Right now it looks like Ms. Charles, the sanctimonious and self-important gasbag representing District 3 on the Fullerton City Council has no competition for re-election this November.
I suppose this is a testament to the apathy of the electorate because there should be at least one person willing to challenge the otiose uber-leftist whose constant stream of self-righteous and ignorant bullshit almost demands an opponent.
A visit to the City Clerk’s webpage listing candidate committees shows no one except Charles in the Third District.
This doesn’t mean that a non-committee candidate isn’t running, or that a potential opponent isn’t waiting to file the forms necessary to raise funds like a serious contender. But time is almost up. Candidates will be able to “pull papers” to run in just a few weeks. If they haven’t announced yet, at this late date, it seems unlikely.
Why?
Charles has taken lots positions that would undoubtedly be unpopular among responsible, taxpaying citizens outside the Fullerton Boohoo echo chamber. Let’s put aside her flip-flops on issues like the downtown noise regulations and the issue of private publications on city property. Instead, let’s focus on issues that would be pretty damaging to Charles once voters learn about them. They involve wasting money, or trying to. A lot of it.
First is her steadfast support of handing over $200,000 of public funds to support illegal aliens harassed by ICE. You can feel sympathy for people snagged by the ICE goons without wanting to use public funds to pay for their groceries.
That can’t be good…
Then there is the embarrassing matter of the so-called boutique hotel, where the Council approved massive entitlements on a property and then “sold” it for peanuts to build a massive and harebrained project on Santa Fe Avenue. The worst part was deeding over the property to a couple of inveterate con men who, after many years, haven’t turned a shovel of dirt on the site and never will. Providentially, that approval was Shana Charles’ very first vote.
Green means green. One way or another…
How about the issue of her income from the marijuana lobby – gained via her husband’s effort to get Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo elected in the 2024 D4 election. Her tribe is always blathering about the evils of money in campaigns; Jaramillo got $60,000 of Washington DC lobbyist cash working for her and $4000 went right into the Charles family wallet. Would the residents of D3 like a dispensary on State College?
I don’t want to forget the disastrous Trail to Nowhere that cost $2.5 million and has virtually no use. FFFF predicted that over and over again, although it wasn’t hard for anybody to foresee. The last half dozen times I have driven down Richman at various hours, I have yet to see a single user. Charles was stupid enough to fall for all the bullshit peddled by staff; either that or she knew it was nonsense and didn’t care. Does it make a difference?
Spinning, spinning…
If there is a tax on the November ballot Charles will have to take a stand. Spinning won’t help. She won’t get her 13% general sales tax increase, but there could be two 6.5% special sales taxes to vote for, infrastructure and “public safety.” Opposing these would send a signal that she doesn’t care about fixing the budget deficit she helped create: just a couple years ago she bragged about hiring more people.
She has to run on the state of the City and that state isn’t good. She’s been there for four years with nothing to show for it except foolish positions and non-stop, rambling lectures.
Update: a well-informed reader pointed has out that 7/7/26 was removed from the calendar in December 2025 because staff determined it was too close to Independence Day.
I have no idea why it wasn’t so designated on the CC’s schedule found on the City website – until this afternoon.
This does beg the question as to why the meeting wasn’t rescheduled as an official hearing to make determinations regarding the budget and find out the status of the search for a new money-raising consultant. There seems to be almost no sense of urgency about the fact that the City still doesn’t have a budget for this fiscal year.
The Kennedy Sisters weed out comments and commenters on their blog that undermine their own partisan narratives. They have no problem, apparently, in letting stand crap that attacks the objects of their hatred. Fred Jung is accused of “unsavory” business practices, romantic infidelities? Really?
Let the lecture commence…
The following has been snipped to share the sort of “journalism” that takes place in the hallowed precincts of the Fullerton Observer:
AmyI think it’s clear what Jung stands for. Not through his inscrutable persona or his public statements, but from his actions on the dais: he stands for Jung, and Jung alone. He seeks power, connections, money. He seeks to climb the ladder politically and somewhat professionally. I believe he deliberately obscures his real job and income source because to do so would reveal more than he would like and invite scrutiny into what could be unsavory business practices. It is clear that he does not stand for the people and that his intentions are not for – and are often diametrically opposed to – the good of the people who elected him to power.
Matt Leslie My earlier reply to Amy’s comment above hasn’t been published, so I’ll try again. Amy, what evidence can you present to justify your belief that Fred Jung has engaged in possible “unsavory business practices?” I think this malicious online speculation about Mr. Jung’s private businesses reflects a certain frustration with the recent audit that found no fraud in the city’s budget on the part of Mayor Jung (or anyone else), despite Jung’s detractors displaying PAC sponsored signs and banners that baselessly suggested otherwise.
FK + TKI’m sure it didn’t help that he was dating Tammy Kim, an Itvine City Councilwoman who was charge with 11 felony counts. He was married the whole time. I agree with the other commenter that the article lacks real metrics, but I agree with the Author, Jung is in politics for Jung.
RobWhat a tired trope. Blaming Tammy Kim means you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re too lazy to make a real argument. It also lets him off the hook way too easily. If that were true, I suspect Jung would not have lost so badly. She still has formidable relationships with the Democratic Party and labor, and has helped campaigns across OC for years. Jung lost because of Jung. His campaign, his decisions, his record, his baggage.
Matt LeslieWow, now an accusation of personal improprieties from a completely anonymous commenter. Is this what the Observer now allows on its site?
I wonder if the this garbage is okay with the guard old and new, of Fullerton Boohoo, who believe the Fullerton Observer is actually an objective journalistic endeavor, but woi, in reality, will believe almost anything.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
Yes, indeed. In an editorial masquerading as some sort of news, Fullerton Observer sister Sikita Kennedy explained the failure of government and the ways in which that failure is dressed up to look like victory. This article appears to be an AI generated creation since the estimable Satskia has never shown this sort of perspicuity in the past, but, whatever. After you weed out the jargon some fundamental management truths emerge.
The topic of course is something almost nobody gives a rat’s ass about: getting rid of bike lockers at the train station, the reason given that they are underused. The awkward title shouts out “Fullerton’s Bicycle Lockers Spark Controversy Among Cyclists” as if an inanimate object has such puissance. Naturally, it’s the removal of said lockers that is causing Siska herself grief; not a solitary cyclist is interviewed or quoted in her essay.
But I digress. The topic is inconsequential, but the analysis of failure is quite remarkable and completely uncharacteristic. Kennedy seems to have finally discovered the cultural behavior of government bureaucracies that we have known all along. Let’s enjoy some of the fruits of her editorial labors:
Organizations in crisis rarely announce themselves as such.More often, they produce charts, reports, and performance metrics that tell a reassuring story — one that, on closer inspection, was shaped by the same decisions it purports to evaluate. This is one of the quieter dangers of institutional mismanagement: it doesn’t just damage an organization, it can generate the evidence that justifies its own continuation.
How perfectly true, and so descriptive of almost every staff and study report ever produced in Fullerton. The classic dodge is to answer a question that nobody asked.
“…a dispute over bicycle lockers is offering a textbook example of how low performance, manufactured by neglect, gets cited as the reason to eliminate the very thing being neglected.
Yes, indeed. Sort of sounds like the death-march noise ordinance fiasco, doesn’t it, wherein City failure to enforce codes results in the push to abandon the process of code enforcement altogether.
When managers make poor decisions, they typically face two options: change course or defend the course they’re on. Defense, in institutional settings, almost always involves data. The problem is that those same managers often control what data gets collected, how it gets measured, and how it gets reported.
Good Lord, Satkia, has had her come to Jesus revelation! The truth may yet set her free! How often have we seen a circling of the wagons, the manipulation of information to reinforce the error? Mostly data collection, crooked or otherwise, isn’t even necessary. Convoluted rhetoric often does the trick. Option number one never takes place.
A leader who has misallocated resources will tend to measure success in ways that don’t reveal the misallocation. A department head who has pursued the wrong strategy will frame performance indicators around the metrics where progress is easiest to show. Over time, the organization’s entire information infrastructure bends toward confirming decisions already made.
This is something we’ve seen time and time again. Throw out the jargon and it means this: “look over there.” The misdirection is so common as to be commonplace. This is what will happen when the City’s disastrous “fire fighter” ambulance driver chickens come home to the proverbial roost.
This is the classic mismanagement data trap: measuring outputs rather than outcomes, and then using those outputs to validate the decisions that produced them.
Amen, Sister, testify!
The “data trap” of measuring outputs was nowhere better seen than on the horrendously useless Trail to Nowhere, where the efforts were all about building something expensive and then patting yourself on the back for…building something expensive. But that wasn’t about a few piddling bike lockers, no, but the waste of $2,500,000, an irony lost on the Fullerton Observer editorial staff of two. The Observer Sisters will never expend a moment’s time worrying about actual users (or complete lack of same) on the “trail.”
One of the most common tools in this playbook is selective periodization — choosing a start date for measurement that makes current numbers look favorable by comparison. Applied to civic infrastructure, this often means measuring usage after a program has already been allowed to deteriorate, rather than tracking the arc from functional to neglected.
How funny. Siskia has had her epiphany, alright, but it sure is a selective enlightenment. Remember when staff tried to keep the ridiculous Waste on Wilshire going by citing low traffic on Wilshire after the street had been closed!
Organizations under poor leadership often commission external reviews that appear to provide independent accountability but are structured to confirm decisions already made. The questions given to reviewers shape the findings, and the questions come from the people who need favorable findings. The result carries the authority of objectivity while functioning as a mirror.
Let’s consider the very recent Grant Thornton report whose results were meant to cauterize a huge embarrassment without naming a single culprit or a single systemic failure. No outcries from the Observers, of course.
Cities do this too — with traffic studies, usage audits, and infrastructure assessments that are framed around the conclusion leadership has already reached. Whether that’s what’s happening with Fullerton’s active transportation data is a question advocates would do well to press publicly.
They sure do, Sitka. Who are you supposed to believe, your commonsense or the experts we have hired to back us up? Ahem, remember the “experts” hired to produce pro tax findings, pro development findings, pro this or pro that findings? In fact data supporting everything that the City Manager who hired them wants. The latest examples is that “traffic study” for the overbuilt Harbor/Hermosa project that will never in a million years stop the project as designed, from being built.
The antidote to data shaped by mismanagement is not more data — it’s differently sourced data, with different incentive structures attached to it. Independent audits are conducted by parties with no relationship to the decisions being evaluated. Performance metrics set before interventions begin, not after. Usage data is examined in the context of program accessibility, not in isolation.
Great Caesar’s Ghost! What a splendid statement of objective accountability and something that should be happening, at least occasionally, and not on some silly bike lockers, but on real issues where millions are spent, from hiring ambulance drivers to deciding if anybody is now going to use a new but previously failed park; on weather there is a chance in hell that anybody would patronize a “boutique” hotel at the Transportation Center.
There is a vast irony in the Observer’s new-found demand for objective standards to promote accountability – exactly the thing government employees dread. See, it’s the squalid world of professional management, and such accountability is not to be applied to government bureaucrats who are made of a finer material. They are working for us, see, and have a noble calling not to be subjected to accountability.
And it’s deliciously ironic that the new Observer spirit has been discovered due to some footling bike lockers, and not the decades long history of Fullerton disasters that nobody but FFFF has chronicled.
Might Sciatica Kennedy’s observations and suggestions be applied to future Fullerton mishaps? Bet not. But let’s enjoy them while we can.
Fullerton is supposed to have its budgets wrapped up by the end of June. That’s when fiscal years end and new ones begin. It’s in the Municipal Code.
But not this year. So a resolution was needed to keep the gears of government grinding in Fullerton at current levels so that “essential services” be maintained. At the June 16th meeting the City Council passed the appropriate resolution authorizing the continuation of the process into July. Here’s the casual explanation of what’s going on::
“Staff continues to evaluate revenue projections, expenditure estimates including cost containment and deficit reduction strategies, capital improvement requirements, reserve levels, organizational needs and other fiscal considerations as part of the FY 2026-27 budget development process.”
Permit me to translate the double talk: “a complete absence of leadership has stalled the process and nobody in City Hall has the remotest idea how to deal with the massive, impending budget shortfall except by taxation.”
Where there’s smoke…
We have seen over the past year the revitalization of the footling Budget Sustainability Committee that accomplished exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. Well, not quite nothing, because its members reflected the positions of those that appointed them. Dunlap’s appointee voted against all tax proposals offered up. Jung and Valencia’s appointees supported a half-cent special infrastructure tax, but not a general sales tax. Zahra and Charles’ appointees rejected a special sales tax and pushed for the one cent general sales tax.
One committee member suggested privatizing the Water Utility; another suggested borrowing from the deep pockets of the new (or old) waste hauler. Another idea was creating a business district to pay for the Downtown Fullerton deficit. Innovative concepts for a City on the edge of insolvency that got no traction. T he committee how disastrous budget cuts would be to the public, especially to the hallowed halls of “public safety” that sucks up the lion’s share of the budget. Service levels, donchaknow.
I don’t recall anybody discussing mandatory salary reductions. Maybe I missed it.
Which leaves the City with no viable tax path forward even getting one on the November ballot. Other revenue generating ideas went nowhere, including selling off real estate, particularly that where Water Fund activities are going on. Other ideas, such as selling the boutique hotel site aren’t practical because Council and staff and City Attorney have led to humiliation and fraud on the property and has seen it tied up in dispute.
Even as Fullerton’s “leaders” fiddled away their time, new information about huge accounting errors revealed the situation was even more dire than previously imagined.
It would be dereliction not to remind Friends that our illustrious City Council actually agreed to hire a bunch of ambulance drivers on credit and a dozen new “firefighters” at the behest of the their union even as the budget crisis loomed on the near horizon.
A couple months ago the City of Fullerton hired Grant Thornton to investigate a handful of financial transactions that resulted in an vast overstatement of the city’s General Fund.
Last night they reported on Task 1: investigating the awkward General Fund balance fuck up.
As expected was the conclusion that no nefarious intent was involved. Just some good old fashioned negligence and/or incompetence (these were not used by Grant Thornton who was completely diplomatic).
But all you had to do was read between the lines and the conclusions were, and are, damning.
According to the consultants these few transactions were the only thing they looked into; they were not hired to perform a full forensic audit. Well, okay. But the conclusions that they drew, and that informed their recommendations should have been perceived as a serious indictment of how the City’s finances operate, were accepted by a clueless city council without a whimper.
One transaction alone, the $2.9 million from redevelopment, should have sufficed to alarm all involved. The funds were moved without a concomitant debit to at least a temporary holding account – a basic principle of accounting called double entry book keeping, a fundamental concept of Accounting 101. It’s only been around for 600 years.
The big recommendation was to hire a competent Chief Financial Officer – a CPA knowledgeable in government accounting. There’s another $300,000 per annum. It seems like the budget and reporting reforms recommended by our consultant may not be able to be applied to the upcoming budget due to lack of time, which just seems so typical of Fullerton Futility.
The little that Grant Thornton did delve into suggests a fundamental failure of practices and procedures that is the result of years, if not decades of organization entropy because of lack of managerial leadership. When we consider the completely unqualified City Managers like Chris Myers, Joe Felz, Ken Domer, and Eric Levitt – appointed for reasons of political maneuvering or convenience – things start to make more sense. Combine that with the fiscal and budget responsibilities being rolled up to Administration Directors whose professional accounting abilities were (and are) dubious, you get a process running on inertia.
Naturally, nobody at the meeting had the courage to say any of that, although the Grant Thornton folks sure must have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how not to say it.
Grant Thornton has decided that someone else should perform Task 2 – the generation of revenue to bail the City out of its fiscal embarrassment. They say it will save the City money to hire somebody else with a better “wheelhouse” to perform this task, a generosity foolishly lauded by one councilmember, but that begs the question of why Grant Thornton was hired to perform the task in the first place, a question whose answer will not be forthcoming.
My guess is that GT doesn’t want to have anything to do with talking about new taxes and there’s an end to it.
Last week “the People” held their own meeting in front of City Hall since the Fullerton City Council meeting had been cancelled for lack of a quorum.
Who were “the People?” Nobody was saying before the event, except that the organizers were springing for limited pizza.
The turnout, predictably, was a couple dozen of the usual agitators at City Council meetings – a combination of Fullerton Boohoo, Fullerton Self-righteous, Fullerton Angry and Fullerton Nuts.
The ostensible theme of the get together was to bitch about the usual stuff, including transparency, which was funny because Sanka Kennedy of the Fullerton Observer who advertised this event, didn’t even bother to say who was putting on what turned out to be an overtly political event, whose principal purpose was to attack Mayor Fred Jung and promote Connor Traut in advance of the upcoming Supervisorial primary election.
It turns out the shindig was the work of Fullerton Forward, a political action committee cooked by council annoyance Steven Sherry, one of those underemployed political cling-ons looking to make his way in a cold, cruel political world. He was the one who sprang for the dozen pizzas, apparently.
O, the sparkling rhetoric from Crazy Air-punching Tim Johnson. Little Angry Bird, Dancing Ms. Green Card, Professor Curtis Gamble, Tender Young Elijah, Oliver the No-account of Montecristo, and other luminaries! Stika Kennedy, erstwhile “journalist” addressed the gaggle, too, showing again her failure to distinguish journalism from partisan politics.
The booby prize…
Then, at last, to the mawkish business of “appointing” the “People’s Mayor.” Angry Johnson had already prepared certificate of accomplishment for the Dodgy Doctor from Damascus, Ahmad Zahra! What a surprise!!
The People’s Mayor contemplating his political future…and then free pizza for dinner!
The entire affair was an unwitting foray into comic opera, so at least some entertainment value was produced.
Questions about whether such an overtly political event on public property is legal and whether Fullerton Forward had permits or insurance to put on this affair are being raised by concerned citizens (see what I did there, Observers?).
Fullerton’s so-called Ad Hoc Fiscal Sustainability Committee met again, and probably for the last time last Thursday. Like its predecessor, the meeting expended hours of lots of peoples’ time and accomplished nothing. Not very little. Nothing.
Hours and hours of already familiar Power Point readings.
Three things worth mentioning happened.
Miss Daisey was driven…
First, Daisy Perez, the Assistant City Manager reminded the committee that if the City were to get a dedicated “infrastructure” half-cent sales tax increase, that money could be diverted to pay for “maintenance” of police and fire department facilities. She said nothing about a commensurate reduction in the “public safety” budgets and naturally nobody on the committee asked her.
Later, when pressed, the City Manger had to explain that he needed some sort of City Attorney blessing before he could share polling questions asked by the City’s quality of life/pro tax consultant. Huh? The only people who get to know the questions are the ones who got phone solicitations? What bullshit is this? Fortunately, Joshua Ferguson was on hand to share the nature of the questions his wife got; of course they were directed to promoting a sales tax increase of some kind.
You will be taxed…sooner or later!
Later still, when everyone was fatigued, Perez tried to get the committee to vote on a laundry list of options, all of which would be passed on to the council. This is the precise swindle that occurred during the redistricting process courtesy of City Clerk Lucinda Williams – when Fullerton Booohoo was trying real hard to keep Jesus Quirk-Silva in a political job.
Chris Norby, our former City Councilman, County Supervisor and Assemblyman showed up to save the day. He shared the value of vacant properties the City owns, and threw in the airport. These collectively are worth half a billion he asserted. He didn’t remind committee members that these properties would be declared surplus, and that “affordable” housing developers would get first shot at them. He reminded the committee that sales taxes are inherently regressive, perhaps thinking anybody cared about that.
In the end a completely improper process of trying to vote on something, anything, occurred. Without following any order except prompting by staff, the committee voted 3-2 against a Tony Bushala suggestion of a 1/2 cent sales tax dedicate to infrastructure, and keeping in place an existing ordinance guaranteeing a certain percentage of funding for infrastructure.
Peace. No, piece. Another piece of your money. You have it. We want it.
Then the appointees of the liberals Shana Charles and Ahamad Zahra, Derek Smith and Jennifer Duong proposed their own idea: a one cent general sales tax. This failed 3-2, also with Bushala, Wehn and Wozab voting no.
Finally a legitimate motion was made by Eric Wehn and seconded by Bushala: investigate the possible sale of the water function to an independent water company. That proposal was finally passed 3-2 again with the liberal appointees voting no. This idea really has no place to go, except that an exploration of the Water Department’s vacant property should be definitely considered for offloading.
There seemed to be confusion about whether the committee could meet again to keep kicking the can around. No decision was made on that as far as I can tell, but I’ve seen so many Fullerton meetings dissolve into incoherence at their end that I really can’t say.
Ahmad Zahra acolyte and tender sprig Elijah Mannisero is at it again. In a very strange post on the Kennedy Sister Observer blog he takes offense at my recent post on FFFF detailing many of Zahra’s shortcomings – ethical, financial, and legal.
J’accuse!
Specifically, the fragile green shoot takes umbrage at the claim that Zahra filed a false police report back in 2021 against his colleague Fred Jung.
Most of the impressionable fella’s post wastes time explaining what everybody agrees happened: Zahra popped off to Jung with a snide comment, and the latter reacted verbally. It’s funny that Manissero makes it sound like Jung pursued Zahra into the back room, because that is where they all go after meetings – as evidenced by Dunlap, Whitaker, and Quirk-Silva’s presence there, also. He inserts some little snips to look like he has uncovered something. Whatever.
In young Elijah’s recounting Zahra was afraid that Jung would escalate his behavior so he went to the cops – the next day. He shares the fact that the cops did investigate something and closed “the case” for lack of anything that looked like a crime. Oddly, Elijah takes exception to my “timeline” although my post offered none.
It all amounts to FFFF badness and evil, of course. No “false report” was made and we are spreading disinformation.
But hold on a sec, Elijah. You have the whole police report, including the accusation, right? I won’t bother asking who gave it to you because I already know. However, here’s one small problem: you didn’t share any documentation on what the exactly Zahra claimed Jung did to require police involvement. Hmm. I wonder why not.
Young Maniserro tries to claim I mischaracterized something when I wrote that other councilmembers denied Zahra’s account. Not true. Elijah should have tried reading. Here’s what the post said:
The cops interviewed other councilmembers who denied Zahra’s tall tale. End of story. Except that the story has never been reported by Zahra’s Observer friends and of course never discussed by Zahra.”
So the point is not just what people saw and overheard. The issue is whether they saw and heard everything Zahra put in his report to the cops – the whole thing. Obviously, they didn’t. Readers of his post still don’t know what Zahra claimed happened that warranted police intervention, and sweet Elijah didn’t bother sharing the whole report from which he only cites the verbal exchanges, but not the actual accusation Zahra made to the police. Where’s the rest of the report? Let’s see the whole thing
Maybe Zahra honestly thinks “are you a little girl?” is a sufficient affront to call in the police to investigate a crime – in which case there is no false report – just a stupid waste of everybody’s time. Can he possibly have believed that? Or is it much more likely that he saw another opportunity to play victim by dragging the cops into a silly verbal exchange by pretending a crime happened to him, an opportunity that backfired.
The most telling part of the post was Elijah’s attempt to drag Tony Bushala into it, somehow. Bushala wasn’t there at the confrontation, but he must be blamed for something or it wouldn’t be the Fullerton Observer. So the story twists itself to Bushala’s oversized influence, yadda, yadda, and transparency and the like.
What a mess.
Maybe his mom needs to run young Elijah’s sheets out on the line for the neighbors to see.
Now, finally in his last year of public preening and pontificating on our dime, Fullerton Councilmember Ahmad Zahra deserves an appropriate retrospective from FFFF. And this backwards look is colored by Zahra’s own continual critique of his colleagues for their lack of transparency. His claque, in particular the lonely old Kennedy Sisters of the Fullerton Observer, are willing to pass along these accusations without a shred of curiosity about their own hero.
Transparency.
Mug shot of the one-time Mrs. Ahmad Zahra.
Back in mid 1990s the immigrant Zahra came to America with a dream in his heart. That dream was stay here. To that end he quickly married a woman in Arkansas named Michelle Salmon in order to jump the green card line. In Zahra’s case the marriage fraud takes on a pungent charm since Zahra is proudly gay and has said in print that he has always known he was gay.
The newly minted husband left right away for the sunshine and beaches of California, leaving his unheartbroken and probably a little wealthier bride in Little Rock. When the statutory time obligation passed he divorced his abandoned wife, and here he remained. Zahra has never bothered to share his brief sojourn in Arkansas in any of various biographies, and why would he? That would be transparent.
Zahra claims he is a medical doctor although he certainly didn’t attend any medical school in the First World. Maybe in the Third World? There is no record of his practicing medicine anywhere, and he has never even bothered to share his medical school diploma. That would be transparent.
Sometime in the 2000s he says, Zahra, claiming to be a “film maker,” washed up on Fullerton’s shores. Zahra still claims film making as his job, even though no one can find any recent cinematic work to his credit. How he makes ends meet is a mystery and the wherewithal for his trips abroad (he says they are) is a matter of conjecture. Zahra never explains where he gets his income. It certainly isn’t from making movies. The public has the right to know how he supports himself. That would be transparent.
Not the people’s choice…
Zahra’s first action on the City Council was a cheap flip-flop that you never read about in the Observer. Despite his call for an election to replace Jesus Quirk Silva’s citywide seat, he soon voted to disenfranchise Fullerton voters and appoint the old retread Jan Flory; in return he got a great paying seat on the Orange County Water District Board where he pulled in $70,000 over a couple years. Zahra never talks about his decision reversal, nor do his followers. That would be transparent.
While on the Water Board, Zahra published three articles under his own name in the Fullerton Observer about water-related issues. It was later discovered that the articles weren’t written by Zahra at all, but rather by an OCWD PR hack. Zahra didn’t care and neither did the Observer Sisters, who tried to explain the plagiarism as some sort of amateur error by somebody, probably Jesse Latour. Transparency?
Read. Weep.
In the middle of Zahra’s first term on the City Council, he was busted and charged by the District Attorney for battery and vandalism. The case vanished as happens when somebody pleads guilty, pays a fine and does some community service. That gave Zahra the chance to falsely claim that he had been “exonerated” and offered to show evidence of that claim. But he never did. That would be transparent.
Not looking so good…
Zahra has been a cheerleader for legalized marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton. He had recommended the services of the later-convicted dope lobbyist Melahat Rafiei. He appointed Derek Smith, an MJ union lobbyist and peripheral character in the Anaheim Cabal crew to be his representative on the Budget Sustainability Committee. Zahra has never revealed his ties to the legalized marijuana cartel and what was in it for him. That would be transparent.
Ferguson and Curlee. The easy winners…
In Zahra’s worst offense against the people of Fullerton, he voted over and over again to sue David Curlee, Joshua Ferguson and FFFF. That flagrant abuse of power cost the public hundreds of thousands of dollars in a settlement. Zahra was aided and abetted by the Fullerton Observer’s Sharon Kennedy who actually employed an “expert” family member to assist City Hall’s reckless lawsuit. Zahra lied to the Voice of OC, claiming he was a “fan” of settling the lawsuit from the beginning, even though he voted against the final settlement. No explanation for this disaster was ever forthcoming from Zahra or his accomplice, Sharon Kennedy. That would be transparent.
In 2021 Zahra tried to privatize the UP Park and turn it into a commercial events center masquerading as a non-profit fish farm. The move was illegal as hell, but none of his friends cared so why should he? Zahra never reminds anyone of that harebrained scheme, but loves to talk about how his district is park poor. Transparency?
Tony Castro. Staying out of jail long enough to be of use to the Democrat Party of OC.
In his 2022 reelection campaign, Zahra spent $120,000 to keep a job that pays a thousand bucks a month. Part of this campaign involved the Democratic Party’s creation of a patsy candidate with a shady past but with a Latino name, Tony Castro, to beat his real opponent, Oscar Valadez. How much did Zahra know about this phony candidacy? Come to think of it, how much did Zahra know about the perjury of another fake candidate in 2024, Scott Markowitz, recruited by north county Dems in order to elect Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo. Once again Sharon Kennedy of the Observer not only ignored the story but ran interference. More transparency.
In October of 2021 Zahra filed a false police report against his colleague, Fred Jung. The cops interviewed other councilmembers who denied Zahra’s tall tale. End of story. Except that the story has never been reported by Zahra’s Observer friends and of course never discussed by Zahra. That would be transparent.
Zahra’s campaign finance reporting has been the subject of an FPPC investigation. First reported in August of 2025, it still seems not to have been resolved. A credit card payee, not vendors was routinely reported, leaving an unclear record of who was the beneficiary of these payments, payments that might have benefitted Zahra personally. Zahra has said nothing about this complaint. His friends at the Observer don’t seem interested, either. So why would he? That would be transparent.
That’s quite a list of misfeasance and malfeasance. Transparency? Not so much. Zahra has had the good fortune of having bamboozled the simpletons at the Fullerton Observer. And he has groomed a stable of eager young fellows who appear to be interested in political upward mobility and are happy to parrot the transparency schtick. To these followers and acolytes there is no reason to delve into their hero’s own extensive catalog of lies, secrets, hypocrisy and plagiarism.
