FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Category: Redevelopment
Redevelopment is Government removing existing homes, businesses, and other buildings and replacing them with something different. The history of redevelopment in Fullerton has lead to a long string of ugly, deteriorating buildings and outright failure.
Yesterday we ran a post on the duplicitous way the City started the ball rolling behind closed doors on a big housing project that promises CEQA impacts on its neighbors. In fact decisions are already being taken that should have been done under the illumination of a public hearing.
The project even has a name, “Euclid Commons” that makes us wish to make a quick pit stop at the West Harbor Alley Improvement Project vomitorium. A couple of comments provided descriptions of what was being proposed that seemed to differ considerably and so we provide la tabula rasa for our Friends to chime in and see if any clarifications are forthcoming.
The issue of starting negotiations is being addressed tonight (Aug 4th) behind closed doors since the public can’t be trusted to even know that a project is now officially (if secretly) sanctioned by the City Council. There will be “reporting out” but no public comment. Really, what have they got to hide?
The other day I took my elementary-age children to Cafe West for a cool drink, and found this postcard on the counter:
The triptych above seems to reflect a strategy all too common in the city:
Phase #1: tear out trees (and put in a subsidized fire line for the “night clubs”)
Phase #2: fill holes with temporary asphalt
Phase #3: ask questions later
To most of us, this would seem a bit like putting the cart before the horse, but one has to wonder if the RDA sees it that way.
Redevelopment Project Overload; Council Loses Traction
What’s the mystery here? For goodness sake, this is just an alleyway, all they’ve done is yank out a few trees! What kind of “design” is required here? Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill!
From this...... to this!
My own kids provided some helpful suggestions as to what to do with the freshly vacated space in the alley. One of them thought a modern sculpture would be appropriate, while the other mused that perhaps another luxury apartment complex could be squeezed into that tiny space. Hey, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Or how about affordable housing? Alley-style!
However, given Fullerton’s recent trend of rolling out the red carpet to the bar scene, perhaps a European-styled “pissoir” could not only provide a visually attractive option, but one that’s functional as well.
Et voila! Le pissoir de resistance!
True, a few fumes may greet the occasional pedestrian walking through the alley, but this would be one project the RDA could actually claim where form follows function.
This triptych seemed to reflect a strategy all too common in the city:
We read in the LA Times this morning a story about Redevelopment by Jessica Garrison. It was a kind of weird hybrid about State budget raids on Redevelopment agencies and about how the California Redevelopment Association had paid to produce a series of TV shows touting the wonders of redevelopment and hosted by Huell Howser click here for story .
We have always considered Howser something of a menace to culture and intelligent television with his dopey drawl, his inability to ask an insightful question, his perpetual overstatement of the obvious, and his complete disregard for whatever his “guests” happen to be saying. The transfiguration of the mundane into the near metaphysical (hey Louie, you gotta get a picture of this bubblin’ mud hole!) is another annoying part of his tiresome schtick. But on balance he seemed to be fairly innocuous, little kids who didn’t know any better liked him, and we remember with fondness his attempt to save the Long Beach Naval Shipyard facilities.
According to Garrison’s article Howser has now been bought and paid for by the Redevelopment lobby, who undoubtedly saw an opportunity to co-opt a voice for preservation and employ it for themselves. Howser should be ashamed of himself for getting into bed with the same greedy, self-interested thieves who have done inestimable harm to the historic built environment in California. For every historic building it has saved (remuddled, more likely) redevelopment has deployed its bulldozers against a hundred others.
Hey Louie, you gotta get a picture of this!
Well, Huell has got his thirty pieces of silver. But as the article points out, the State’s raid on Redevelopment coffers may well spell the end for many Redevelopment agencies. Let’s hope so. And let’s make sure to boycott Howser’s puff piece love notes to the CRA.
Former Mayor Clesceri does a walk & talk at a Chamber of Commerce/State of City Luncheon, of course sponsored by the City of Fullerton
What associations and organizations does the City of Fullerton support financially that should be cut before cutting a librarian, a police officer or a life guard? How much money does the city spend every year on contracts with lobbyists?
Friends, we receive thought-provoking e-mails from time to time, and like the good Friends that we are, we like to share them with you.
We recently received an e-mail from Jeff Oderman, an attorney with the firm of Rutan & Tucker. Mr. Oderman happens to be the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency’s lawyer, and we’ve been pretty diligent about ripping the bandage off this suppurating wound; and one of our more assertive Harpoons even took a poke at him here. We’re not sure if Oderman is complaining about that particular post, or about our whole effort here at FFFF. Clarity of expression doesn’t appear to be a prerequisite for employment at R & T. In either case, Jeff seems none too happy.
Your Honor, I'd like to make one of those legal thingies..
Anyway, from Mr. Oderman:
—– Forwarded Message —- From:“Oderman, Jeff” <joderman@rutan.com> To:Fullertons Future <info@friendsforfullertonsfuture.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5:41:27 AM Subject:RE: [Friends For Fullerton’s Future] Jeff Oderman: The High Price of Bad Advice
You should check your facts before you publish. You’re entitled to your own opinions, of course, but there is almost not a single truthful factual statement in the entire blog.
Jeffrey M. Oderman
Rutan & Tucker, LLP
611 Anton Boulevard, 14th Floor
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
714-641-3441 Direct
714-546-9035 Fax joderman@rutan.com www.rutan.com
We’re entitled to our own opinions? Well, Hell, Jeff, that’s mighty big of you. And we thank the boys at the Constitutional Convention, too.
But: “Almost not a single truthful factual statement in the entire blog.” Really? Almost everything is either a lie or wrong? Or both? Hoo Boy! Them’s fightin’ words.
As a firmly attached barnacle on the bottom of the SS Fullerton Redevelopment Agency, Oderman has a pretty sweet gig going, with zero accountability, and we’re pretty sure he wants to keep it that way. Good revenue for the firm and not much real work. But c’mon Jeff, you’re not going to protect your little sinecure by riling up the Friends.
Anyway, in the spirit of self-improvement and public information we have invited Mr. Oderman to favor us with “truthful and factual” corrections to any of our posts to which he objects. We promise to publish anything he sends our way. See, unlike the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency and its minions, we want open and unfettered dialogue – a discussion where the truth will out, and the political flacks and self-interested bureaucrats don’t always have the last, incompetent, and irresponsible word.
We also figure that the more they say the more holes they punch into the bottom of their leaky tub.
Some people are determined to talk. They just can’t help it. They believe that the more stuff they say the more informed they appear. Even if it’s just babble to the rest of us.
Well, I've got a heap 'o talkin' to do...
Take our own Councilman Dick Jones. If we didn’t mine so much pure gold out of this bonehead’s blathering we really would beg him just to shut up – if only to soothe our agitated synapses.
Oh boy, this is gonna hurt in the morning!
One of his favorite reasons for promoting Redevelopment expansion is that the money can be used to satisfy low-income housing mandates, imposed by the evil bastards in Sacramento, or Karakhastan, or Tanganyisha, or whatever mythical countries exist in his febrile imagination.
Hail, hail, Freedonia
The fact is that housing objectives come from SCAG – the Southern California Association of Governments – a bureaucratic local government consortium made up of people like Jones and guided by public employees. The housing targets, by income classification, are contained in the RHNA (pronounced “reena”) – the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, and are divvied up among local jurisdictions. These numbers are merely “goals,” not mandates. The whole thing is a bureaucratic paper chase and hardly anybody takes it seriously except far lefties.
We didn't get much done, but we built a huge stack of paper.
Which brings us to the point of this post. We wonder what Jones’ Republican backers like Ed Royce and Dick Ackerman think about Jones actively promoting the quasi-socialist RHNA objectives in Fullerton. He is sounding more and more like Sharon Kennedy with each passing meeting. So we have to wonder who’s coaching him on housing issues (well, no we really don’t).
Finally, Jones doesn’t talk about thereal mandate;it comes from Redevelopment law itself: the 20% property tax increment set-aside for “affordable” housing, a requirement created to help compensate when city planners and pols rip up lower income neighborhoods to gentrify them. The new expansion area includes little if any residential housing, so no housing stock is going to be displaced. But sooner or later that 20% set aside will start to accrue, and it will have to be used somewhere in Fullerton.
Somewhere in Fullerton. But not in Dick’s zero sub-prime neighborhood in the hills, you can bet the family farm on that. The buck will certainly stop there.
Watch Dick Jones question Redevelopment Director Rob Zur Schmiede about the availability of tax increment monies in the proposed extension area. Zur Schmiede responds that because of the merger with an existing area money would be available “immediately.” And Jones is off to the Camp Town races, perhaps not realizing that his Redevelopment director was only talking about existing funds – not new property tax increment. All he heard was “immediately.” So he sits up, pleased as punch, like he had just discovered radium. Uh–mmediately! Well, Land ‘o Goshen! You cain’t hardly beat uh-mmediate! Instant gratification – a predictable desire in a child; embarrassing in a septuagenarian.
The reality is that even if the Redevelopment extension survives a legal challenge, the depressed real estate market and property tax re-assessments will likely create a flat or even a negative increment for the near to mid-term future within the amendment area. This means that any Redevelopment funded projects here would have to dip into the also diminishing increment in the pre-existing project area. So why doesn’t Jones grasp this? Because the Redevelopment Agency has arrived upon the scene to cure all that ails us. HOT DAMN! IMMEDIATELY!
Is this really the guy we want making this decisions for us?
Below is an illuminating video clip of our old nemesis City Councilman Dick Jones defending redevelopment expansion in Fullerton.
Dick’s suggestion that blight exists because foreclosed houses are close to “those blighted areas”, makes absolutely no sense, and, in fact directly contradicts the specific legal findings he had to make to support Redevelopment expansion; but then again look who’s talking.
The other important question Dick’s little speech raises is whether or not he discussed this issue with Pam Keller prior to the meeting. Listen to when Dick he says “when this thing passes, I’m going to make a motion to have our attorney and our staff work with the County to….”, it was obvious he already knew it was going to pass. But how could he have known unless of course Dick had already gone over this with Keller, the ultimate third vote? This is not a Brown Act violation, but it sure would be if he had previously discussed this issue with either Don Bankhead or Sharon Quirk, and it’s pretty hard to believe otherwise. These guys habitually play fast and loose with the Brown Act prohibition against “serial meetings” so it’s not inconceivable.
A few months ago we went after Sharon Kennedy and her Observer’s shameless pandering to City Hall when she passed along a letter from OC Supervisor Chris Norby opposing Redevelopment expansion to her pals in the government. Some Redevelopment flunky put together the “official” response, Don Bankhead affixed his X to it, and the two were printed side by side.
Well she’s at it again. Check out page 8 of the July edition. Same technique, same result.
Now, we have nothing against the City getting out its propaganda, even if it is full of baloney. But this habit on the part of Kennedy of sharing an editorial writer’s submission so that it can be immediately rebutted without counter response is so unfair that, well, we feel justified in accusing Sharon Kennedy of being just a wee bit biased in the stuff she prints.
Why not print the submission and let the City respond if it feels inclined to do so? Why not let the debate go back and forth – fairly, and see who can develop the more compelling argument? Oh, yeah. That’s right:
