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 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.
I’ve been watching Fullerton politics and governance for for a long time – since 2008 or 2009, in fact. One thing that has consistently struck me is the way in which Fullerton’s elected officials have completely and almost happily abdicated their responsibility to determine the direction of policy.
It has always been the goal, in principle if not in practice in modern representative democracy, that policy would be established by electeds, and administrated through a protected civil service bureaucracy.
Determining policy – the philosophical direction you want the town to take – isn’t easy in the “City Manager” form of government, a form deliberately created to remove any sort of executive authority from elected representatives. But with that set-up came something else, too: the difficulty of people’s representatives in establishing policy direction, and doing it without violating the Brown Act strictures on open meetings.
Nevertheless, the responsibility is still there, even if it easier to have photo ops, and ribbon cuttings and the like. Sadly our electeds have failed; failed with remarkable banality and complacency. Former Councilman and Fullerton Police Chief Pat McKinley once illustrated the point when challenged for his “failure to lead.” He exclaimed that councilmen weren’t there to lead – that was the City Manager’s job.
Lately the policy role abdication has been seen with the regurgitated, spit out, re-consumed and regurgitated again noise ordinance, an ongoing embarrassment that has plagued honest citizens for over fifteen years. I read the staff report on the recent noise effort, a report that justifies a decision to actually increase acceptable levels, protect offenders by including an ambient noise mask, and locates the noise metering away from the source whence it can be muddled by an equally noisy neighbor.
The staff report is nothing but a list of events that have occurred since 2009 when the City Council last expressed a coherent position. Nowhere in the staff report is there any discussion on the policy decisions behind any of the activities. Why not? Because there weren’t any. In the same way that the incredibly costly, drunken binge known as Downtown Fullerton has escaped any intelligent policy conversation, the noise nuisance issue, a subset of the former, has evaded policy discussion as City staff – behind the scenes – has diligently avoided doing anything to enforce existing code, and worked very hard to reduce the requirements.
So what has happened is a vacuum in which each new action seems disembodied from policy conversation; that’s because it is. And our council steadfastly refused to have an open and honest conversation of what it wants, abdicating its responsibilities.
One size fits all…
There is a long list of issues that our elected representatives should be addressing from an overarching policy level and aren’t. This sort of thing takes thought; and some hard work in ascertaining whether your city employees are really doing the thing you want; or not, as in the case of the Trail to Nowhere. It’s easier just to ram through the Consent Calendar on the nod, rubberstamp the ridiculous, clean your plate like good kids, and move on to the photo ops and the trophy ceremonies.
When thinking about the Trail to Nowhere it seemed to me that I had seen this same sort of thing before. Then it struck me. Of course.
An expensive and unnecessary project that dragged out for years, and that was supposed to be paid for with other people’s money, “free money” as it is known in City Hall, I recalled.
It may have been expensive, but it sure was unnecessary…
I remembered because I wrote about it, here. The second elevator towers at the Fullerton train station, a project so ridiculously over-engineered, so expensive, so reliant on phony ridership projections and so expensive and mismanaged that it ended up raiding Fullerton’s own Capital Budget to the tune of $600,000. In the end no one knows how much was actually spent on that boondoggle when everything was said and done. But one good thing that came out of it was teaching me to appreciate how things are done in Fullerton, and how there isn’t one cent’s worth of accountability on the part of anybody.
If the Trail to Nowhere actually ever gets built but is way over budget, unused, unmaintained and falls into decrepitude, who will stand up to take responsibility? Not the City Council who approved it without question. Not City staff – the chief architects of this disaster in-waiting are already gone– nor will the City Manager, who will be gone as soon as his pension formula tops him out. None of the people stirred up to insult and harangue the City Council will be in evidence and the proprietors of the Fullerton Observer, if they are still around annoying people, will not be searching for those accountable. No one else will be, either.
Maybe the less said, the better…
Remember the multi-million dollar Poison Park intergenerational fiasco? Has anybody ever taken responsibility for that poster child of bureaucratic incompetence and political indifference? Of course not. That would be a horrible precedent. Fullerton.
It was like getting hit with a broomstick all over again…
I have to say there are a lot of advantages to being in Doggie Heaven, and I would be remiss if I didn’t share them once in a while.
Getting rid of all the little annoyances connected with being alive and being a dog, for one thing.
Like I was reminded on Tuesday night when I was looking in on Fullerton’s City Council meeting to see if much had changed since my last visitation.
There was a lot of silly bloviation going on, the sort of things bipeds (humans and parrots and so forth) like to do. But then I was suddenly horror struck! Who was that sitting five or six rows back along the left aisle?
Arf! None other than my former mistress, Jan Flory, looking grumpier and more outraged than ever!
Yes, I admit, I recoiled in terror – a justifiable reflexive action, really, given all the times she would crack my skull with her broom and force me to take a doggie dump on Mr. Bushala’s property – and then crack my skull again if I didn’t. A chill ran down my ghostly spine as I recalled the bad old days when a pint of Jim Beam would mean a sound thrashing for me.
Too much scotch, not enough water…
My anxiety got even worse when my former mistress got up to speak. I know I should have averted my gaze to something less horrific, but it was sort of like one of you humans watching a train wreck – it’s hard to look away. I have no idea what she was babbling about, but she was going off on a guy named Whitaker, most likely the same man she raved about at home thirty years ago – just before the ol’ broom would come out of the closet. Whack! Right across the orbital. I could tell the utility mop was still securely in place after all these years.
Well, that’s my report from up here. I did notice that Fullerton has changed very little which is sort of reassuring in a way, even though I am just a dog, and a dead one at that.
On Tuesday Nick Dunlap was appointed Mayor of Fullerton by the City Council.
That’s “Mayor Dunlap” to you…
Dunlap seems like a decent fellow. He’s been courteous and collegial and always seems to be engaged in meetings. Congratulations to him. Apparently he’s turned down the job in the past, maybe because he’s got a couple of young kids.
I’m not voting for Zahra and you can’t make me…
Fred Jung, the outgoing Mayor was chosen as Mayor Pro Tem, the person who runs meetings if the Mayor is indisposed.
The real story here is that once again Ahmad Zahra was passed over. Oh, the humanity.
Intelligent commentary was not forthcoming…
His band of followers spoke emotionally for him. Why, you’d think he was the incarnation of St. Joan, St. Francis, Albert Schweitzer, Tiny Tim and Mighty Mouse, all rolled into one. Of course that little cavalcade was also the same group of folks who show up every week to challenge the ethics and honesty of the Council majority – at Zahra’s behest.
The system of rotation must be upheld they cried passionately. Fairness, they wailed. One guy got himself so wound up he looked ready to take punches at the air. The agitation. The furor! District 5 will have no Mayor some of the underserved proclaimed. The wailing and gnashing of teeth!
Too much scotch, not enough water…
Even former Councilcreature Jan Flory hauled herself out of inebriate haze to deliver comments whose sole purpose was one last attack on Bruce Whitaker, challenging him to put aside his ill-humor and do the right thing by Zahra, hilariously neglecting to observe her own 30-year old, still unsatisfied vendetta against Whitaker. Clearly the stick up her backside remains firmly in place.
And this was before the vote.
I know what’s best. Trust me.
But none of the offended folk seem to have reflected that there must be an excellent reason for Whitaker, Dunlap, and Jung to deny Zahra “his turn.” Those three obviously don’t like Zahra and don’t trust him. His penchant for self-promotion and his demeaning attitude toward them, so typical of the left-leaning know-it-all, has probably worn very thin. They know it is Zahra who has been orchestrating the ongoing harassment of them through his collection of oddball minions.
Zahra has been said to have filed a complaint to the police against Fred Jung for being a meanie of some sort, a claim that was refuted by everybody present. Zahra lied about being exonerated for a crime to which he pleaded guilty to have his record expunged. These aren’t good ways to earn trust and respect among your colleagues. And then there’s his ties to Melahat Rafiei the dope lobbyist and bribery queen who was just rung up by the US Justice Department.
Then, that very night, the public discovered that Zahra had gone behind the Council and City Manager’s back to talk to a State agency all by himself.
And who knows how many other shenanigans have been played by this unemployed, self-righteous, utterly transactional individual; and who knows what other skeletons might be inclined to tumble out of his closet?
And the end of the meeting Zahra was brought to tears by the injustice, choked up like a little child who wasn’t allowed to play on the monkey bars. The pathos was so thick it brought Zahra’s remaining followers in attendance to weep right along with the object of their affection.
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.
Here at FFFF HQ we always leave the door open for Fullerton citizens to share their issues. This instance is a little different. We received (anonymously) a statement that purports to be by a 5th District resident. I don’t know who wrote it, or in what context it was written. I don’t need to know. It is a well-written, eloquent, and damning indictment of Ahmad Zahra’s weepy, sleezy, self-serving 4 year tenure on the Fullerton City Council.And it’s all true.
Money talks…
Here’s the statement as we received it:
“1. Mr. Zahra denied the voters of Fullerton the opportunity to elect a member to a half term on the Fullerton City Council. Although he at first vocally supported an election to fill the at-large seat vacated by Jesus Silva on the Fullerton City Council, Mr. Zahra ultimately voted to appoint someone to the two year remainder of this term despite dozens of public speakers from all backgrounds pleading for a special election. Mr. Zahra argued that a special election would be too expensive, but went on to support at least one other questionable expenditure far in excess of the estimated cost of such an election.
“2. Following the appointment of Jan Flory to the aforementioned two year seat on the city council, she joined council member Jennifer Fitzgerald and Mr. Zahra himself in appointing Mr. Zahra to a paid seat on the Board of the Orange County Water District, supplanting the city’s then current representative, whose term had not yet expired. The vote gave the appearance of an obvious quid pro quo, wherein Mr. Zahra supported appointing Ms. Flory to the council in exchange for her support in appointing him as Fullerton’s representative to the OCWD.
“3. Mr. Zahra consistently voted to support spending over a million dollars on legal fees to sue two writers from the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog who downloaded private files from an unguarded and publicly available folder on the city’s website— a folder to which the city itself had directed the bloggers. The blog’s publication of of at least some of these files revealed incompetence and malfeasance on the part of the city’s administration and police department. In addition to being an enormous waste of public funds on a suit the city was unlikely to win, this lawsuit represented a serious attack on freedom of the press, on par with legal actions taken against the publication of the Pentagon Papers fifty years ago—that is, an attempt by government to suppress publication of materials embarrassing to it and to punish news outlets who would do so. Council member Zahra’s support of this lawsuit alone should be reason for any news organization to decline to endorse him for public office.
“4. Mr. Zahra participated in a council subcommittee consisting of himself and then Council member Jennifer Fitzgerald. This economic development subcommittee held meetings behind closed doors with no publicly available agendas, no publicized meetings times or places, and no subsequent public notes. The public were not invited to attend. No one knows what was discussed in these meetings.
“5. No notes were ever made available from the aforementioned subcommittee meetings, but Mr. Zahra subsequently supported, with great enthusiasm, the development of the former Kimberly Clark property into a massive warehouse distribution site for Goodman Logistics, a frequent host of Amazon delivery services. It is no exaggeration to state that Goodman subsequently stripped the site of every living tree, including a perimeter of large, mature pine trees and groves of fruit trees that included the last orange tree orchard in Fullerton.
“6. Mr. Zahra falsely claimed authorship of a story about the Orange County Water District submitted for publication and ultimately published by The Fullerton Observer. Subsequent discovery that the article was actually authored by OCWD staff caused public embarrassment to the Observer and revealed that Mr. Zahra was willing to uncritically and deceptively pass along an agency’s public relations material to The Fullerton Observer as his own writing, casting clear doubt about the independence of his representation of Fullerton on the Board of this agency as well as his trustworthiness as a public official.
“7. Mr. Zahra has refused to reveal the ultimate disposition of criminal charges brought against him while serving on the council. Although the charges were reported by the Observer to have been dismissed, court records were sealed, denying the public the right to know what actually happened in the case of a public official accused of assault and vandalism. Whether or not the charges were judged to be justified, Mr. Zahra should have revealed exactly how this case proceeded and how it was ultimately concluded to dispel any doubt in the minds of his constituents.
“8. Mr. Zahra appointed to the Planning Commission, arguably the most important and powerful committee or commission in the city, a representative for a pro-development organization Her role as director of this organization represented a clear conflict of interest between her profession and her public service. She ultimately resigned from the Commission part way through her term with no prior notice during one of its meetings, leaving before the meeting has been concluded the the evening. Such an appointment, in my opinion, calls into question Mr. Zahra’s judgement.
“Additionally, we should remember that the 5th District was created to accommodate representation by the area’s largely Latinx population—the only such district in the city. Endorsing the only non-Latino in this contest would not seem to advance this goal.”
