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Category: Fullerton BooHoo
A BooHoo is a knee-jerk supporter of government activity – whatever it may be. Most BooHoos are self-proclaimed liberals, but very many avowed “conservatives” are nothing but titanic BooHoos – using conservatism to get themselves elected.
A Friend sent in a copy of a letter from Daniel S. Franco of the City of Fullerton, requesting/demanding weed abatement per the Municipal Code. Supposedly the letter was instigated by a complaint. That may be a true story; or not. Here’s the letter:
Now, this isn’t all that unusual except that the irony of the City making a private citizen do what it will not is pretty rich. What am I referring to? Why, the Trail to Nowhere, of course, the City-owned former UP right-of-way where lately a handful of people, offensively masquerading as “the community” demanded a recreation trial. A quick look at the current situation along the abandoned strip reveals the City in severe breach of the rules it feels compelled to apply to the populace.
Oops.
Oops, again.
It’s pretty apparent that the City of Fullerton can’t take care of its own property. Or maybe by neglecting this property the City is offering up a big FU to the “community” it pretends to care so much about.
In any case the question of our town’s ability to maintain its property brings into focus the question of maintenance costs for new facilities – like the sad proposal of the Trail to Nowhere.
During the recent Trail to Nowhere kerfuffle one of the big problems the limo liberals had was bending their brains around the possibility of a multi-modal facility that might improve circulation and offer development flexibility, particularly in light of the massive development the City staff is going to try to cram into the 30 acres adjacent to the UP right-of-way.
Bikes and traffic don’t mix, came the anguished cry of people like Egleth Nucci and Shana Charles who would have never ridden a bike, or even ambled a long the Trail to Nowhere, and ignoring a world full of urban examples where bicycles and cars get along just fine.
These same self-appointed “experts” seemed unconcerned that their beloved trail would have to negotiate intersections at both Highland and Richman Avenues.
To find and example of a space shared by trail and car lane, all these Option 1/trail-only people had to do was look across Highland to their much bragged about “Phase I.” Here’s a satellite image:
Please note that the Phase I portion accommodates both a roadway and a recreation trail! Land o’ Goshen! Is it really possible? Well, of course it is. The trails cult has already built, and often described this existing configuration between the closed UP Park and Highland Avenue as the inevitable prelude to Phase II; but now for some reason, a paved portion west of Highland is verboten.
Oh, well, one thing we can expect in Fullerton, and that is a complete lack of reason and intelligence when it comes to this sort of thing. It’s more important that the so-called professionals do what they want, and there will always be enough dopes in the City to go along and to even be a called a “community.” And then there are those politicians like Ahmad Zahra who decide to score cheap points patronizing their constituents by giving them “nice things” that aren’t nice at all.
I know, lets get some running exercise. Before they catch us!
The other day I learned that Fullerton’s nonsensical trail to nowhere has been magically resurrected, again, it seems, the beneficiary of some wasteful State grant meant to make people feel good about themselves. How do I know it’s wasteful and all about virtue signaling? Easy. Just consider the “Trail To Nowhere.”
Time to recreate.
City staff is no longer even pretending that the the proposed “trail” goes to the Transportation Center, or that it could ever make its way to the Hunt Branch and points northwest. At least those lies have been dispensed with. Now it’s all about connecting a refurbished UP Park and Independence Park, a connection that means nothing to anybody outside the hallowed halls of City Hall. The proponents of this absurdity still can’t identify a single likely user, nor can they spit out the cost of maintaining this trail. They don’t know and don’t care. Build something and someone’s bound to use it, despite the fact that it runs through a dangerous, dilapidated, and dismal industrial zone of junkyards, used tire shops, asphalt plants and metal plating operations. The gesture is what counts, not the aftermath!
But I have already digressed.
The real point of this post is to ask how this miserable idea sprang back to life after the City Council expressed their displeasure with the bureaucratic piecemeal planning of this area, questioned the wisdom of the proposal and said they wanted to see alternatives that might actually help innovative development in the area. They got none of that.
Don’t let the amorphous shape fool you. Oh, wait…
It’s true that Fullerton has had four City Managers in the past three years or so; it’s pretty easy to spot the vacuum here. Plus the new guy, Eric Levitt, seems to have the backbone of a jelly donut when it comes to saying no to his staff. He appears to be cruising for a pension spike and an imminent decampment.
The idea may have been bad, but it sure was old.
Who was it that organized the happy field trip to explore the potential wonders of the trail? How come nobody knew about it except select invitees? How did the Parks Commission come to be presented with a choice that was no choice and how on Earth did this get on the City Council agenda? Obviously there has been a conspiracy to revive this idea and Mr. Levitt is all on board. Why? And why has the City Council permitted the same proposal it rejected last time, to reappear in the same form? These are rhetorical questions only.
The fact that D5 Councilmember Ahmad Zahra and his minions wanted this so badly last time – a gesture, (no matter how expensive and hollow) to the communidad – leads me to suspect this thing has been orchestrated by him and Parks staff to embarrass his colleagues into going along with the scheme this time.
A few weeks ago the Daily Titan published an article about how, in a few years, Fullerton is going to be running in the red. Deep red. City projections point to being upside down $19 million between 2024 and 2028. Now that’s not very good, is it?
Here’s the grim forecast:
Going the wrong way…
Naturally, the article quickly devolved into a vehicle for advocating the hiring of more people and paying them more, replete with completely fraudulent comparative pay statistics. On hand were Ahmad Zahra and his helper Shana Charles to bleat about unfilled positions and service deficits, always the first opening salvo in a new tax proposal – like the one Zahra pushed hard in 2020.
The head and the hat were a perfect fit.
Doug Chaffee, the senile Fourth District Supervisor of Orange County and a former Fullerton mayor contributed this gem to the conversation: “I think I would have been a little heavier on keeping our staff because they are the lifeblood of the city. They do the work.” Uh, huh. He failed to mention his own inept culpability in mismanaging Fullerton’s budget for years.
Gimme some of that do-re-mi to waste…
Hilariously, Zahra seems to think the phrase “economic development” has some sort of talismanic quality, as if there were anything City Hall could do to produce it. It never worked during the heyday of Redevelopment and it won’t do anything now. It’s just a shiny distraction that can’t even pay for the bumblers who are paid, and paid very well, to pursue it.
What economic development really means is a focus on increasing tax revenue to pay for the salaries and benefits of public employees and their bloated, guaranteed pensions. It would be refreshing if just once elected folks thought about less about raising revenue and more about living within budgetary constraints.
Mayor Fred Jung calmly opined that Fullerton has adequate reserves to handle the tsunami of red ink coming his way, but this is not reassuring. Fullerton went through the same crimson bath during the Fitzgerald/Chaffee/Quirk-Silva/Flory/Zahra regime, and anybody who thinks Fullerton is better off for the deficit spending it is a damn fool.
I’ve been relating the newest bit of Fullerton nonsense lately, to wit: the unfolding, bureaucrat driven, unfolding the disaster now know by the funny name The Tracks at Fullerton Station.
So far, we’ve found out that the 141 unit density of the apartment half of this hermaphroditic monster was based on the entire site size, despite the fact that that the “boutique” hotel, all 118 units, sits majestically on the other half. In essence, the Transportation Center Specific Plan limit of 60 units an acre – which is already ungodly dense – has been multiplied by two-and-a-half times, and the environmental documents that have already been approved by the City Council neglect to address this incompatibility with existing governmental strictures.
But it gets even worse.
It’s axiomatic that government minions will invariably cough up “solutions” to non-existent problems. It’s called job security, and the results, as these pages have amply demonstrated over the years, are never subjected to the embarrassment of scrutiny and accountability. This concept is not different.
At the recent Planning Commission hearing we learned that the project in question involves the complete remodel of the existing parking area just north of the Santa Fe Depot, south of Santa Fe Avenue. This further elimination of parking is being proposed to accommodate a brand new bust lane and stop. Why? No intelligent reason was forthcoming. Here’s the site plan:
Because the current bus stop is so far away…
The existing OCTA bus stops and canopies are only a couple hundred feet away. Is this deemed too far for the scant few travelers who use both bus and train? Of course not. Obviously some “transit” dreamers are hard at work, making work – for themselves.
And now notice at the right of the site plan the proposed hotel juts into the existing Pomona Avenue right-of-way. This will require an abandonment of part of a public street which would require an official abandonment. This is being done to provide outdoor eating for the proposed ground floor café. In order to provide an alternative, our thoughtful staff floated the idea of non-permanent elements in the same area, only requiring the issuance of an encroachment permit. Here’s the architect’s vision looking south along Pomona Avenue:
Aw, Hell, just give it to ’em.
This wet, hot mess was all approved by the five gourds sitting on the Planning Commission dais. Soon it will make its way to the City Council. Will it pass, as the sale of the property did in December? Will the three who voted to virtually give away this useful public land – Whitaker, Charles and Zahra – vote to double down on their foolishness and approve the monstrosity, the unnecessary bus stop and the abandonment?
An alert Friend recently advised me to visit the web pages of the Fullerton Observer. There, according to this person, I could find an “open letter” written by our new councilwoman Shana Charles and addressed to Mayor Fred Jung.
Apparently Ms. Charles stood up and hauled herself out of the State of the City speech given by Jung and subsequently felt the need to share her reasons with the public. Maybe she thought nobody saw her leave, or cared.
Now going to the Fullerton Observer is not a task I undertake very willingly, but I was interested to see what sort of silly drama was taking place. Here’s a link to the aforementioned open letter.
Looking down from above…
The missive explains that she walked out of the lunch in protest of some sort of verbal mistreatment of Councilman Ahmad Zahra and follows with a recitation of all the wonderful things Zahra has done for District 5’s “underserved” folk, yadda, yadda, yadda, and reminds her readers that his brand is the only LGBTQ Muslim, and he deserves respect!
I get the vibe that that the whole stunt was pre-planned and that the dress rehearsal was probably staged in Zahra’s living room.
In any case, the preachy petulance shown by this woman is telling. She admonishes Jung to rise above his personal “vendetta,” obviously uninterested in publicly exploring her assertion and “urges” Jung to apologize to the poor, injured Zahra. “If you wish to continue as Mayor” she sternly intones, Jung must put aside his own interest, an ironic admonition given the ceaseless self-promotion performed by Zahra.
That’s not very good, is it?
I don’t why or how Ms. Charles got her schnoz all bent out of shape, or if she was even really offended at all; and it really doesn’t matter. The fact is that those who have followed the self-serving “public service” of the serial prevaricator Zahra know what sort of creature he is and will find it hard to imagine that he is even capable of being offended.
When things get tough, real leaders make difficult choices. And then there are those like Ahmad Zahra.
When Covid 19 rolled around in the spring of 2020 Fullerton was already looking at financial disaster. Years of unbalanced budgets were backfilled by reserve funds by the partnership Fitzgerald, Flory, Silva and Zahra. With the Covid lockdown things looked bleak.
What to do?
“I know” said Ahmad Zahra, “lets have a sales tax.”
And so the ill-fated Measure S was placed on the ballot by the same herd: Fitzgerald, Flory, Silva and Zahra. The proponents didn’t seem to care that sales taxes are inherently regressive, and Zahra seemed uninterested in the fact that his D5 constituents would be disproportionately hurt. Ironically, at the time, Zahra was hauling in $4,000 a month for a few hours time as an appointed member of the Orange County Water District Board.
Later, in 2021, when federal relief money rolled in to Fullerton, Zahra tried to direct funds away from infrastructure and into salaries and pension obligations.
Well, those chickens have come to roost. This mail piece landed in D5 mailboxes today:
When council districts were finally created in Fullerton – in response to a lawsuit, one district was designed to support Fullerton’s large Latino community – District 5. In 2018 D5 elected a non-Latino which of course was surprising but perfectly legal. But what would Latinos think about a concerted effort by the OC Democratic party to make sure the Latino vote was divided to protect Ahmad Zahra, the non-Latino incumbent?
Enter Tony Castro, the dead-beat nobody who popped up out of nowhere and pulled election papers the day after Oscar Valadez, who has lived in D5 for over 20 years.
Recently FFFF has been bombarded with spam comments all of which came from Tony Castro himself. I took out the trash, but not before salvaging this little gobbet of that is quite revealing: a statement that Castro was approached by one Ajay Mohan:
This snippet has the ring of truth. There is an Ajay Mohan and he is the director of the OC Democrat Party. Here he is:
Now that’s not very good, is it?
Now why would Mr. Mohan recruit an unknown, broke, Tony Castro to run against the incumbent who has the endorsement of Party Central? The answer is, unfortunately, crystal clear: to take votes away from Oscar Valadez. This dirty little trick is as old as elections themselves, of course, but to see the Dems do it to working class Latinos betrays a special sort of cynical mindset.
Get off my grass…
Which brings us to the OC Dem Party Chairperson, Ada Briceno, a Latina unionista who apparently has decided to bamboozle La Raza in support of the egregious Zahra – who has supported dope stores near schools, who battered a Latina woman, and who voted to give away a public park in the barrio to a private events center/caterer.
Apparently, Ahmad Zahra held some sort of meet and greet (I’ll talk to anyone, but I won’t tell them the truth) Sunday morn, behind a donut store.
There to greet him were some protesters who seem to be angry that he voted several times to allow marijuana dispensaries within 100 feet of homes and schools – at the behest of emissaries from the Long Beach weed store cartel.
