Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Mayor Dick Jones is a councilmember in the City of Fullerton. He is known for using his position on the council to serve out mindless babble and execute revenge on those who have spited him in decades past.
On Monday I went to Fullerton’s State of the City meeting, hoping to hear the mayor deliver one of his colorful oratories. Imagine how disappointed I was to discover that Jones had done a pre-recorded video instead.
Buzz Kill. Video removed at the request of Davis Barber, Davis Barber Productions.
I’ve just learned from an inside source at Fullerton City Hall that F. Richard “Dick” Jones has resigned from the city council, effective immediately. As a matter of fact, here’s a copy of his official letter of resignation:
Well, we all saw it coming. Frankly, I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did.
Friends, re-enjoy this Hee Haw blast from the past. Colonel Cornpone’s bloviations never cease to amuse.
– Joe Sipowicz
Dear Friends, we have reached way back into the dusty corners of our video archives and have retrieved this gem – an unedited rant by our own beloved eccentric on the Fullerton City Council, Mr. Dick Jones. Last fall some of Fullerton’s middle-brows got bent out of shape because we went to the trouble of patching together clips of Jones’ fulminations and actually elevated his crazy diatribe into high art. So here we present him in his own, unvarnished syntactical glory!
The project that Dick Jones is ranting about was a housing/re-use proposal for the old Kohlenberger/Morehouse building on Commonwealth. Housing and preservation, good goals, right?
See if you can slice though the chicken-fried blather coating this brainless bluster and find any substance.
Pea-brained, parochial, pitiful. Is this really the best Fullerton can do?
Here’s a revealing exchange between Fullerton City Councilman Bruce Whitaker and his two dinosauric RINO colleagues Don Bankhead and Dick Jones. The subject is Redevelopment.
Whitaker points out that Redevelopment property tax diversions from school districts are back-filled by the State and that absent Redevelopment diversions back, taxes could go up. He also takes exception to Bankhead’s assertion that without Redevelopment Fullerton (or downtown, take tour pick) would be a ghost town. Bankhead loves big government economic central planning; Whitaker has faith in the private sector.
Naturally the ever-increasingly disheveled Doc HeeHaw (say that haircut sure looks like blight to me) stimulates himself by babbling about about stim-u-lus and even mentions Prez Obama and how Fullerton’s government stimulus is real stimulus. Thanks, Comrade Heehaw.
Well, there you have it Friends. A clearer distinction between calm, conservative opinion and rambling, emotional, Jurassic nonsense could not be drawn.
Kudos to Whitaker. And shame on all the Fullerton voters and repuglican string pullers for making sure nincompoops like Jones and Bankhead re-elected.
And now, back to the letter.
According to commenter Art Brown the plaintive Redevelopment wail signed by Mayor HeeHaw on behalf of all of us was actually scribed by the League of Cities and sent out as a boilerplate template for the incompetent locals who, presumably, couldn’t be trusted to mount their own intellectual and philosophical defense of Redevelopment (think: “we neeeed the muh-nie!”)
Of course there is space at the end of the missive to insert one’s community’s dubious Redevelopment accomplishments. And Fullerton did.
Mr. Brown’s claim certainly has the ring of truth to it. It reminds me of a gang of dope addicts defending their habit.
As to the letter itself, observe the following:
The claims that Redevelopment is a job creator and some sort of economic engine is, of course, utter nonsense. It is indeed a massive boon to subsidized corporations and Redevelopment master planners, consultants and bond salesmen. Redevelopment is simply a zero-sum revenue diversion scheme whose manifest failures are immediately forgotten. The funniest part of the letter may be the way one bent branch of government uses the screw-ups of another (SB 375 and AB 32) to justify itself.
Then there is the hilarious claim that Redevelopment is really poverty-stricken, once the bond holders are paid off!
You would think a letter honestly outlining the effects of Redevelopment in Fullerton would have described just a few of the disastrous quagmires that Redevelopment and it organizers have gotten us into: boondoggles amply illustrated in these pages. But no. No Harbor/Commonwealth; no SRO; no Poisoned Park; no endless succession of useless downtown master plans; no attempt to relocate a McDonald’s 200 feet. Wait. Come to think of it they did: cited as an accomplishment is the idiotic Richman housing project!
Affordable housing. Where poor people are cleared out and replaced by less poor people. And this was never one of the rationales for Redevelopment. The housing set-aside was created to protect the poor from dislocation due to the great Urban Renewal mega projects of the 1950s and 60s.
Well, there you have it. An intellectually and morally bereft letter signed by a clown who cannot grasp anything more complicated than a fried chicken.
Are you surprised?
Last year we posted a magisterial, five-part history about one of Fullerton’s greatest Redevelopment boondoggles, the so-called “City Lights” single-room occupancy project. Our series started here.
As we related, here, in October 2010, questions were being raised about the financial dealings and records of the developer, Ajit Mithaiwala, and the federal government was investigating.
Once again, according to a recent article in LA Times, here, Mithaiwala and his company ADI, are accused of sticking it to the City of Glendale, but good. More evidence is presented suggesting that ADI defrauded the Glendale housing agency out of millions, possibly building substandard po’ folks housing while receiving millions in public subsidy. To top it off, ADI was greasing the axles of local government real well, too, as demonstrated by contributions and favors to city councilmembers in Glendale.
According to the articles ADI has been involved in 40-50 projects across the Southland, so the enormity of the problem is, well, potentially enormous, if in fact, the Glendale experience proves typical.
Which brings us back to Fullerton. When the SRO was built in the late 90s, peculiar construction techniques and prolonged inspection difficulties had some scratching their heads. And now with stories of possible substandard work in Glendale circulating, we are well within the bounds of reason asking our city officials if, in fact, the building is really safe for occupancy.
Where is Mithaiwala? These articles do not say. Maybe the FBI is looking.
And just for fun backwards salute, here’s a timely quote from our current mayor, Ol’ Doc Heehaw who, when the SRO was being proposed in 1997, shot off his big yapper, got threatened with a personal lawsuit by Mithaiwala’s henchmen, and then cowardly changed his vote:
“The city would be at great, I underline great, financial risk if it did not proceed with this project,” Jones said before casting his vote for the settlement. The threatened lawsuit was “a loaded gun against the head,” Jones said.
Risk. Thanks Mr. All Hat and No Cattle.
It’s that time of year again. The Fullerton police officers are having their annual get together tonight at the Summit House restaurant. You may remember the controversy surrounding last year’s Christmas party, here. I wonder if anybody ever got to the bottom of that.
Well, that didn’t take long. In office as Mayor for a few scant days, Doc Jones issued his first diktat: a new sister city for Fullerton to join the ranks of Fukui and Morelia and Yongin.
The new destination for Fullerton international gladhanders is none other than Pilgur, principal metropolis of Kharakhastan. Of course Friends will recall that Jones’s ties to Kharakhastan run deep, and remember his reference in a diatribe against a former Congressman:
Then there was our subsequent research into this exotic corner of Central Asia.
When reached for comment on his unusual decision, Jones minced no words: “As a Airman Basic in the Air Force I oncet had to bail out over that place. And man, I’m telling ya, them gals was friendly! ‘Sides I ain’t partial to no squids and raw tuna ‘n suchlike, ‘n that cabbage slaw done give me some baaaad gas.”
And so for those of you who believed that Good Ol’ Boy Jones was jes’ gonna run out the clock, well, Hell y’all can guess again.
It happened. As predicted. At the behest of the repuglican puppetmasters that helped put him on the Fullerton City Council, ex-police Chief and $215,000 a year pension puller-downer Pat McKinley bypassed Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva for Mayor Pro Tem. Instead Fullerton’s former top cop and election winner by 90 votes went with the feeble octogenarian, Don Bankhead. Gotta keep that winning team intact, right?
Well, goddamit, the ‘pugs weren’t the only people who helped put McKinley on the council. They had help. As noted previously, many of the the Yellowing Fullerton Observers went for McKinley, too, including folks like Molly McClanahan, Jan Flory and….wait for it…Sharon Quirk-Silva! It cost Doug Chaffee the election.
Two years ago these same people helped put the cracker back in the cracker barrel.
Say, guys, hows that strategy working out for ya?
Just in case you missed Crazy Dick (our Mayor to be, per Policy #37) Jones’s battle of wits, here with a local resident the first time around, watch again as the poor guy gets the loop-a-doop brush-off by Dick, courtesy of our inebriated Video Alteration and Welding Department.
What kind of nitwit gets into a shouting match with one of his eccentric constituents who started to unravel a bit? Pea-brained Doc HeeHaw, that’s who. As our next mayor there can be little doubt: a youtube sensation is in the making.
