On this week’s Fullerton City Council agenda I caught a glimpse of the upcoming May 21st agenda forecast:
AGENDA FORECAST (Tentative) Tuesday, May 21, 2024
APRIL 2024 CHECK REGISTER
MONTHLY COMMITTEE ACTIVITY AND ATTENDANCE REPORT
DISPOSITION AND DEVELOPMENT AMENDMENT FRONTIER
COSTA COURT AREA STREET REHABILITATION PROJECT
ALL CITY MANAGEMENT SERVICES CONTRACT
SENATE BILL 1383 COMPLIANCE ACTION PLAN FOR SERVICES AND PROGRAMS
CHAPMAN PARKING LEASE
FOX BLOCK
REVENUE OPTIONS
Not all that interesting until you get to the bottom.
Yeah, it was ugly as sin, but there sure was a lot of it…
The Fox Block, a never ending saga and a classic example of a tail wagging a dog. For years the “rehabilitation” of the historic Fox Theater structure has been used to support all sorts of God-awful lunacy, including residential land acquisition and demolition, new grotesque clown architecture, and the six million dollar relocation of the McDonalds restaurant a couple hundred feet to the east. The “Fox Block,” as the boondoggle came to be known, is a living fossil of the bad old Redevelopment days, when any nonsense could be got away with by City staff playing with Monopoly money. Damn accountability. It’s the Fox Block!
Why this is on the agenda is as yet unknow, but I noticed that one of our Friends “Fullerton Historian” suggested it may have to do with extending a development agreement or some other similar concept. Then I saw the third bullet point above: Disposition and Development Amendment with Frontier. “Frontier?” That’s all? What is this? Frontier Real Estate is our “partner” on the Fox Block, meaning we’re probably taking the risk and they’re goon get any reward – if there is any.
M. Eric Levitt. Will he save us from ourselves?
And finally we see an item simply called “Revenue Option” an oatmealy sort of phrase, but one that FFFF has already discussed. At this meeting the City Manager, Eric Levitt, will try (without too much unseemly enthusiasm) to tie dangling threads heretofore described here: a push poll created to drum up support for enhanced public services; a review of the likelihood that general sales tax might pass at 50%; and a precipitous budgetary cliff looming ahead.
See where this is going? Let’s see who stands up and demands that for our own good we must have a tax increase.
The other day FFFF related a story told on the Orange Juice Blog about Fullerton City Councilman Ahmad Zahra having been married to a woman in Arkansas in the late 1990s. It’s always been a blank time in Zahra’s otherwise detailed autobiographies.
The problem is that Zahra has been very clear about being a gay man and “always” knowing it. The unambiguous statements asserting his self-awareness are published in interviews. So how and why did he come to marry a woman?
From beautiful Pulaski County
According to the OJB story, Zahra tells of his arriving in the United States (no mention of what sort of visa he held); and, not knowing a blessed soul, heading to Little Rock, Arkansas where he claims a friend of his father lived. There, says Zahra, he met a woman whom he says he “liked” and who liked him in return. This tepid romance led to a marriage, dissolved a few years later after Zahra had made his way to Los Angeles to learn the movie trade.
The story is so outlandish that it stretches credulity far past the snapping point. The OJB forewent an opportunity to delve farther into the strange tale, but the obvious difficulties emerge with startling clarity.
An immigrant to the United States of America shows up for some reason, not knowing anybody. Is he a tourist? Maybe. But if so he decides to go to Arkansas, of all places – not exactly a well-know tourist destination. Well, there he is in Little Rock. Where does he live? How does he get by? He can’t get a job, at least not legally, so he must have a little something stored up for a rainy day Stateside.
Michelle Salmon
Enter Michelle Salmon, stage right. Somehow our eager young visitor crosses paths with Ms. Salmon. How and where they meet is at the heart of this mystery and is open to some interesting conjecture. Inexplicably the relationship leads to matrimony at the Pulaski County Courthouse where a marriage license is obtained.
Michelle has hooked herself quite a prize catch: a 27 year-old foreigner with no job (legal anyway), no job prospects, and, according to Zahra himself, completely aware of his homosexuality. On the surface he seems like pretty poor husband material for an Arkansas gal, so we have to wonder if poor Michelle was either mentally challenged or perhaps in need of financial assistance.
Zahra makes no mention of his visa status in his story to the OJB, but we have to assume that he received either a work visa or permanent residency status because not long after his connubial union he goes to LA, bravely living in a car on the streets of Hollywood (so he says). His visa would have been helped along by a marriage certificate to a citizen and it’s safe to say he got one that permitted him to stay in the US.
Well, says Zahra cavalierly, the marriage thing didn’t “work out,” what with the husband living in a car in Southern California, and with Michelle deciding to remain in Arkansas “with her family.” Divorce ensued and Ahmad’s new life journey had begun. He became a citizen in the course of time, a fact he shares as if this simple fact absolves him of any impropriety in the acquisition thereof.
Here’s what happened…
Naturally, Zahra tried to paint this ludicrous picture to the OJB as his “coming out” portrait, and invited homophobic and Islamophobic FFFF to “make fun” of the narrative. The old dodge. Homophobia. Islamophobia. Be a victim.
I’m not the least bit interested in making fun of anything relating to Zahra’s gay coming out story – whichever variation he is selling at any given time; except when the story is cooked up to obfuscate what looks like a serious and likely problematic question. To wit: did Ahmad Zahra commit Marriage Fraud to expedite the legal requirements for him to stay in this country?
Our friends at the Orange Juice Blog published a story yesterday about Fullerton City Councilman Ahmad Zahra having been married in Arkansas, of all places, in the late 90s. And to an American woman named Michelle Salmon.
FFFF was sent of a copy of the marriage license.
Now this would normally not be of interest to anybody, except that Mr. Zahra has branded himself as the first gay Muslim, etc., etc. – brave hero, in fact. However, his self-propagated biography, such as it is, has never discussed a sojourn in the state of Arkansas, let alone having a wife there.
Michelle Salmon
How a Syrian immigrant ended up in Arkansas, married, sounds like an interesting tale in itself.
According to an interview with Zahra, the OJB reports his version of how he ended up in hillbilly country:
Adrift on a foreign shore. What to do?
“I got to this country and I didn’t know anybody, but my father had a friend in Little Rock, so that’s where I went first. I met Michelle, and we liked each other and thought we could work things out, but it didn’t work out. She was even going to go to LA with me but she decided to stay with her family.”
Wow, that’s pretty damn thin. Personally, I “like” all sorts of folks without feeling the least bit inclined to get married. Not surprising “it didn’t work out.”
Zahra, 52, did not have one specific moment when he came out as gay. He always knew he was, but it would be decades until his family would know.
In fact, when Zahra did finally come out to his friend, he was not entirely surprised, saying, “That explains a lot.” Zahra had never dated girls.
So why does a gay, Muslim immigrant marry an American woman in Arkansas? That’s a good question. Was Zahra giving the hetero deal one last swing at the plate? No need for marriage to do that, especially in Arkansas.
The Orange Juice suggests another reason:
Okay, well, the suspicion arises that this was a marriage to get citizenship, which is illegal under the Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments Act of 1986. But Ahmad tells us he didn’t become a citizen until long after their 2001 divorce, in 2008.
Um, we always know that when somebody provides irrelevant information, he’s likely avoiding something. In this case the year of Zahra’s actual citizenship (even if true) isn’t the issue. The issue is whether he tried to accelerate permanent residence status by virtue of a phony marriage. And as OJB observes, that is illegal.
The fact is that nobody cares about Zahra’s sexual orientation, or his “heroic” coming out narrative, real or otherwise. What I (and others, no doubt) care about is his pattern of untruths including his tale that he was “exonerated” by the District Attorney in a case of battery; his phony accusation of assault against Fullerton council colleague Fred Jung; his disappearance from a council meeting for a photo-op, etc. And naturally, if an immigrant’s first official act in America is to break the law, then the public deserves to her about it.
The other day the Fullerton Harpoon posted a brief synopsis of Fullerton’s Fiscal Year 24-25 budget, suggesting that the “workshop” to present Fullerton’s dire economic situation was just another step in the process of trying to get the City Council to put a sales tax increase on the November ballot.
Of course Mr. Harpoon is right about this. Not only have we seen this play before, we noticed that the process of collecting manipulated information started last year. Of course it’s still ongoing. But the pro-taxers in City Hall are running out of time for 2024 since some acceptance of tax inevitability will have to be discussed during the budget formalization in June.
After that there’s only about a month until the 2024 ballot cutoff.
To be sure, the tax increase doesn’t have to be on the ballot in the fall. And the reality is that there may not even be the votes to do it. This makes the 2024 District 4 election more important.
She wants what you have.
District 4 candidate and former City parking ticket hander outer, Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo would no doubt be only too happy to apply a regressive sales tax on her “underserved” constituents, just like Ahmad Zahra was in 2020. If the votes are there a special election in 2025 might be tried.
In any case, our tax dollars would undoubtedly be used to propagandize us about how our quality of life is determined by how many happy public employees we have bumping into each other in City Hall. Even worse we would be scolded about our lack of civic responsibility, etc. etc.
It will never occur to the would-be taxers that a lot of folks in Fullerton don’t feel like having taxes raised as a response to years and years of fiscal imprudence on the part of liberal councilmembers and incompetent city managers.
Our message to our would be overlords in City Hall, the “heart of the City” as Jan Flory called them, is clear.
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.
Every now and then I look down from doggy heaven and see something entertaining. Then I ask you humans to come up with a caption for the image. Here’s an picture that just cries out for a caption. Your councilman Ahmad Zahra, beloved by my former mistress, Jan Flory, and others of her ilk. My canine instinct senses something is off-putting about this man, but, arf. I’m only a dog, and a dead one at that.
Please give it a whirl. I am informed the best effort will receive special FFFF recognition.
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.
Earlier today, one of our Friends shared a couple Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo posts from the Next Door site sharing her views on the subject of marijuana tax revenue. Jaramillo says she’s running for the Fullerton City Council, and has big plans for solving the budget problem.
“I don’t know when the lightbulb will go on for our current council majority that our city is dying. We have been pinching penny’s for much too long and our city’s infrastructure shows it. If they would put on their thinking caps and allow legal dispensaries they could be the super heroes of Fullerton. Vote only candidates in favor of legalizing“
Responding to something called Legalize Fullerton Dispensaries, Jaramillo shared:
Thank you for your continued interest in legalizing marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton. Unfortunately we still have the same 3 councilman, Whitaker, Jung & Dunlap, who voted against this issue. So let’s be sure when any of these 3 are up for re-election to show up and vote them OUT! Our city is losing millions of dollars each year that dispensaries are not allowed. We all know how desperate we are for a stronger budget……
I can’t guarantee that these are genuine comments made by Jaramillo, but when you consider the poor grammar and punctuation, they have the ring of genuineness. And of course, Jaramillo’s world view, “pinching penny’s” (sic) is the problem, not excessive pay and pensions to thousands of employees over the years.
Her stake-out makes sense if she she believes the Long Beach Cannabis Cartel can be a source of political fundraising; and, of course her political soulmate, Ahmad Zahra, has long been known a wannabe player in the legal dope store game. Zahra supported the proposed ordinance that could have resulted in legalized dispensaries within 100 of your house. Zahra has also been associated with the “consulting” work of one Melahat Rafiei who recently pleaded guilty for conning a would-be dispensary operator in Anaheim out of hundreds of thousands that were meant as payouts to officials, and to trying to bribe Irvine City Council members.
Now, it could be that Jaramillo really believes that dispensaries are an economic salvation for Fullerton, and the more the better, and any negative impacts are worth the price of happy public employees and timely CalPERS payments This may put her at odds with the Fullerton Police Department that has a long-standing opposition to this sort of thing; she must be counting on the cop union to paver her way to office.
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?”
It’s pretty rare when one of our commissions really does its job, so when they do I’m happy to advertise the fact. Last week the Fullerton Planning Commission re-reviewed the noise ordinance that was kicked back to them by the City Council for further consideration, and they excelled themselves.
Their performance was so rewarding it almost makes me want to overlook the first time this group unanimously passed virtually the same proposed ordinance in November, 2023. This time they really took their jobs seriously.
The staff report for the item, given by some guy named Edgardo, was the same nonsense they pitched before, and they essentially asked the Commission to rubber stamp it yet again.
But this time there is a problem. It seems that no matter how many words they throw at the issue, staff can’t talk around their own complete lack of effort at code enforcement in Downtown Fullerton. They admit it now, claiming (without a shred of evidence) that the existing noise level is unsupportable in court, and begging the question of why amplified music is then allowed outdoors at all – it wasn’t for decades. We were informed that a “vibrant” downtown (pictures of happy people) requires more noise, not less. The underlying theme was the usual tripe: DTF is an economic asset whose saloon proprietors must be coddled at all cost. Look the other way, fast!
Incredibly, our new friend Edgardo informed the Commission that current levels of noise are acceptable to the citizenry based on the fact that so few complaints are lodged. Complete balderdash, of course. Naturally the bald declaration of “acceptability” was unsupported by any complaint data, suggesting that if there is a record, it is an embarrassing one. And the Commission learned from public speaker Joshua Ferguson that the City doesn’t bother with code enforcement and almost never has, leading Commissioner Patricia Tutor to wonder if this lack of responsiveness might have caused citizens to give up complaining.
One poor lady, the owner of Les Amis was there to push for the proposal. Unfortunately, as she admitted, she does live music in her establishment without the benefit of the required entertainment permit. Oops. Code enforcement to the rescue!
Local hero…
Tony Bushala got up to speak, sharing his story of being driven out of his downtown home due the noise. He also produced a lengthy list of errors and omissions in the proposed ordinance and stuff that was just contradictory. It turns out that the public and the Commission were not presented with a complete underline/strike-out version, showing pretty clearly that counsel Baron Bettenhauser of the I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm, had not, as he claimed, looking up from his cell phone, read the damn thing.
Edgardo and Baron work their magic…
One zoom caller named Maureen said the smartest thing of the night. She actually suggested that without actually hearing the sound on site, she (and presumably everybody else) was at a loss to really fathom the mystery of decibel levels.
Tutor tutors staff.
Commissioner Tutor was particularly effective in asking pertinent questions, one of which, was how come, after 10pm when music is supposed to move indoors, isn’t the decibel level lowered. A really commonsensical question. She didn’t get a commonsensical answer. The acoustical consultant from some operation called Dudek explained that during their noise collection procedure, that seemed to be the general noise level.
What’s going on here?
Oops again. Commissioner Cox pounced on the fact that the collected data was based on a noise level that was one, currently illegal; and two, based on a situation where there is no code enforcement, thus kicking up the noise level that staff was claiming was acceptable! He didn’t say so, but it was pretty clear that Mr. Dudek Guy had been receiving coaching from staff on the noise levels they found acceptable.
Mansuri ain’t buying it.
The other main sticking point was where to measure noise from – a certain distance from the noise source or a certain distance from the property line; two choices were offered with the greater distance being recommended. Commissioner Mansuri was unpersuaded by staff. That issue tied everybody up in knots off and on for the better part of an hour. Finally it was concluded that the noise sampling site needed a rethink.
Thanking God it’s over…
Finally, mercifully, Commissioner Arnel Dino moved that the whole thing come back in May with the entire code changes organized and clarified and that in the interim the Planning Commissioners would go out themselves with decibel monitors and experience for themselves the problems of sound accumulation, reverberation, etc. So that’s what is going to happen. Imagine that – first hand experience without the muddled abstraction of decibel levels on a piece of paper.
As usual it was obvious that our hand-wringing staff was pursuing their path of least residence by raising sound thresholds, making it harder to enforce even that, and refusing to enforce the requirements of the bar-owners’ entertainment permits – things like closing doors and windows. How many times have we seen staff guide the consultant they chose to get what they want? Happens all the time. And how many times must the public be subjected to uninformed or misinformed opinion passed along as Gospel truth by our public employees? Happens all the time. And when will the City Council demand honesty and competence from its bureaucrats? I’m afraid we all know the answer to that.
