be a 2-year pilot program to see what happens. As noted, staff is proposing a streamlined process, online portal, etc., etc., with one goal being to help disadvantaged neighborhoods (of course “disadvantaged,” like “underserved” is code in City Hall for Latino, so that’s an interesting use of the word). This option begs the question: if the permit process could be streamlined why wasn’t it – a long time ago? There is no mention of the new permit fee amount.
The staff report contains a long list of possible additions that could be made, presumably to help a City Council that can’t be trusted to come up with its own.
What I think is really interesting is that there is no option for doing nothing. Not every snake or green-glowing rock needs to picked up and examined, and I get the impression that there is a political undercurrent here. Commonsense suggests that adopting a revision for the purpose of allowing more cars to park overnight will still annoy some residents who may not like others parking in front of their house all night – especially in the vicinity of under-parked, older apartments.
