Redevelopment Archives - Page 7 of 23 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

January 21, 2012Dick Jones

Doc HeeHaw Ain’t Skeered Of No Change

Here’s everyone’s favorite Fullerton council yokel F. “Dick” Jones robbing folks who are forced to listen of three minutes of their lives – precious time they’ll never get back. True there are none of the usual vertiginous rants about make-believe central Asian countries, Hitler, syphilis, or Galveston’s Red Light District; but I challenge you to follow a single thread woven into this rhetorical demolition derby.

I especially liked the irony of the Angry Big Gummint swerve there in the middle of the speech from this biggest of all Big Gummint boobs. Being afraid of change? Was that supposed to be some kind of joke?

And he doesn’t know the difference between a storm drain and a sewer? Really?

We now know Dr. Heehaw won’t pay twelve bucks for a car wash; and of course we already know this jackass is utterly clueless about why over 17,500 of his fellow Fullerton voters signed up to recall him.

January 4, 2012Redevelopment

Time to Reach in the FFFF Mailbag

by Travis Kiger16 Comments

This just came in from “van get it da artiste”:

The California Supreme Court finally saw municipal power grabs of private property and tax dollars as illegal and made cities’ redevelopment agencies history.

But for those who wax nostalgic for the good old days of Fullerton’s redevelopment agency, they may warm their hearts and hands at the redevelopment agency’s legacy to us, “Heritage Walk”, an “affordable” housing development located near Richman Park in Fullerton.

In 2010 the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency agreed to pay the private developer, the Olson Company, to build thirty-four houses so persons with moderate to low incomes could afford to buy these houses. This development is called “Heritage Walk”.

Now, The Kennedy Commission, named after Ralph Kennedy, the father of Orange County Human Relations Commission CEO Rusty Kennedy, defines moderate to low-income as less than eighty percent of Orange County’s median income. Orange County’s median income in 2009 was approximately $71,000 a year. Only families earning less than $56,000 a year would qualify to buy Heritage Walk houses.

However, Heritage Walk housing development allows persons with annual incomes greater than a $100,000 to buy their low-income affordable houses.

The Kennedy Commission asserts affordable housing for low to moderate income earners is essential because most of these low-income earners can’t afford to pay the average Orange County $1,594 a month rent for housing.

Heritage Walk says its potential buyers may be expected to pay from $2,762 to $2,984 a month for the privilege of living in “affordable” housing built with our tax dollars.

Who will miss the use of tax dollars to fund private construction of affordable housing? Those who earn between $72,000 to $111,000 a year or those who will no longer be allowed to use public monies for private construction ventures?

But this is conjecture to be pondered by the good people of Fullerton.

January 2, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Never Got Our Day In Court

by admin124 Comments

Now that the Governor’s decision to put the kibosh on Redevelopment in California has been upheld by the State Supreme Court, our lawsuit to stop the illegal expansion of Fullerton’s Redevelopment project area is becoming something of a moot point.

Too bad, because we really wanted the City to try to defend its ridiculous findings of blight in front of a judge.

Well, we’re not going to forget that the bogus attempt was made, and made hard by Fullerton’s Redevelopment junkies – Bankhead, Jones and McKinley. These guys are absolutely hooked on government creating dimwitted master plans, buying into stupid boondoggles and handing out taxpayer subsidies and freebies to their pals and campaign contributors.

In the coming months we will be sure to remind Fullerton citizens of the City’s history of expensive Redevelopment failures and the part played in these disasters by our “esteemed” City Council.

January 1, 2012January 1, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds?

by Mr. Peabody40 Comments

Remember the assertion by dithering dinosaur Don Bankhead that without Redevelopment, Fullerton would be a ghost town?

Or, to put it another way:

Is Fullerton doomed to become a ghost town? Bankhead thinks so or he wouldn’t have said it, right?

Or could Fullerton become an incubator of interesting and profitable businesses run by people whose ideas are not grounded in government subsidies and write-downs, gifts, and grants? Old big-government liberals like Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley have more faith in central government economic intervention and subsidy than they do in any free market ideals. And that’s how we ended up with a saloon in every other building in downtown Fullerton.

What do you think?

December 31, 2011December 31, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

A 4F Record Year

by admin50 Comments

Well, Friends, 2011 was a record year for our humble little blog. We’ve had 2,013,945 visitors, and counting. I wonder what next year will bring for a blog that all began here, the day I questioned the ridiculous and deteriorating Redevelopment Styrofoam light fixtures at the downtown plaza.

See what I mean?

light-fixture3011721524_2ebc5a4745 — Styrofoam, the Redevelopment material of choice...

That was just three short years ago, and since then we’ve taken on every Sacred Cow of Fullerton’s reactionary old guard – from ridiculous Redevelopment boondogglery to a police department stewed in rampant corruption. And we’re not done yet, not by a long shot.

Stick around as we continue to poniard the pompous and demand accountability from the unaccountable. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll experience a whole range of emotions. We promise.

December 30, 2011December 30, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

Redevelopment As We Know It Is Dead

by The Fullerton Harpoon85 Comments

Unknown — Come to think of it, don't rest in peace...

Yesterday the California State Supreme Court pulled the plug on the scam known as Redevelopment. The agencies that were created under the Health and Welfare Code to eliminate urban blight had taken on lives of their own, of course, and became sinkholes of waste, abusers of eminent domain, handers out of corporate welfare, and implementers of aesthetic fascism.

Good riddance. Despite stout defense by big government addicts like Don Bankhead, Pat McKinley and Dick Jones, the sad truth is that for every paltry “success” of Redevelopment, there have been a hundred failures – failures for which there was no accountability, and no responsibility. The Redevelopment klown kar had no rearview mirrors.

The Court unanimously found that the Legislature does indeed have the power to disband that which it created – common sense to you and me, but a horror-in-the-making to all the lawyers, bond salesmen, grifters, con men, housecoats, no-talent architects, and design Nazis who make their livings off of the property tax increment theft.

What will happen to all the recently approved projects in Fullerton is uncertain, although there is little doubt that McKinley, Bankhead and Jones will try to keep building over-dense low-income housing for the benefit of their handlers, especially anti-recall team leader, Dick Ackerman.

Nevertheless, the result of the decision is crystal clear: victory for the people of California; defeat for the Unknown Government and its Invisible Empire.

December 5, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

A Peaceful Family Town

by Mr. Peabody78 Comments

JonesMouthOpenFor Business — Oooh, they's bad, bad men!

The anti-recall chuckleheads are trying to scare their few dozen elderly supporters with the notion that the Recall is some sort of scary thing that will upset the applecart in good, ol’ Stepford.

The shameful fact is that Don Bankhead and Dick Jones turned downtown Fullerton into a boozy free-for-all with fights, rapes, and killings; and Pat McKinley sent in his goon squad of misfits, thugs, perjurers and killers to keep order in Jones’ “New West.”

Here’s the latest black-eye for Fullerton, a cabbie stabbed twice at Amerige and Harbor.

When are the folks of Fullerton going to wake up to the mayhem wreaked on their peaceful family town by Mssrs. Bankhead, Jones and McKinley?

Real soon, I reckon.

December 4, 2011December 4, 2011Behind Closed Doors

You Said What You Said

by Mr. Peabody147 Comments

Politicians are forever saying asinine things and then denying they said them. Small time politicians like our own mutton head Don Bankhead have been getting away with this sort of thing for years. Televised council meetings have helped expose the intra-noggin confusion that exists in minds like Bankhead’s, but youtube has really been invaluable.

A while back we ran a post that highlighted Bruce Whitaker rightfully taking Bankhead to task for sharing his opinion that Fullerton would be ghost town without Redevelopment. No, no said Bankhead, testy-like. He really said “downtown Fullerton.” Forget that neither would be a ghost town without Redevelopment – that’s just Big Gummint Bankhead passing along all the lies he’s swallowed over the years, and of course his own campaign literature year after dreary year – taking credit for “revitalizing” DTF over and over and over and over and over again.

Here’s what Bankhead really said, verbatim, an insult to the hundreds of businesses in DTF and in the rest of the city that never took a nickel of Bankhead’s largess:

Or, to put it another way:

November 23, 2011February 7, 2012Arts & Architecture

Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

by admin49 Comments

Friends of Fullerton’s future have read many pages on this site dedicated to cataloguing the manifest failures of Redevelopment and all the attendant boondoggles it brings with it. Blind support for these disasters is one of the reasons The Three Blind Brontosauruses are being recalled. One of the biggest disasters-in-the-making is the lamentable “Amerige Court” project, another gigantic monster to be plopped down into Fullerton, and a totally staff-created and driven mess.

Naturally Bankhead and Jones have supported this gross example of corporate welfare that we end up paying for. McKinley is bound to go along for the ride. When he does we’ll be sure to let you know about it. Here is an update.

By Judith Kaluzny as published in The Fullerton Observer

The Amerige Court proposal is not dead yet. The council will vote December 5, 2011, whether to extend a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) first approved February 7, 2006, the third amended version having been approved by council March 4, 2008.

Since then, two extensions requested by developer Pelican Laing /Fullerton LLC (a Delaware corporation) were granted by staff June 2010 by Rob Zur Schmiede, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), and April 1, 2011, by Joeseph Felz, acting executive director.

Meantime, the Laing portion of the Pelican-Laing developers, had been purchased in June 2006 by a company in the mideast country of Dubai, and Laing subsequently filed for bankruptcy in February 2009.

“Amerige Court,” described as “mixed-use development with up to 124 residential units and as much as 30,000 square feet of commercial area” was to be located on the north and south parking lots in the 100 block of West Amerige. At one time, the project was to be nine stories high on the south side of Amerige, with a five story parking structure on the north side of the street.

A Draft Environmental Impact Report was prepared in 2008 and concluded that there were “no potentially significant impacts that cannot be mitigated.”

Richard Hamm of Pelican Properties said recently, “It has been impossible to make any progress with the project since the State has attempted to end redevelopment. Of course, the economy has not helped.

“We have four companies waiting in the wings to join us in Amerige Court. We want to get the extension to the DDA as well as a few details worked out with Redevelopment before going forward with a new partner. Amerige Court is still a great opportunity. Downtown Fullerton is still a great place (despite the recent events).

Points in the original contract included:

-Giving $5.5 million from a $6 million bond issue to Pelican Properties to build the parking garage. The bonds were to be paid back by the residents and businesses in the new development. That will cause the businesses to cost $1.93 per square foot more than any other retail space downtown according to the city’s consultant, Keyser Marsten Associates, which advised the city to do “more due diligence” before they entered into this contract.

-The land Pelican will be given the by the city was not appraised, but agreed as being worth $8 to $8.5 million.

-A guarantee of 10% profit to Pelican on the project. Pelican can submit a new budget before escrow closes. If that does not show they will get a 10% profit, they can withdraw from the project. However, at that point, the redevelopment agency can volunteer to pay the required profit to Pelican. The Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency can do this without further input from the city council/redevelopment agency.

-Tearing down the historic properties on the southeast corner of Malden and Amerige Avenues.

[The DDA and amendments are a maze of turgid language: The Third Amendment provides for a “future amendment,” but if “a Future Amendment is not approved by Developer and the Agency Board (city council) by April 5, 2009, or such later date as may be approved by the parties in the sole and absolute discretion of each of them, either party shall have the right to terminate the DDA… .”

[The third amended DDA also includes the following language: “However, the Entitlements have not been approved as Agency has not approved the Project or any other project for the Property. The parties acknowledge that this Third Amendment does not constitute the third amendment that was contemplated under the Second Amendment.”]

Begun in 2001 with a “rendering” commissioned by Paul Dudley, then Director of Development, and shown to city council members in closed session, it has been said that this was a scheme to get more parking for the bars/restaurants downtown. (In December 2002, restaurants downtown were exempted from having to provide parking or to obtain conditional use permits.)

FFFF has argued for years that this grossly subsidized monstrosity should be killed outright. As I noted, above, the extension of this agreement will become another issue in the upcoming recall campaign: a perfect example of corporate welfare of the type that has characterized massive subsidized apartment blocks in downtown Fullerton already approved by Bankhead and Jones over the years.

November 6, 2011November 6, 2011Brick Veneer, Fake Old, And Other Horrors

Fullerton Redevelopment Whores Line Up To Praise Redevelopment Pimps

by The Fullerton Harpoon173 Comments

Last Tuesday’s council meeting included a comical orchestration in which numerous recipients of taxpayer subsidies ambled up to the microphone to heap praise upon the Three Blind Mice. They have millions of reasons to do so, as you will see in the accompanying video clip to which I have thoughtfully added text explaining who these people are and how much they have to gain by backing the present corrupt and incompetent regime.

Well we say it’s way past time for a regime change!