Repuglicanism Archives - Page 11 of 69 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

August 15, 2012Behind Closed Doors

What To Do About The Illegal Water Tax

On Tuesday the City Council is scheduled to discuss what they want to do about the embarrassing fact that the City charged an illegal 10% tax on our water bill for fifteen years, amassing a total rip-off that easily topped $25,000,000. The funds were deposited in General Fund and mostly went to pay for salaries and pensions of City employees that had absolutely nothing to do with the acquisition and transmission of water – the ostensible purpose of the levy. It even went to pay for four-star hotels for Councilmembers’ League of City junkets.

Some folks think reparations are due, in some fashion, to the rate payers that got ripped off. But how? A check in the mail? Lowered rates in the future? Repayment from the General Fund to the Water Fund?

The City doesn’t have $25 mil laying around, and rebates in the future for past indiscretions would certainly create inequities. Going back just a few years for reparations may be a logical and practical step. Repayment from the General Fund over time may be the only recourse and would certainly address the original purpose of the “in-lieu fee” which was the cost of delivering water to the people and businesses of Fullerton. However it should be pointed out that the the 10% that was raked off was never connected to the true cost of the water in the first place.

Another question to be dealt with is what is an applicable rate for miscellaneous City costs that are currently unrecompensed by the Water Fund? There isn’t much unaccounted for, and the “consultant” for the Water rate Ad Hoc Committee tried to cook up some phony percentage between 6 and 7 based largely on the cost of the City charging the Water Fund rent!

This raises all sorts of embarrassing questions about why the Water Utility was not permitted to acquire all this valuable real estate in the first place, dirt cheap, if now it is to be treated as a separate entity; and how a landlord can negotiate rent with his tenant when they are both one and the same person. In any case there is a new council that is a lot less likely to cave in to this sort of nonsense than the old stumblebums.

In any case, I want to mention a couple of things. First, the perpetrators of the scam need to be identified and chastised for their complicity in the tax: they would be all of the former councilmen of the last 15 years who let this happen; the city managers Jim Armstrong, Chris Meyer, and Joe Felz, who participated in the scheme and who either knew or should have known it was illegal; and let’s not forget Richard Jones, Esq., the City Attorney, who was there every single step of the way and damn well knew it was illegal. Second, Joe Felz’ obvious strategy of stalling and temporizing on this issue, aided and abetted by the Three Hollow Logs and Sharon Quirk, protracted the rip-off by another full year and compounded the problem even more, even as they knew the jig was up.

It should be interesting to see if any of our aspiring council candidates show up to share their wisdom on this subject.

What do you think?

August 14, 2012August 14, 2012Boohooism

Jan Flory Grieves For The Three Deaf Dinosaurs

by Jan Florys Dog107 Comments

Friends, here’s a repeat post by our esteemed JFD from last November. It is even more trenchant now that his former mistress has declared war on the only two really good councilmen Fullerton has had as long as I can remember – and that’s a long time.

– The Desert Rat

Whenever my former mistress got into a mood or had a couple too many G&Ts, and picked up that broomstick I always made myself as inconspicuous as possible. Looking down from doggie heaven I can see she hasn’t changed much. It’s good to know she still has that metal rod firmly stuck in there.

Here she is at the Fullerton City Council meeting during public comments handing out some cooked-up award to Pat McKinley.

Notice how she grieves for Fullerton because of the incivility to her “esteemed” councilmen, Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc (I gotta tell ya she never grieved after whacking my orbital bone with that broomstick, but that’s a another story altogether, eye blousing-wise).

Obviously she has set a rather low bar for estimation; if Old Doc HeeHaw can haul himself over it, I guess almost anybody can.

Apparently my former mistress doesn’t give much thought to the $350,000 settlement that a hand-picked McKinley cop cost the taxpayers of Fullerton because he sexually assaulted women in the backseat of his patrol car; or that McKinley thinks that it’s okay for a certain kind of woman to be so victimized; and that, according to Big Mac “it’s just touching. Not a good thing, but it ain’t a dangerous thing;” or that her esteemed councilmen turned over Fullerton to the cops to do with it as they liked – theft, beatings, perjury, false arrest, a killing.

FloryBird — Yard arm? What yard arm? It’s 5:00 PM somewhere!

Mrs. Flory somehow got an extra seven minutes to ramble on and on about all sorts of bullshit, whereas others get the microphone shut off after three. Looks like there really is a double standard there.

Anyway, there you have a fine representative of what’s left of Fullerton’s Old Guard liberals: stubborn, frightened, clueless, self-righteous, dwindling fast.

August 8, 2012Repuglicanism

Fullerton Will Not Solicit Information From Sheriff

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy308 Comments

Last night the City Council voted 3-2 against asking the OC Sheriff to provide information about their cost to take over police services in Fullerton.

Chaffee and Quirk went with the public employee union pearl-clutchers, as expected, as did Greg Sebourn. Bruce Whitaker and Travis Kiger voted to seek additional information about providing public services, a reasonable position, you would think.

The Old Guard and the cop union turned this into a life and death issue, which maybe for them, it is. Even old Bankhead and Flory tottered up to speak. The idea of possibly saving millions means nothing to them, and never did.

Perhaps the most interesting this is that Sebourn’s vote puts the lie to the anti-recall goons who insist that the recall replacement candidates are lock-step puppets for anybody.

August 6, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Council Candidate Supports OCSD Preliminary Analysis

by Grover Cleveland50 Comments

We are in receipt of a letter to the Fullerton City Council from a potential candidate named Jennifer Fitzgerald. This individual supported the Three Bald Tires in the recent Recall, but seems to have seen the light with regard to exploring all opportunities to provide cost effective services to the taxpayers and residents of Fullerton.

It remains to be seen what union spokesman “Dick” Ackerman will think about this missive, but hopefully this lady will show up to the council meeting to let him know.

August 6, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Do The Math!

by Mr. Peabody217 Comments

The prospect of being replaced in a couple of years by the OC Sheriff’s Department has the cop union waking up in cold sweats. They have a website and everything, and have dredged up a repuglican fossil to pitch their woo to the citizenry via robocalls.

Their pretty pictures focus on historical images around Fullerton, ostensibly linking themselves to Fullerton’s century-plus history. However, one thing you will never hear from them is the cost to the Fullerton taxpayer, although they will no doubt be questioning any likely savings from bringing in the OCSD. But those saving could be huge – perhaps $10,000,000 or more. One of our commenters on another thread helped out with the rough numbers:

#64 by It’s Not Complicated on August 6, 2012

Fullerton PD costs each resident $264 dollars per year = $37,000,000.

OCSD costs each resident of Yorba Linda $183 dollars per year = $11,000,000.

Fullerton is 2.3 time bigger than YL. $11 mil times 2.3 = $25 mil. $37 mil – $25 mil = $12 Mil. Be conservative, say $10,000,000.

Good grief! Ten million bucks? I’d take even a small part of that, especially if it meant cleaning up a racketeering operation that has demonstrated zero remorse for its Culture of Corruption that has killed, beaten, robbed, perjured, falsely imprisoned, and sexually assaulted its citizenry.

bad cop — We aren’t very nice, but we sure are expensive…

And then, of course, there’s the cost of cleaning up via legal settlement for all that FPD misbehavin.’ Added millions. You won’t be hearing about that from the FPOA, either.

So tell me again, what’s wrong with seeking a proposal from the OCSD?

August 5, 2012August 5, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

He’s Back. Dick Ackerman Prostitutes Self For Cop Union

by The Fullerton Harpoon78 Comments

tricky dick — Will make union-sponsored robocalls for food.

Below is a fun clip that includes a robocall sent out by the FPOA to try to whip up the Old Guard into an ignorant froth of fear and loathing.

The subject? Tony Bushala’s maniacal attempt to rule Fullerton demonstrated by his latest effort to solicit a cost proposal from the OC Sheriff Department; the campaign’s motto: Fullerton Is Not For Sale! Now where have we heard that before?

If you stuck through the whole 2:30 of that drivel you will have been struck by a few things. First, Ackerman’s continual reference to “we.” Ackerman has lived in Irvine for the past 12 years so that’s a hoot. His ramblings about George Amerige are some idiot consultant’s idea to tie the FPD into Fullerton’s folksy past. That explains all the historical pictures on the website. That might have worked before the Culture of Corruption took hold of the FPD. Then there’s the very strange strategy of fighting the last war, a war Ackerman and the Three Dead Batteries lost by a landslide. But really?

Of course the biggest question people will ask is why not solicit information from the OC Sheriff’s Department? Who will be harmed except the FPOA leaders Coffman and Kirk and the stratum of upper echelon of officers rendered redundant in the event of a contract with the OCSD? Such an eventuality could save the taxpayers of Fullerton $10,000,000 each and every year. It’s an option that any councilmember would be completely derelict in his duty not to explore.

The sad spectacle of Ackerman being pimped out by a public employee union, shouldn’t really surprise anyone anymore; just when you thought there was no farther this pustule could sink, he always seems to sink even lower.

July 31, 2012July 31, 2012Behind Closed Doors

The Revolution Was Televised. But You Were Watching Dancing With the Stars.

by Joe Sipowicz476 Comments

Check this out:

The streets of Bagdad or Kabul? No, this occupying force is all dressed up with no place to go – except the mean streets of Anaheim, where the police department has done just about everything possible to take a bad situation and make it worse.

But what’s with all the paramilitary bullshit? Camouflage? Really? What the Hell have we let out country become? Why did we let a bunch of neo-conservative chickenhawks and cowardly statist liberals turn our nation into a place where the local street cops are parading around with all the latest military hardware Homeland Security could buy for them?

Anaheimistan Lalo Cop Block OCW-thumb-504x505 — Courtesy of the OC Weekly

I don’t know about you, but the thought of a Cicinelli, a Wolfe, a Ramos, or a Hampton decked out like GI Joe, gives me nothing but apprehension. In Fullerton our new council needs to start scrutinizing this militarization of the flatfoots, and PDQ.

July 29, 2012July 29, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Out With Old, In With The…Old

by Mr. Peabody22 Comments

Well they finally did it. Our pathetic county Board of Supervisors finally got rid of their pathetic excuse for a CEO, Tom Mauk. Of course they let him call it a retirement and they gave him $270,000. And it took about nine months after he helped cover up the sordid details of Carlos Bustamante’s sex assaults on female County employees.

Of course the Supervisors should have fired both their HR director and Mauk when news of the 20 page report that detailed the behavior (that has earned Busty a total of 12 felony charges courtesy of the District Attorney) came out. But they didn’t. The sad Supervisor from the Third District, Bill Campbell actually commended Mauk for a job well-done. The female members of the Board, Pat Bates and Janet Nguyen, who should have been most shocked about the whole thing, made no public statements, perhaps hoping the thing would just go away.

It didn’t. And the embarrassment got so bad even Mauk and his allies knew the jig was up – many months later.

Just in case you were wondering who would take the helm of the county ship of state in the time of crisis, scandal, turmoil, and erosion of public trust, the selection by the Board seems underwhelming, the present Finance Director, Robert Franz. He will be Acting CEO until an Interim CEO is chosen until a Permanent CEO can be discovered. It’s government, get it: and a completely dysfunctional one at that. The whole place needs to be cleaned out, and the sooner the better.

July 24, 2012July 23, 2012Chris Norby

Message to Norby: Kill POBAR

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy74 Comments

Um, Chris Norby, you are a State Assemblyman, right? You stand for something, right? You ran for office for some reason, right?

So now that you’re up in Sacramento, why don’t you do something about the hideous union scam known as POBR – the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights – that grants special protection to cops good and bad. It seems that POBR keeps honest, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens from knowing which crooked cops have been preying upon the very citizens who pay for their salaries and exorbitant pensions. Are you in favor of this? Do you care? Are you worth a dehydrated ostrich turd?

You’ve been in Sacramento for over two years and so far have accomplished nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero. So how about finally showing some guts by doing the right thing. Make it legal for all police departments to release all relevant information on cops who have been separated from their police force. If they’ve done nothing wrong the facts will bear this out. If they have violated policy, or worse, if they are criminals, the public has a right to know.

And Sharon Quirk, if you’re reading this (and I know you are) what do you have to say about fixing POBR.

July 21, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Compulsive Liars Lie

by The Fullerton Harpoon85 Comments

bankhead-crown — The closer you look, the less there is.

They lie about stuff big and small. They just can’t help it. Last year FFFF nailed former councilman Don Bankhead in a bald-faced lie here, when he denied saying Fullerton would be a ghost town without Redevelopment.

Here he is denying to Fullerton Stories that he had pulled papers to run for the city council (after having been recalled just six weeks ago). Possibly Bankhead is unaware that not only does the City Clerk keep track of who has pulled papers, but they list it on their web page.

Of course Bankhead has run so many times that he should know this, unless the teeth are just worn away and the old gears are spinning aimlessly.