Parks and Trails Archives - Friends For Fullerton's Future

February 18, 2025February 18, 2025Ahmad Zahra

The Trail to Nowhere. Radio Silence With The Capital

The trouble with the City of Fullerton’s Public Records Act system is that responses are so dilatory, so frequently incomplete, and often so non-responsive, as Friends have seen over the years, it’s hard to know if you can draw any firm conclusions from what are charitably called public records.

Here’s an interesting request made a couple of weeks ago.

The request has elicited a “full release” response, so we may infer, I hope, that it really is full.

It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

Why is this request interesting? Because the obscure State Department of Natural Resources is the grant-giving sugar daddy of the 2.1 million dollar UP Trail fiasco.

I noted back on January 27th that there were problems with the Trail to Nowhere project schedule, namely, that the design and construction milestones were seven and five months late, respectively.

It’s hard to know the exact status of this boondoggle because nobody in City Hall is saying anything about it to the public. I (confidently) assume the final design was never submitted to the State because the City Council never approved it, never released a bid or awarded a contract. Construction has obviously not started. Now there are just eight months left to do it all.

This is where the PRA request comes in. The response just shares a short email string between Fullerton and Natural Resource Department people trying to set up a meeting for a briefing on some water project up north and its impact on MWD cities’ water supply. That’s it. There is nothing about the grant for the so-called UP Trail.

The project showed little promise, but they didn’t care…,

So what is the status? Were the milestones waived by the Natural Resources Department? Has some schedule modification been made? If so there’s no correspondence (at least none shared by the City Clerk) that show it. That’s pretty odd, isn’t it? Is it possible the State isn’t even keeping track of the agreement and the City isn’t bothering to remind them? That strikes a believable chord.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Camp-750x1000.jpg

At this point it seems highly unlikely that the Trail to Nowhere could be completed in time, but maybe hope springs eternal. The State doesn’t seem to care.

Ahmad Zahra and his pal Shana Charles made a big deal about this dumbassery and organized such an annoying Astroturf backing for it, that the previous council majority chickened out and agreed to the mess. They haven’t been talking about it either, even though they already took a victory lap and threw themselves a party.

Let’s hope so.

February 7, 2025February 7, 2025A Step in the Right Direction

Time for Fred Jung’s Iron Fist

by Mr. Peabody22 Comments

Yeah. It’s about time. For decades Fullerton’s citizenry have picked up the tab for one bad idea after another. So if Mayor Jung really did say he wanted the City run with an iron fist, let’s get going with the plug pulling.

The Trail to Nowhere

The abysmal Trail to Nowhere, a bad idea that was germinating for 14 years before the grant was finally approved at the end of 2023. City staff has never told the truth about this fiasco, and because of incurious and stupid councilmembers, they never had to. I can simply say that it would accomplish none of things its backers promise, mostly because the wishful thinking behind it was so untruthful from the start. No users, possible contamination, no linkage to anything, no destination at either end. Just a waste of 2.1 million bucks.

Oh, and yeah – the milestones for design submittal to the State and start of construction were blown past 9 months ago and still no status update from anybody.

The Boutique Hotel

The boutique hotel next to the train station started out as just a stupid idea by then Mayor-for-Hire Jennifer Fitzgerald. Then as the likelihood of failure increased, the City kept doubling down on dumb, adding density to density until an appended apartment block raised the density to at least 2.5 times the already dense limit in the Transportation Center Specific Plan. No one seemed to care, because those plans are only occasionally adhered to.

Nobody bothered to ask why useful City property had to be deemed “surplus.” Bruce Whitaker didn’t.

And last we looked the whole thing had been turned over to a couple of con men who paid 1.4 million for a property whose new entitlements made it worth ten times that much. Fullerton, being Fullerton. Those guys haven’t met any of their milestones and must certainly be in default. Not a peep out of City Hall, of course. I’ll bet my last dollar Sunayana Thomas is desperately looking for a new “developer” to assign the mess to, without a backward glance.

The Florentine/Marovic Sidewalk Heist

This 20 year+ scandal is still alive and kicking thanks to the stupid and cowardly attitude of staff/city council toward first, the Florentine Syndicate, and now, a new scofflaw, Mario Marovic. Somehow, the City let Marovic do remodeling construction work on our building on our sidewalk – an illegal trespass if ever there was one. Then the City let him open his newly remodeled place with promises to remove the “pop-out” as a condition of re-opening.

Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.

Naturally, Marovic gave the City a big fuck you on that agreement, as he no doubt planned to do all along. He had six moths to start and nine months to finish. That was two fucking years ago, and Marovic is drawing income from our property the whole time. Nowadays this matter is safely hidden in closed session, where the painful subject of accountability for this quagmire can be safely discussed away from embarrassing public revelation.

Fortunately for the cast of characters involved there are so many culpable people in this story that blame can be diluted to the point where nobody feels the least bit compelled to explain what happened over two plus decades, just so long as the municipal humiliation goes away once and for all.

So, yes. Let the Fullerton Observer sisters and their ilk boohoo about iron fists and poor, intimidated staff. Fullerton has been in need of some accountability, even a tiny bit, for a long, long time.

January 28, 2025January 28, 2025A Step in the Right Direction

Park Dwelling Fee-asco?

by The Fullerton Harpoon19 Comments

*The story no one wanted to talk about.*

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want the abandoned Union Pacific Park reopened. It was a crime-ridden attractive nuisance from the day it opened even without considering the toxic substances that had to be remediated after the damn thing was built.

But there seems to be an interesting reason the park hasn’t been reopened 18 months after the City Council ordered the fence around the vacant land be taken down. And the reason could be that there isn’t enough money in the Park Dwelling Fee Fund to pay for it. These funds are collected from developers to pay for new park facilities, presumably to reflect the new projected increase in population.

This situation emerged at a Fiscal Sustainability Committee meeting a while back. The Fund has about $800,000 to $900,000, according to Assistant City Manager Daisy Perez, and at least $300,000 of that is already earmarked for the delusional “Trail to Nowhere” plan. It also emerged that the massive eyesore project called “The Hub,” on Commonwealth at the 57 Freeway, has not paid it’s Park Dwelling Fees, a number amounting to $5,000,000, staff said.

It seems that for some reason the City gave the developer of the project a waiver on the required upfront fees, until the project has a certificate of occupancy. That $5 million is burning a hole in somebody’s pocket, and it sure ain’t our pocket. How this happened is another story, and a good one, too, I’ll bet.

In the meantime, we seem to have some sort of Mexican Standoff – UP Park vs. Trail to Nowhere. The Park is assumed to have been given priority, but there’s no money for it. Meantime the Trail to Nowhere waits in the wings, embarrassingly, having missed several entrance cues demanded by the State, the most important of which were submission of plans by 6/24; start of construction by 8/24; and viable plant life by 10/25.

*The idea may have been bad, but it sure was old.*

One of the selling points of the Trail to Nowhere is that it connected to the UP Park (of course that was another lie, too – it ends at Highland Avenue). But what if there is no UP Park at all?

January 27, 2025January 28, 2025About Us

“Where’s My Trail to Nowhere?”

by Mr. Peabody21 Comments

Poor, disheartened Diane Vena reminded the City Council about the Trail to Nowhere at their last meeting. Poor Diane, a liberal activist, and a member of team Jaramillo, is best known for her suspicious nomination of the phony Republican candidate, Scott Markowitz, in the 2024 4th District election.

It may be a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

Well, thanks, Poor Diane. It’s about time someone mentioned the Trail to Nowhere, even if in passing.

Friends will recall that the Union Pacific Trail project – funded by the State of California Department of Natural Resources – was finally approved by the City Council over a year ago. The conceptual “trail” goes from nowhere to nowhere and was going to cost $2,100,000 to build.

As usual, the idea was cooked up by City staff as a make work project, and was then vigorously supported by the Fullerton Observer Sisters and a few dozen knuckleheads taken in by the ingratiating Astroturfer, Ahmad Zahra.

Anyhow, Poor Diane believes the Trail has been deliberately put on the back burner due to the Council’s desire to first open the Union Pacific Park, more commonly referred to as the Poison Park. This is true – sort of. In August, 2023 the council majority directed City staff to drop or redeploy the grant and re-open the fenced off park. There was no timetable, and apparently no money either, since the empty park site still sits there 18 months later, even though a conceptual plan was drawn.

Poor Diane believes lack of progress on the park is deliberate – a cynical ploy to delay the Trail until the grant money time allowance runs out. This could be true, and I certainly hope it is. Fullerton did renounce the grant in August, 2023 and then backtracked after months of harassment from Zahra’s annoying claque.

The deadline in the grant agreement was October 2025 for completion of the project – including “plant estabishment.” That’s about eight months away. But there are already original milestones that have been missed. Here’s the schedule from the grant agreement:

Final plans were due last June, and construction was supposed to start last August. Has the State granted Fullerton time extensions? If so why doesn’t the public know about it? If not, why hasn’t the State demanded its money back, per the agreement? Good questions, no good answers.

If working drawings have been completed and submitted, the public hasn’t been favored with a glimpse. And you need completed construction drawings to bid a public works project, let alone build it. There’s the hitch. At this point Fullerton would have only eight months to publish plans, receive bids, get a responsive bid, sign contracts and then construct the trail, a project that would turn out to be a lot more complicated and expensive than any of the conveniently departed Parks officials could have imagined.

Why more complicated and expensive? Because of all the toxic water monitoring wells, the need for new water lines, new storm drain systems, and resolution of cross lot drainage issues – none of which are even included in the grant scope of work! It’s a pretty good guess that the cost of construction in the grant application was woefully underestimated. And nobody in City Hall ever admitted the presence of TCEs along the happy trail.

I suppose the City could get down on their knees and sing the blues to the state, asking for more time. Maybe staff already has. Or maybe, just as likely, the Department of Natural Resources and its chief, Wade Crowfoot, don’t even keep track of what happens to their money despite specific performance requirements in the grant agreement. After all, it’s not their money. Remember the $1,000,000 Core and Corridors Specific Plan, paid for by a State “sustainability” grant, that vanished into thin air?

Well, I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on this to see what’s happening. I’d hope that the Council provides an honest appraisal of the status of this hairy boondoggle, but that’s unlikely. So far nobody but FFFF has told a single truth about this fiasco.

October 7, 2024October 7, 2024Ahmad Zahra

When Something is Funny…

by Mr. Peabody13 Comments

You have to enjoy it. Even when the laugh is not so much heartfelt, but the reaction to a painful example of utter head-in-the-sand stupidity; or as in this case, breathtaking lack of self-awareness.

Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)

A Friend alerted me to a post on the the Yellowing Fullerton Observer website, in which the “editor” thereof, one Skasia Kennedy wrote in high dudgeon about campaign signs posted by Fred Jung and Jamie Valencia on – wait for it – public property! Railing against these criminals, Kennedy admonishes all Fullertonions to “know their rights” and report the illegal signs to the City!

It’s odd that this worthy woman and crack journalist failed to identify other lawbreakers – like Sharon Quirk, and the supporters of the massive school bonds who are in violation of the letter of the law. It’s Jung they despise over there, and of course they are all in for Vivian Jaramillo, Ms. Valencia’s opponent. It’s also amusing that they never cared about this issue before, so we can surmise a level of desperation about Jaramillo’s candidacy chances.

Anyway, it’s not Kennedy hypocrisy that this post is about, well, not exactly. It’s about a fun exchange between a reader and Ms. Editor herself, when the former accuses the latter of subjective harassment of her political adversary, Mr. Jung. Then Kennedy goes sideways-funny. Check it out:

Fullerton Troll got a good laugh out of that as well he/she might. The Fullerton Observer is and always has been about emotional responses to civic issues, especially the ones that signal some sort of virtuous liberal high ground. Well, Hell that’s easier than actually finding out real facts and reporting, right?

And so Kennedy and the Observer not only beat the drum for nonsense like the Trail to Nowhere and the Wake on Wilshire, they refused to print a single fact that would undermine their glandularly-charged objectives. In fact, the Kennedy women, mere et fille, have actively participated in both of those boondoggles, throwing all inconvenient objectivity aside. Emotions? Check. Preferences? Double check.

This Skasia Kennedy is so damn stupid that I really think she believes her bullshit, Running free ads in that paper for “Walk on Wilshire?” Refusing to tell the public that it’s a money loser? Refusing to even address the dozen good reasons not to waste $2,000,000 of public money on the dismal Trail to Nowhere? Do those sound like the actions of someone who is free of bias and journalistic integrity?

August 2, 2024August 5, 2024Bad Cop

The Charge of the Light Brigade

by Mr. Peabody60 Comments

So, according to the article these ponies and their associated costs are to be paid for by the cops themselves. Their horsing around to take place in addition to their regular duties. This makes one feel less aggrieved about the maintenance cost, but I have to wonder if this implies additional pay since the union would not like their boys working for free. Perhaps this is considered to have PR value.

Believe it or not, Fullerton now has an equestrian cop unit.

What’s that you say? Why? Why the Hell on Earth?

I don’t know why, but I know it’s true because Orange County Register thief/scribe Lou Ponsi says so. You may remember Lou from his role as apologist for the FPD after six of their gang murdered Kelly Thomas in July, 2011. Before that he gained local fame by stealing a story from FFFF and pretending it was his.

Why, during the influx of an immense ocean of red ink Fullerton has assembled a horse troop is beyond me. Horses need to be fed, sheltered and given adequate veterinary care (one hopes), and the use of them on Fullerton trails is completely unnecessary. Five cops on ponies is five less than could be patrolling Fullerton’s streets. (See addendum, above)

Will these bold equestrians be patrolling the Trail to Nowhere? Of course not.

Maybe they’re there for riot control, since a 900 lbs. horse is a substantial deterrent to all those rioters Fullerton deals with on a regular basis.

Whatever the the pretext for this nonsense, one wonders if this deployment was actually approved by our City Council. It hardly matters, does it?

I love the cowboy hats. A true sign that the spirit of the Old West, despite Doc Heehaw’s plea for “New West” behavior, is alive and well.

July 19, 2024July 19, 2024Ahmad Zahra

The Poison Park Gets Some Federal Dough

by Mr. Peabody34 Comments

At last Tuesday night’s Fullerton City Council meeting the annual CDBG show took place.

CBDG stands for Community Development Block Grant – money that is doled out by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to local governments to fritter away with no accountability after slicing off the lion’s share for themselves to “administer” stuff.

The local do-gooder community surround this federal largesse like hungry koi wanting to be fed. Some get money, some don’t. Most of these applicants are centered in the homeless industrial complex, that cluster of NGOs that are the recipients of untold government paychecks who are never held accountable for anything.

One of the items that caught my eye was money – $350,000 for the abandoned Union Pacific Park – the municipal embarrassment that has created an eyesore on Truslow Avenue for two decades. It was described in two different documents. The first mention is in the staff PowerPoint presentation:

This laconic slide is most unhelpful since there are no details. We know it’s a 1.4 acre park, but we also know there is a plan for a new park; so why this cryptic reference? You can’t boil a government potato for $350,000, so what’s the plan, a partial rehabilitation?

We know if the walkways are “damaged,” it was because the City damaged them last year – when pressure was put on staff by the City Council to reopen the park. Do they mean sandblasting the graffiti?

The term “sports courts” is unhelpful because there is only one – an old basketball slab. Some people wanted pickle ball courts but can you do them without the rest of the park? What gives?

The staff report is accompanied by a slightly more specific “action plan” that gives details about the various grant applications. Here we discover this:

There is no existing trail in UP Park, so what are they talking about? Who knows? Are they referring to the dilapidated Phase I of the dismal Trail to Nowhere? Do they want to fix the barrio’s equestrian trail railing? No, the public may not know, but one thing is certain: nobody in City Hall wants to discuss the failure of the UP Park and Phase I of the Trail to Nowhere; they just want to waste more money on them.

The presentation did elicit a few words from some staff guy who stood up saying the City wants to add new “courts” and ADA improvements at the little parking area, language implying that there is indeed some sort of concept to rebuild this park in pieces, an idea which makes sense in a perverted sort of way – everything about this park has been screwed up by City staff since the proverbial Day One.

Tellingly, not one councilmember bothered to question the idea of phasing construction of anything, and whether this is a good idea. It may be that some of them want to plant grass and then forget about the Big Plan. If that is the plan, no one wants to talk about it publicly, and the UP Park Committee has vanished, never to be heard from at all.

At this point the piecemealing pantomime is good for appearances, and the appearance seems to be to be seen doing something, no matter how futile the flailing.

I guess the otherwise laughable piecemealing means that this next inevitable failure will happen in less a less expensive manner.

June 5, 2024June 4, 2024Ahmad Zahra

New Well. Same as Old Wells

by Fullerton Engineer19 Comments

A new testing well has recently appeared on Walnut Avenue next to the source of trichloroethylene contamination at 311 South Highland Avenue. Friends may remember that this contamination has been monitored by the Feds and the State agency responsible for tracking such things. Here’s the drill rig crew hard at work installing the well casing.

Of course FFFF has already noted the existence of the contamination of the property and its neighbors in the context of the dismal $2,000,000 Trail to Nowhere, pet project of Ahmad Zahra and his colleagues on the City Council; FFFF also identified ten testing wells on the trail site, plus a couple more in the middle of Truslow Avenue. Apparently testing is now taking place to the north, on Walnut Avenue, too. That’s not very good, is it?

The City of Fullerton claimed and still claims that there is no problem with their trail site and apparently the State Natural Resources Agency, the bureaucracy that doles out grant money, remains incurious as to why no mention of trichloroethylene has ever been made by Fullerton’s environmental consultants in their reporting.

Meantime the City continues its silence about the growing plume that could be moving northward, too.

Of course public employees are indemnified for their activities, no matter how incompetent or based in misfeasance. It’s the public that gets to pick up the check.

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Trail to Nowhere Pests Throw Party

by Mr. Peabody36 Comments

A Friend just forwarded notice that something called South Fullerton Community is holding a “recognition” celebration this Saturday. The cause? Recognizing “community leaders” for succeeding in pestering, insulting and generally annoying Councilmembers Dunlap, Jung, and Whitaker until the latter finally caved in and approved the $1.7 million State grant to build a recreation trail through the middle of the worst industrially blighted, drug-riddled and gang infested strip in Orange County.

Hubris doesn’t seem to be something the South Fullerton Community folk worry about.

Of course this unheard of group was obviously created by and exists solely as a prop for Councilman Ahmad Zahra. Ironically, they won’t be holding their victory party anywhere near the site of the Trail to Nowhere. That would be a bummer for the celebration.

The announcement says that Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk Silva will be there to recognize the achievement, which makes sense because she doesn’t have any. Senator Josh Newman knows better than to bless this disaster-in-waiting by his presence; but maybe Gas Tax Josh doesn’t know better. This is the same guy who passed a regressive tax increase on his constituents the day before he left town for a Caribbean vacation.

And still the problems of the Trail to Nowhere appertain: a fraudulent grant application that omitted mention of contaminated soil and lied about the number of potential users; 10 active testing wells for trichlorethylene on the site; gang graffiti everywhere; homeless encampments; and of the cost of ongoing maintenance that no one has accounted for. Then there is the rosy, 5 year old budget that won’t get the deal done and will require additional money that could be used on other facilities.

Will any of the celebrants care about the true facts of the Trail to Nowhere? They haven’t so far. Will any of them stand up in a couple of years and apologize for the harebrained scheme? Of course not. All the people in charge of this mess know it as a fact that government has no rearview mirror and that mistakes may have been made (passive voice) but:

Not enough money was spent.
The people in charge have retired.
Critical information was withheld by someone, possibly, but it was all a worthy gesture.
It’s not a disaster it’s a victory!!
Hindsight is 20/20.

Of course this being Fullerton the subject probably won’t come up at all, just as no one even bothers asking about the 20 year old embarrassment known as the Union Pacific Park.

I wonder if the party-givers have invited Messrs. Dunlap, Jung and Whitaker to their fete. They deserved to be recognized, too, and maybe even get a certificate of achievement.

March 4, 2024March 4, 2024Ahmad Zahra

A Tale of Two Trails

by Mr. Peabody54 Comments

A Friend has alerted us that the on-line version of the Fullerton Observer posted a story by somebody named “Emerson Little” about a little known Fullerton trail called the Lucy Van Der Hoff Trail. The title? “Lucy Van Der Hoff Trail Needs Maintenance.” It seems that almost nobody knows about this .9 mile “asset” even though it is City-owned.

Unfortunately, the “trail” is overgrown, full of trash, and is yet another shining example of neglect by our top-notch Parks Department. Fortunately, the intrepid Emerson took the trail and generously provided images. But let’s let Emerson tell it in his own words: .

“It’s maintained by the Fullerton Parks and Recreation Department and is listed on the city’s website as a connector. However, when I walked on the trail, it was rather overgrown and poorly maintained. In certain spots, there were quite a few lost objects and pieces of garbage, possibly swept down the pathway by rainwater.”

So, the City has completely failed at maintaining the Lucy Van Der Hoff Trail – even as a simple mountain bike trail. They seem actually have completely ignored it – a facility that should cost almost nothing to maintain. It’s alleged “connector” value is almost useless.

More from Emerson: “I stepped around some discarded plastic bags, bottles, pillows that were torn open, unidentifiable articles of clothing, pieces of broken wood, old soccer nets, and cans, making my way forward.” When the overgrown vegetation became too thick our brave explorer had to ditch the “trail.”

Finally, here’s Emerson wrapping up the tale of his Big Adventure: “So, while my hike was interesting, I really wouldn’t recommend taking the Lucy Van Der Hoff trail.”

And now, Friends, here’s an observation that seems to have escaped the keen notice of the Observers. The advocates of the infamous Trail to Nowhere on the old Union Pacific right-of-way tacitly believe (or pretend to believe) it is going to be maintained – 170 trees, hundreds of shrubs, water lines, irrigation systems, benches, paths, signage, light fixtures – and let’s not forget graffiti removal, etc. – even though there is no budget to do this, and the money can’t be looted from the Park Dwelling Fund which can’t be used for maintenance.

We’ve already seen the maintenance fiasco of UP Trail Phase I – the plant denuded, trash filled, urine soaked predecessor of Phase II that nobody in City Hall has given a rat’s ass about. And Fullerton is also facing a fiscal cliff thanks to years of budgetary mismanagement.

Several months ago FFFF received a comment from former City Manager Chris Meyers, warning about the foolishness of building something that doesn’t have a plan for maintenance cost. But Ward 5 Councilman Ahmad Zahra believes even talking about maintenance issues south of the tracks is “offensive,” the idea being that it’s great to give the “underserved” barrio “something nice,” but who cares what happens to it later. It’s like giving somebody a car when they can’t afford to buy gas, or insurance, or keep it running. Looks like Zahra’s colleagues all agree – even though the very same people can’t figure out how to open Union Pacific Park – another embarrassing disaster.