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.
Marijuana. Decriminalize, tax and regulate. Makes a lot more sense than ban, spray and incarcerate. Of course, it’s just the dark-skinned ones that we jail mostly. For middle class kids, it’s just “experimentation”!
That was the message of retired Judge Jim Gray at last night’s packed meeting of the Neighbors United for Fullerton at the main library. Gray told the supportive NUFFsters that imprisoning marijuana offenders costs California taxpayers $1 billion yearly and taxing it would add $4 billion to state coffers. That’s a net of $5 billion!
Who are the big winners in the drug war? Prison guards, prison builders, drug lords, dumb politicians and Big Pharma. (Tough to profit from a plant that grows in the wilds!)
Elected officials attending–and positively responding–were Supervisor Chris Norby and Anaheim UHSD Board Member Katherine Smith.
Gray talked about all the costs of the entire drug war, but concentrated on cannabis as the one most likely to see real reform. AB 390 by Assemblyman Tom Amiano(D-San Francisco) would legalize and tax marijuana in California, to take effect only after federal law was changed to respect state autonomy on the issue.
How ’bout it Barack? Would society really have been better off had you been jailed back during your experimental youth?
There are just enough pro-freedom Dems and Reps to form a coaltion. Reefer Madness might soon be replaced by Reefer sanity!
Pam Keller seems to think it’s a good idea to make the new 6.5 million dollar subsidized McDonald’s look “more like the high school” than a “fast-food joint.” She appears to believe that a visual “upgrade” helps justify the huge expenditure of public money. We don’t think it’s an upgrade at all, but just another example of Redevelopment shoving crappy architecture down our throats. Strike two.
On the other hand, maybe Keller is hoping the architectural “blend” will keep people from noticing that the city spent 6.5 Million dollars on moving the McDonald’s 150 feet closer to the school!
Because of the health concerns caused from fast food, Sharon Quirk is said to be considering changing her vote. Maybe Pam Keller will too.
Right on, Frazier. And thank you Supervisor Norby, for your Fullerton legislative history update on the importance of vote-changing, when changing one’s vote is simply the right thing to do.
In one corner, a huge corporation, under guise of a local businessman; in the other, City of Fullerton, hoodwinked into abetting the feeding of malnutritious food to its young residents! On this issue, I must entirely side with Council members Jones and Nelson. McDonald’s shouldn’t receive ONE DIME from City of Fullerton! Long-term costs upon Fullerton’s citizens to provide financial assistance to this global firm are catastrophic!
By eating this food, Fullerton students become less prepared to excel at school, less productive citizens, and will suffer crippling long-term health problems! Obesity, cardiac distress, diabetes! This isn’t idle speculation, but medical fact! Our Latino population’s particularly susceptible to these complications! Not even to mention high civic costs to clean up paper and plastic waste, which is daily generated from this eatery!
I defend, though not happily, McDonald’s or any firm’s rights to build wherever it wants; pay the going rate, meet all governing local, state and federal rules and requirements.
But it’s just wrong for Fullerton to subsidize McDonald’s operation, in any way. Wrong for Fullerton to favor one company over another. Wrong for Fullerton to justify such future ugliness, in the name of civic beautification. Wrong for Fullerton to victimize its young, to enable old people feel good about themselves. Wrong. Wrong Wrong.
I strongly urge Council members Keller, Quirk, Bankhead to carefully reexamine their votes, and put Fullerton first! Put Fullerton first; provide a safe, healthy environment for its young! Put Fullerton first; cautiously rein in civic waste! Put Fullerton first; focus not on global corporate greed, but on local civic virtue!
Every time Fullerton citizens drive by Fox Theatre, and marvel at its future apotheosis as local cultural shrine, please think of thousands of Fullerton young children, teen-agers, young adults who’ll have paid the price to make this happen. Very soon, they’ll have even fewer steps to pick up their Egg McMuffins, Mcfries, and six dollar dollar Super-sized Big Macs.
It hardly seems possible!
Sorry to be so cranky. But I’m truly flabbergasted by this civic-inspired fiscal imprudence and grave social justice.
So far we have chronicled the story of a city park that nobody needed, with a proposed name no one wanted. Once construction was done, what had heretofore been a waste of time and money was soon to take a new twist.
No, not that kind of Twist, Chubby.
It was discovered that a flume of toxic material contaminated the west half of the park.
Oops. They're empty. Now that's not very good, is it?
Nobody in City Hall had bothered to do an environmental assessment before buying an old piece of industrial zoned property: not Gary Chalupsky the Redevelopment Director; not Susan Hunt the Community Services Director; not Bob Hodson the Engineering Director. All these Directors and nobody was directing anything. Perched atop of this shaky pyramid of incompetence sat Jim Armstrong, just waiting to bug out for the soonest better deal that offered itself. By the time the park was built Armstrong was gone, and his protege Chris Meyers was in charge – and probably damn glad this was Fullerton, where nobody was ever held accountable for anything.
This'll come in handy...
Since 2003 a fence has been set up around the contaminated half of the park. Meanwhile the City has been wrangling with the Gas Company over clean-up costs. This is now 6 years of embarrassing closure, and counting. Half the park has been fenced off.
A lot of chainlink fence and dead grass. Not much of a park, is it?
Meanwhile, too, the few Fullertonians who were actually paying attention found out how little park $1,500,000 in land and $1,900,000 in construction gets you nowadays: a prefabricated toilet building, among other things. And the City continued its tradition of ludicrous design, for instance a monument sign with its own little roof! How precious!
What kind of genius would put a tile roof on a sign? And how come the tiles are broken?
And as predicted, the half-park attracted just the sort of element you don’t want hanging around your parks and your kids – gang taggers, cholos, and neighborhood borrachos. Fortunately few kids seem interested in playing there anyway.
In the proposed Redevelopment expansion this would be proof of blight!
As this park degenerates we wonder how long it will be and how many consultants hired and studies performed to recommend the re-Redevelopment of this park; or to pave it over for Metrolink parking! Since we know that the City doesn’t like to part with territory once they acquire it, we can only speculate about future foibles in the Never Ending Story.
Read the rest of the Paseo Park Chronicles – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
This is a story that relates a chain of events that goes back many years, Gentle Readers, so please be patient. For those who don’t think Redevelopment spends half its time fixing mistakes it created with the other half, we promise that you will learn a lot about the way your city has been run – in three bite-size installments.
Why can't they leave stuff alone?
Way, way back in the 1980s Terry Galvin of the Redevelopment Agency cooked up a deal with the Union Pacific Railroad to acquire their Mission Revival depot on Truslow and Harbor. It was properly seen as a valuable historic resource, but damn the luck! It was on the wrong side of the tracks! Galvin’s plan was to relocate it to its current location on Harbor and Santa Fe, attach a weird-looking wood box addition to it, and present it to his pals at The Spaghetti Factory for $1 a year. The first of Fullerton’s subsidized restaurants offered cheap carbs to the masses, and why not? They weren’t paying any rent!
25 years of corporate welfare...
But how does this narration tie into something called “Paseo Park” you ask? Patience, Friends, patience.
As usual the Redevelopment “experts” created more problems than they solved, for the empty lot created by the relocation was soon to become a permanent dumping ground for trash and junk – right next to Harbor Boulevard in the veritable gateway to Downtown Fullerton! And the painful irony: blight as a by-product of Redevelopment! But it was in the barrio so nobody cared.
The UP site with the Allen Hotel in the distance: blight in the foreground, blight in the background, courtesy of Redevelopment.
But cleaning up junk on railroad property is not nearly so fun as playing Monopoly with other people’s money, and the problem festered for years and years – almost twenty to be exact; until the Union Pacific decided to unburden itself of this section of track and the adjacent depot site. Despite the fact that that the railroad was in negotiations with private citizens to buy the old depot site, the Redevelopment Agency led by Gary Chalupsky intervened, and acquired the property itself – with the ludicrous intention of building a trail and an adjacent park. The “trail” itself was utterly useless since it effectively ended at the Highland Avenue grade separation on one end, and the SoCo Walk project at the other. The park occupied the former depot space between Truslow and the trail. Check out the aerial.
And all the property was removed from the property-tax rolls forever.
How about Another Utility Tax Fix?
Apart from the trail to nowhere, the park project itself was a dubious venture from the start. The location was not auspicious, and nobody from the community really wanted it. Sparsely attended “community” meetings showed that people on Truslow were concerned about on-street parking and getting rid of blight – not creating more. And they weren’t interested in a hang-out for the local gangs and borrachos by creating a “pocket park.” Well the City never let that sort of thing stand in the way of progress.
Skeptical observers noted that vast Richman Park was only a few blocks away, but this did not dampen enthusiasm in City Hall for a land grab: Susan Hunt, the Director of Community Services, was in a facility building mood – and that’s all that counted. Redevelopment money was there to grease the skids.
Read the rest of the Paseo Park Chronicles – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
This YouTube clip of a recent Fullerton Redevelopment Agency strategy/workshop session is a must see for anyone who wants to see how their decisions are made. The audio has been artfully overdubbed to protect councilmembers from appearing ridiculous and thus preserving the dignity of their office.
Listen to Councilman Shawn Nelson as he effectively guts the findings of blight necessary to establish the proposed redevelopment expansion. He applies intelligence and common sense to this issue that would, if imposed, negatively effect the future of Fullerton. Undeterred by staff and colleague pressure, he stands on principle instead of prevarication and political expediency.
Folks, this is what a real leader looks and sounds like.
How did the Fox project morph into subsidizing teen obesity?
The sign hits McDonald’s hard, though—to be fair—McDonald’s doesn’t want to move at all. Just like the residents who lived in the demolished homes didn’t want to move. Redevelopment hard at work!
Who tore the sign down? City crews or the McDonald’s owner are the likely suspects.
Who’s afraid of a little free speech?
After all, that fence is paid for by the taxpayers, just as everything else in this $6 million supersized boondoggle!
And it was covering the eyesore of the vacant lots where vintage homes once stood.
Take pity on your campus, you FHS alums Quirk and Keller! Listen to the District Board members. Superintendent Escalante told City Manager Armstrong back in 2001 that the school does not want a McDonald’s across the street or its drive thru lane accessing already congested Pomona Ave. That information has been covered up for years!
Last night we sat through the horrendous hearing on Redevelopment expansion. It was really a pretty painful thing to have to endure.
City staff and their consultant put on a performance that can only be termed embarrassing. To describe it any farther would do an injury to my synapses, and so I’ll pass. Their presentation was eviscerated by Councilman Shawn Nelson and several speakers from the public – notably former Councilman Conrad Dewitte, former Congressman Bill Dannemeyer, GOP Central Committe member Bruce Whitaker; and perhaps the best of all, Jane Reifer . We note that our lawyer Bob Ferguson showed up too. We can smell a lawsuit coming.
The case boils down to this: you can’t create a Redevelopment project just because you need the money. It’s been done for years, but judges are finally starting to uphold the law. About time.
One of the words that the cheerleaders of the expansion kept using was “tool” and this sure was appropriate since city staff and the Jones/Bankhead team dredged up a number of tools to come to the meeting and add moral support.
They're all so useful
There was Theresa Harvey of the Chamber of Commerce who mumbled and stumbled her way through a statement clearly not written by her; a character by the name of Rick (or Dick – can’t remember) Price representing an outfit that goes by the hilarious name “Fullerton Positive” and wears smiley face buttons on their lapels; John Phelps – one of the biggest welfare recipients in Fullerton’s Redevelopment history ; and former councilman Peter Godfrey – who could only be seen from behind. It was nice to see Peter again, if only his backside, to remind us of his vacuous tenure on the council and recall that he was one Linda Lequire whip crack away from voting to keep the obnoxious Utility Tax.
get back in line little man..
As expected Bankhead and Jones were shilling hard throughout the hearing, Jones giving one of his brilliantly cuckoo rants complete with crazy gesticulations.
Once you wind me up and set me down there's no telling where I'll go...
Since Pam Keller recused herself, Sharon Quirk became the necessary third vote and she kept noncommittal, sensing no doubt the political pitfalls of either position. She asked a lot of questions that seemed rehearsed with staff, and acted like she wanted more information from the lame consultant. We have to question her sincerity since she’s already had plenty of time to lay out the ground rules before last night – the proverbial 11th hour. And so we got the strong sense of a kabuki performance. The simple fact is that Quirk could have killed the deal last night. The fact that she permitted the monster to live indicates she will be going for this when it comes back on June 18th.
It seems a little strange that an organization that purports to support the interests of business would allow itself to become an impotent pawn in a game run by and for city bureaucrats. And yet that is exactly what has happened.
This afternoon the City Council received an e-mail from Theresa Harvey, Executive Director of the Chamber in support of the proposed Redevelopment expansion on tomorrow night’s City Council agenda. The letter attached to the e-mail would be comical if there weren’t so many dues paying members of the Chamber who will get screwed by Redevelopment.
I'm Theresa Harvey and I Have Absolutely No Idea What I'm Talking About...
Harvey starts out by trotting out all the old cliches about infrastructure, housing and business climate. What she utterly fails to mention is how Redevelopment diverts a finite amount of disposable income of consumers from existing businesses to new ones; how it invites bureaucratic interference in business decisions, thus impinging on entrepreneurialism; how it requires business and property owners to endure the idiotic design review process; how it selects favored businesses and “developers” as winners, to the detriment of others. In short: Redevelopment does not work. it is a government ponzi scheme that leverages bonded indebtedness off of property tax revenue; it discriminates against the majority of businesses in favor of a few; and any policy or program that discriminates against the majority of business is, by definition, ANTI-BUSINESS!
Ms. Harvey decorates her tribute to Redevelopment by citing the “charm” of downtown Fullerton. Anyone who has been reading these pages lately knows that whatever charm Fullerton has, it has in spite of Redevelopment, not because of it. Does she support giving away public sidewalks? Does she approve of squandering millions of dollars to move a fast food outlet 200 feet? Does she like giving away free public land to developers? She must. She must like it a lot.
We're the Chamber of Commerce and We Represent the Biggest Business of All - Government!
You would think that the businesspeople on the Board of the Chamber of Commerce would have enough sense to grasp these simple notions. But when you reflect on the fact that our old friend Dick Jones, a government educated doctor, used to be the president of the Chamber, the institutional dysfunction of this group can be discerned in much clearer focus. The Fullerton Chamber of Commerce has become nothing but a sissified adjunct of City Hall, confusing their own alleged mission with that of the City apparatchicks.
To the members of the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce: stop paying your dues until your Executive Director and Board start defending business instead of government expansion and bureaucracy!
