Chronic Failure Archives - Page 42 of 67 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 6, 2017March 6, 2017Behind Closed Doors

The Hard Hat & Shovel

The other day one of our commenters Fullerton Historian remarked on the propensity of politicians to don ridiculous looking hard hats and take on the millinery aspect of construction workers to ceremonially mark the beginning of a big, high visibility public works project. Silly gold painted shovels, picks and hammers are handed out to people who have very likely never put in a day’s work doing manual labor.

I got to thinking about this. Why are these people apparently addicted to looking ridiculous, and why do they do it?

To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail…

Then it struck me. They are talked into it by the very bureaucrats who have promoted some project or other. It’s way the bureaucrats can really show who’s calling the shots – by having their bosses stand up and look comical in public. Its sort of a combination of a dog peeing on a tree and the indoctrination of humiliation visited upon the kidnap victim of a terrorist. The politicians undoubtedly believe they are receiving potential photo-op material for their next campaign, but, boy, are they wrong.

So, the politicians are drawn into a web of complicity, the bureaucrats knowing that if (or, more likely, when) the project goes into the crapper, they have that image of the elected happily affiliating himself with the disastrous boondoggle and wearing a ridiculous hat, to boot.

Another essential Hillcrest Park project begins. How did it end?

The head and the hat were a perfect fit…

Bud surveys the construction site…Sebourn awaits his hard hat coronation.

But seriously. The real issue is accountability the whole way through.

Every politician wants to take credit for the start of the big project that they can put on their campaign flyers. But where are these hard-hatted folks when the project runs over cost and late; when change orders swallow up the project budget; when the finished project turns out to be badly designed, shoddily built, under used, or unnecessary? They are sitting on the dais, hoping like Hell that nobody thinks about the project or remembers the now embarrassing picture with the the hard hats and shovels.

And now let’s let Fullerton Historian take us home:

Too bad there’s no photo follow-ups of projects that went sideways, were involved embarrassing construction lawsuits, or that nobody uses, or that just became a maintenance sink hole.

March 3, 2017March 5, 2017Chronic Failure

The $4 Million Elevator That Nobody Needs

by Mr. Peabody33 Comments

It looked so bad another one was needed…

Well, it looks like more loose change has fallen into Fullerton’s municipal sofa. A lot more. And it’s all so funny. The one thing the Fullerton train station didn’t need was another pair of elevator structures; and the last place they needed it was right next to the existing ones.

But that’s where they’re going. That’s right. A new elevators right next to the old ones that the City has failed so spectacularly at maintaining. “Wait, Joe,” I can hear you saying. “Tell us, for the love of SparkyFitz’s God, this is some sort of cruel joke.”

Let the groundbreaking begin. No point in waiting to waste other people’s money, right?

The joke’s on all of us. Even people who have never been to the Fullerton choo-choo station.The whole thing is costing taxpayers $4,000,000 which is almost three times the amount the exiting one cost 22 years ago. The arguments in favor of building this are laughable as you might imagine, and immediately prove that other taxpayers are picking up most of the tab – as it turns out, money funneled through the bottomless suck hole known as OCTA.

Yes I’m on the OCTA Board, and no, I couldn’t care less about wasting four ‘mil.

For instance we “had” to build a new set of elevators rather than repair the existing ones. Why? Taking the existing elevators out of service for a long period of time would result in ADA lawsuit. There is not a single filament of proof for these assertions but hey, that money ‘s got to be spent by somebody, right? For $4,000,000 you could set up a daily ADA access shuttle for 20 freaking years. Of course there is also an existing gate opened by a remote control that could access the other side of the tracks at ZERO cost.

But wait!!! (as they said on those old TV steak knife commercials). The new toy is not free to the people of Fullerton after all. A new agenda item asks for an extra $600,000 due to cost overruns. Just a few lost nickels in Allan Roeder’s couch, right? And listen to the string of incompetencies by our Engineering Department that caused the extra cost:

“An additional $ 600,000 is required for the BNSF flagging requirements, unforeseen utility conflicts, escalated cost in securing the elevator subcontractor and additional assistant in construction administration. Due to OCTA funding constraints, only direct construction-related costs will be reimbursable.”

13 Transportation Center Pedestrian Overpass Elevator – Budget Transfer

Of course it would be nice if some one on our illustrious city council bothered to ask why a contract was awarded two years prematurely, and why our staff needs “additional assistant” (sic) to administer this simple project, or maybe why the job wasn’t rebid. But they won’t.

And so we witness the comical spectacle of two sets of elevator structures side by side, each slowly deteriorating, until 20 years from now some over-paid idiot proposes a third, because as any artist knows, three objects in a picture are much more aesthetically pleasing than two.

March 3, 2017March 3, 2017Chronic Failure

BREAKING: Joe Felz Charged with DUI, Hit and Run

by Joshua48 Comments

Updated 4:55 PM:

The Orange County District Attorney’s office has issued a press release: FORMER FULLERTON CITY MANAGER CHARGED WITH DUI AND HIT AND RUN ON ELECTION NIGHT:

Case # 17NM03367

Date: March 3, 2017

FORMER FULLERTON CITY MANAGER CHARGED WITH DUI AND HIT AND RUN ON ELECTION NIGHT

FULLERTON, Calif. – The former city manager of Fullerton was charged today with driving under the influence and hit and run on election night. Joseph Burt Felz, 58, Fullerton, is charged with one misdemeanor count of driving under the influence of alcohol and one misdemeanor count of hit and run with property damage. If convicted, Felz faces a maximum sentence of one year in county jail. The defendant is scheduled to be arraigned on April 3, 2017, at 8:30 a.m. in Department N-8, North Justice Center, Fullerton.

On Nov. 8, 2016, Felz is accused of driving a vehicle under the influence in a residential area of Fullerton, driving over a curb and striking a tree. A witness to the incident called 911 and the Fullerton Police Department (FPD) responded and located Felz nearby. Felz is accused of unlawfully failing to stop his vehicle immediately.

FPD initially responded to the scene and then transferred the case to the OCDA for further investigation and legal review.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Nichols of the Special Prosecutions Unit is prosecuting this case.

Updated 4:50 PM:

An anonymous source has sent in the following regarding the DA’s decision to charge Joe Felz with two misdemeanors.

Updated 4:45 PM:

View the criminal complaint – California v. Joe Felz

Original Post:

Former Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz is being charged with TWO Misdemeanors, DUI and Hit & Run, for his wild ride on 09 November 2016. After nearly 4 months of nothing and obfuscating from the Fullerton City Attorney as well as the Orange County District Attorney’s Office it looks like something is finally being sorted out.

We will update you as more information comes out.

March 2, 2017Chronic Failure

The Speech From the Empty Chair

by Grover Cleveland25 Comments

Lobbyist-councilmember Jennifer Fitzgerald took a powder from the budget meeting on Tuesday. Perhaps the potential embarrassment was too much to contemplate.

But she did send in this letter in lieu of her presence. Since she wants it to become “part of the record” we know that it is really meant to be a political PR document. For a little help FFFF has highlighted some fun parts.

Okay.We now know that Fitzgerald is blaming “Sacramento” for Fullerton’s gloomy, no, desperate fiscal projections. We can’t expect her to make reference to her own irresponsible deals with the unions or remind us of her campaign lie that Fullerton’s budget was balanced. We can’t expect her to admit that everyone has known CalPERS projections have been BS for years. No disappointment there.

Scrolling down her wish-list we see the properties she wants to sell off to her developer pals, a one-time fix that won’t fix anything. More insidious is the “public/private partnership” expansion, or P3 in the parlance of the lobbyist’s guild, in which the public generally pays for the same thing twice. Electronic billboards? Like the fuzzy, illegible ones along the 57 put up by Placentia when things got dire next door? Wow, that really is desperate! The ad revenue from signs would be peanuts (but oh no, let’s not discuss Behind the Badge. That loose change is lost in the couch forever).

You have to give Fitzgerald credit, being what she is. After putting Fullerton in a dire financial hole she is still looking for ways to direct profit to people who have or who might contribute to her political future; or to other politicians in cities where Pringle and Associates have clients.

Do you feel better knowing that “this community always rises to the occasion?”

March 2, 2017March 2, 2017Bad Cops

The Torpedo

by Mr. Peabody15 Comments

There is an old saying: “it’s the least I can do.”

And once in a while you get to see the least someone can really do without doing anything at all.

At the last “budget workshop” (cue: a sales tax is coming music), David Curlee brought up the idiocy of the worthless and mismanaged “Behind the Badge” contract – a 50 Grand per year repository of feel-good stories about our police department’s tender employees who, apparently, would rather be well-thought of for anything besides honest police work.

At this prompting, our mayor, Bruce Whitaker raised the issue – where, right on cue, it was peremptorily shot down by our $100 per hour Interim City Manager, Alan Roeder, as chump change that fell into the sofa cushions and isn’t worth digging around for. He warns Whitaker about “obsessing” over such loose change.

And there the matter seems to have died.

Of course if Whitaker had done his job in the first place and agendized the issue as a stand alone item at a regular meeting, this dismissive bullshit could not have occurred. The Behind the Badge embarrassment could not have been written off as an irrelevant, small-picture nothing instead of what it is – a blatant rip-off of the taxpayers that has run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past four years.

And consider this question: how many other loose change contracts, approved by no one other that Wild Ride Joe Felz, are still out there accomplishing nothing? And did any of our council stalwarts bother to make Roeder explain exactly what the monetary level of significance is before he will deign to consider it? We know it’s not $50,000 a year. Is it $100,000? $500,000? A million? Of course not.

Total leadership failure. The litmus test is done. Now we know why Roeder was hired in the first place:

He’s the Tax Man.

March 1, 2017March 1, 2017Chronic Failure

Fitzgerald A No-Show at Important Budget Workshop

by David Curlee28 Comments

The City Council held an important budget workshop Tuesday evening. Councilwoman Jennifer Fitzgerald was nowhere to be found.

She claims to have had a prior commitment, but I was also told she wasn’t aware of the meeting, or something silly along those lines. Knowing the date and time of meetings, and attending them regularly, had never been a problem for her in the past. The only exception that comes to mind is a recent family emergency, in which case her absence was totally justified — I’m not about to rag on her for that.

One has to wonder if she purposely ditched the meeting to avoid accountability on her bogus “Balanced Budget” claim, which was — again — disputed by City staff and others during the 2+ hour meeting.

She doesn’t seem to handle accountability very well.

February 26, 2017February 27, 2017Bad Cops

¡Chinga Tu Madre! Greetings From Anaheim!

by Joe Sipowicz35 Comments

The happy old post card read.

But news from Anaheim isn’t all that happy anymore what with the constant grifting of our lobbyist-council creature Jennifer “SparkyFitz” Fitzgerald’s boss, Curt Pringle; and then there’s all the trouble the City is having with their cops shooting people. To death. Sometimes in the back. Riots ensue.

I won’t bother sharing the litany of bad shootings by the Anaheim PD and the various white washes of our useless DA. But I do want to talk about the most recent incident of bad cop behavior. It’s not about an Anaheim cop, at least not directly, but some off-duty LAPD loser named Kevin Ferguson, who lives in Anaheim and who was having some sort of running feud with eighth graders cutting across his corner lot. Get off my lawn ya no good punks! Here’s a Voice of OC story that includes a video taken by a witness.

When you watch the video you see a grown man physically accosting a much smaller kid, and refusing to relinquish his grasp as he yanks the minor along. Finally some of the kid’s pals intervene knocking the dope over a hedge. At which point Ferguson pulls out a pistol from his pants and squeezes off a round.

Well, pretty soon the Anaheim cops show up and what do they do? Arrest the guy who has committed multiple felonies before our very eyes? Noooooo. They arrest the little kid and send him to juvenile hall. The off duty cop? He is politely escorted home with no charges as the whole assemblage of kids who witnessed the whole embarrassing affair are treated like criminals.

Later, at a press conference, the Chief of Police, Raoul Quezada admits his unhappiness at Ferguson’s behavior, but says there is no evidence that he did anything illegal, but that there is evidence that the kid committed a crime: a threat to “shoot” Ferguson, even though on the video we can clearly hear the kid deny he said that. But they believe the cop. Or at least they say they do.

Hmm.

What I see is a knee jerk defense of a fellow policeman at the cost of justice itself, and here is where the Anaheim incident becomes an object lesson, even if we didn’t need another one. We’ve seen how the “good” cops defend or ignore the crimes of their pals, and how the bad cops lie on the witness stand with impunity about crimes large and small.

Well, here’s a question I put to the idiots who defend Kevin Ferguson, and the Anaheim cops that let him walk: why did this creep shove a loaded pistol in his pants and go outside to confront 13 year old kids? Please ponder the possible answers before responding..

February 24, 2017About Us

The Desperation Has Arrived

by David Curlee44 Comments

In case you weren’t already convinced, Tuesday’s study session agenda provides ample evidence that Jennifer Fitzgerald lied when she said Fullerton has a balanced budget. She also boasted during her campaign that Fullerton, unlike other cities, didn’t have special sales taxes because we manage our finances (better). Short of widespread cuts citywide, that scenario — city sales taxes — looks to be nearly inevitable in the near future:

While not part of the public budget workshop, the City Council will confer in Closed Session beforehand about the (likely) sale of 15 City-owned parcels across town:

The City never provides more than a parcel number, so I’ve taken the liberty of capturing a screen shot of each parcel from the county’s GIS viewer and added a brief description.

After all, these are public assets. We deserve to know which parcels of public land City Hall is seeking to dispose of.

**Hunt Branch Library** — parcels 030-290-16 and 030-290-21

(more…)

February 23, 2017February 23, 2017Behind Closed Doors

Haluza’s BID Bid Bites Dust

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy41 Comments

On Tuesday night our esteemed City Council, a clan that can never say no to a bad idea, reviewed Community Development Director Karen Haluza’s Big Plan to begin the process to create a downtown BID. For the uninitiated, BID stands for Business Improvement District. FFFF already gave the Friends a heads up, here.

To remind you, a BID means a new property lax levy. In downtown the lion’s share of any tax is going to go to the cops, whose performance shutting down the booze culture gives zero confidence that more money in their direction is money well spent. The rest of the loot would probably be wasted on stupid, footling projects that give work to Haluza’s crack staff. Here’s an example of the sort of nonsense that gave our planners the warm and fuzzies before Redevelopment was abolished.

Anyway, the Council got an earful from a few property owners – including one who vehemently denied being notified of the hearing. FFFF will soon be highlighting the comments of this gentleman who poignantly observed that his property income is his retirement income, and, pointing to the uniformed Heroes in the back of the room trenchantly noted that nobody was talking about taking their retirement away.

Our lobbyist-councilperson Jennifer Fitzgerald, who no doubt oversaw this wretched swindle in the first place as a way to keep her bar-owner pals from having to pay to clean up their own mess, moved to continue the item indefinitely. The others didn’t have a whole lot to say, which is typical.

My belief is that we have not seen the last of this obnoxious dodge, a way for the city to get somebody else to pay for their disastrous bar-on-every corner policy.

February 16, 2017February 16, 2017Chronic Failure

Red Ink Tsunami

by The Fullerton Harpoon64 Comments

Last night’s budget workshop showed some pretty dire forecasting. Due to exploding pension costs, especially for our good friends in “public safety” Fullerton is going to deplete its reserve funds in five years, just like other standout OC cities such as Westminster and Garden Grove and Stanton.

The “unfunded pension liability” issue has been around for years, despite the public employee union’s efforts to minimize it, but here our Director of Administrative Services, Julia James, informs the Council that the California Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) is still using happy-talk return projections. The City’s cost to pay for our fire and police Heroes is expected to double.

Hmm. Did you catch our lobbyist-councilwoman Jennifer Fitzgerald interrupt Ms. James at the 4:25 mark in a sneering attempt to downplay the crisis as bureaucratic alarmism? Fitzgerald has all sorts of selfish reasons to avoid talking doom-and-gloom, namely, she has been right there over the past four years as the S.S. Fullerton was taking on water and rather than try to plug the holes was happily drilling more. Naturally her pals in the police and fire unions are not going to want to share the pain. And James’s talk about possible revenue sources to staunch the bleeding includes a tax, which would be a likely coffin nail in SparkyFitz’s already dubious political future.