Shana Charles Archives - Friends For Fullerton's Future

February 17, 2025February 17, 2025Ahmad Zahra

Zahra Goes Unicorn Hunting With His Pea Shooter

FFFF received a fun email the other day, pecked out by Fullerton 5th District Councilman Ahmad Zahra. It is directed to Fullerton Assistant City Attorney Baron Bettenhausen, a fellow that the Friends met yesterday. Ahmad writes on January 27th, and is obviously still in a grand funk about losing his precious Walk on Wilshire the previous week.

The tone of the letter is pretty unfriendly since Zahra seems to believe Bettenhausen has left out something real important in the discussion of Jamie Valencia returning campaign contributions. Of course, as we have seen, none of this would have been necessary if Bettenhausen knew the law and had known about the FPPC decision in Palo Alto before January 21st.

But let’s let Ahmad speak for himself:

From: Ahmad Zahra <ahmad.zahra@cityoffullerton.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2025 9:55 PM
To: Baron J. Bettenhausen <bjb@jones-mayer.com>; Richard D. Jones <rdj@jones-mayer.com>; Eric Levitt <Eric.Levitt@cityoffullerton.com>
Subject: Conflict of interest question

Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments.

Baron, at the last council meeting, you had opined that CM Valencia could vote on the matter of Walk on Wilshire since she had returned the campaign contributions to Tony Bushala and Cigar Shop owner, both of whom have direct economic interests in the decision. Community members have shared with me some concerns regarding your rendered opinion and I’d like clarifications from you.

Was the FPPC consulted on this matter, as has been the practice in the past on complicated issues (example: CM Charles votes on CSUF)? If so, where is their opinion letter and why was it not presented at the time of the meeting?

There’s been a claim that the funds hadn’t been actually returned even if the return check was issued. This is a claim from a resident that raised concerns but no evidence was presented. But it does bring up the question, what evidence did CM Valencia present to you and why was that not made public? This is especially relevant because that reporting period for campaign committees isn’t until Jan 31st, occurring after the meeting itself with no chance for the public to verify any of this.

In your opinion that night, while you addressed the letter of the law, did you factor in the spirit of the law? It seems to easy for anyone to take contributions, use them, then conveniently return the funds before a vote. This is especially important to know as CM Valencia was fully aware of the WoW vote since apparently it was a question asked to her during the campaign.

I would appreciate a clarification on these questions and would request that an FPPC letter confirming your opinion on this matter be made available to the public to prevent any legal issues. Any correspondence to the FPPC should also include the concerns of the public for a comprehensive review.

I am also requesting that any action to execute the reopening of Wilshire be delayed until such legal questions are resolved to avoid any legal challenges to the city.

Note: I am writing this email in the interest of the public and thus deem it and any response to it in the public domain and not under any lawyer confidentiality privilege.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

AHMAD ZAHRA

Council Member, District 5

City of Fullerton – Tel: (714) 738-6311

303 W. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton, CA 92832

www.cityoffullerton.com / Follow me on Facebook

Oh dear me. Where to start. Naturally, Zahra wants to make up and nurture a scandal where there is none. He’s obviously been stirring up an element of outraged Fullerton Boohoo to keep the red herring going. He even uses the same language as the Kennedy Sisters: “there’s been a claim,” and “This is a claim from a resident that raised concerns but no evidence was presented.”

FFFF first addressed the non-applicability of the law in question way back on January 21st. We know Zahra reads FFFF, but maybe he didn’t catch that post.

Anyway, Zahra wants to know if the FPPC has been consulted about this horror of horrors. We now know that the FPPC previously ruled on the identical issue in a case in Palo Alto. FFFF relayed that information, here on February 10th. The answer is clear as a bell: the law doesn’t apply. Bettenhausen should have known this before January 21, and maybe even before Valencia gave back money she didn’t have to.

Ahmad made me wear this and took a picture.

Then Zahra’s deep sea fishing expedition turns to the completely baseless “actual claim” that although a check may have been written, it wasn’t cashed, challenging Valencia’s integrity and Bettenhausen’s lack of diligence.

Zahra’s final numbered point is really funny. He wonders why the “spirit” of the law is not being upheld. Poor Ahmad should be addressing his lament to the State Legislature instead of his own attorney, but, whatever.

Zahra wants the FPPC findings on the issue to be made public, and he requests that WoW remain open until such time as the FPPC responds. Zahra’s worried about legal challenges? From whom? The Kennedy Sisters and Diane Vena? Man, what a failed Hail Mary. WoW was unceremoniously removed a few days after Zahra’s demand letter. Thousands more laughed than did weep at it.

Poor Ahmad wraps up his missive by letting his own lawyer know that this email and any response are free from attorney-client confidentiality – in the public interest, of course. That’s good ’cause we got it, Ahmad, being members of the public, and all. Was there ever even a response by Bettenhausen in the end? Who cares

January 20, 2025January 20, 2025Ahmad Zahra

Jamie Valencia wants to Reduce Public Comment Time

by The Fullerton Harpoon29 Comments

At the last Fullerton City Council meeting, newly elected 4th District representative Jamie Valencia proposed reducing the time allotted to each general public commenter from three to two minutes. Her reasoning was to produce more efficient meetings. The motion failed 3-2 with Nick Dunlap, in what seems to be a trend, voting with Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles – the Council’s two obnoxious moralistic pontificators.

The speakers present at the meeting objected, as well they might. That’s because many of them are constantly haranguing the Council majority about this or that, enjoying three minutes to blather away.

And of course the semi-literate Skaskia Kennedy at the Fullerton Observer couldn’t resist angry editorializing:

“In an apparent disregard for public engagement, newly elected District 4 councilmember Jamie Valencia made a motion to reduce the time allotted for each public commentor (sic) to speak at the start of city council meetings from three to two minutes.“

The general thrust of the opposition to the motion was that this proposal was an affront to public engagement, public participation, etc., etc.

Now, these are the same people who, if given three minutes will use it up, in pointless repetition, non sequitur, and in one recent case, a minute of silence just to annoy everybody.

On the face of it, Ms. Valencia’s proposal seemed like bad politics, and maybe it was.

What seems to be missing here on the part of Dunlap, Zahra and Charles is the understanding that these speakers are members of the public, but are not “the public.” They have been chosen by nobody but themselves, and represent nobody but themselves. Some of them are driven by some inner impulse to share their mental gyrations about something or other and, if given 180 seconds, will use them all.

But, hey, wait just a second. Why must all the other members of the public in attendance, or watching online be subjected to 180 seconds of the same nonsense over and over again? Why can’t everybody else enjoy shorter, better run meetings?

No one is claiming that the right to speak at a meeting be eliminated, or that “engagement” be ended. But why not make these folk distill their comments into something more concise, more relevant and more intelligent? My own attitude is that if you can’t express a general observation, complaint, or even irrelevant philosophizing into two minutes, then there’s something wrong with you.

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025A Step in the Right Direction

Watch Waste on Wilshire Wither

by Mr. Peabody18 Comments

Yes, Friends, the so-called Walk on Wilshire is coming back to the City Council this Tuesday. For the fourth or fifth time this annoying street closure is being reconsidered. I really don’t know how often this mess has been rehashed. But I do know that City staff has turned this temporary remedy for COVID relief into a stupid, near permanent boondoggle. The bureaucrats in City Hall love them some Walk on Wilshire. It offers an opportunity for them to program things there, to collect what little rent comes in, and hide it all under the nonsensical concept of “business development.”

Of course it has nothing to do with business development. No one in City Hall has ever presented a comprehensive cost or budget analysis on this nonsense, and its adherents in the community who want to claim the street and block off cars don’t care. It’s another liberal gesture in which misplaced feelings are ever so more important than cost/benefit study.

Last fall Mayor Fred Jung added a caveat to a Shana Charles proposal for another three month extension to do even more studying. Jung proposed to take the street closure all the way from Harbor to Malden – the whole damn block. To anybody with any sort of brains this was a non-starter idea meant to spike the 200ft closure one and for all. Naturally, the dopes Charles and Ahmad Zahra greedily went for it, the love the anti-auto gesture so much.

Tuesday’s staff report includes traffic crap bought from consultants by staff (our money, of course) to make the closure seem plausible, one conclusion being that impacts to traffic would be minimal. This is pure bullshit, of course. The comparison numbers between the 100 W. blocks of Amerige and Wilshire are based on the current Wilshire closure, the analogy being that botched surgery has already so weakened the patient that a little more cutting won’t make much difference anyhow.

Fortunately, the City Manager seems to have brought some commonsense to the project. Citing staff’s inability to guarantee there won’t be a traffic impact, and noting the problem of access to businesses and residences on Wilshire, the recommendation is to drop the whole thing. There is also the potential of legal action lurking in the future, so there’s that, too. Staff recommends reopening the whole street to auto traffic and letting businesses on Wilshire pursue the “parklet” option of outdoor dining, a fairly reasonable approach.

Well, Fullerton BooHoo will be out in force on Tuesday to moan and wail about the absolute criticality of the Walk on Wilshire, despite the fact that except for a few silly events planned in desperation, the place is empty most of the time; and the Downtown Plaza, perfectly suitable for this sort of thing, is only a few hundred feet away.

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

But appreciation of facts and deployment of common sense can’t be listed among the skillset of people like the Kennedy Sisters and their ilk. But things aren’t looking good for The Walk. Nick Dunlap will recuse himself again, leaving four councilmembers to provide the three votes necessary to keep the boondoggle on life support.

January 5, 2025January 5, 2025About Us

What Does Fullerton’s Future Hold In Store For Dick Jones?

by Joe Sipowicz17 Comments

I don’t have the answer. Not yet anyway. But I know that the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones and Mayer has been making bank on Fullerton for over 25 years as City Attorney. And I know that that the dismal legal counsel has impoverished the taxpayers of Fullerton plenty over the two and a half decades. I’m not going to recite the litany of legal failures we can lay at Jones’s doorstep – not yet anyway; we’ve already been doing that for years.

For reasons that escape Council watchers, Dick Jones somehow managed to escape getting the boot between 2020 and 2024, and I can’t think of anybody outside the Council who knows exactly why. Generally we can conclude that at least one member of the Whitaker, Dunlap, Jung triumvirate was protecting Jones and his minions, since it is incomprehensible that either Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles would dump this chump.

Dick Jones is nothing if not a politician, playing the angles to keep at least three council persons happy at any one time, even alongside legal debacle after legal debacle. It’s worked through 4 different decades thanks to Fullerton being Fullerton. The Old Guard didn’t care and didn’t want to cause trouble; they were easy to push and persuade without too much trouble. The lamebrains like Leland Wilson and Mike Clesceri were afraid of their own shadows. Norby, I’m told, was just happy that the job was outsourced. The other dopes like Pam Keller, Sharon Quirk and Jesus Quirk-Silva could not have conceived of anybody holding Jones responsible for the legal advice he dispensed. For a fixer like Jennifer Fitzgerald he was the perfect running buddy, trying to accommodate anything she wanted.

Well, now Whitaker is gone, and if he was the fly in the ointment for the past 4 years, we may soon find out. Will Council newcomer Jamie Valencia take an independent stand and actually review Jones and Mayer’s record of failure? I sure hope so. It’s time that the City Attorney started giving out advice that avoids lawsuits instead of getting into them, with the result that he gets paid even more for failure.

I don’t know if Ms. Valencia reads this blog, but if so I sure hope she follows that link, above. She would find stories of Jones & Mayer’s incompetence, self-service, and ghastly legal decisions that have harassed Fullerton citizens, given away public resources and cost the taxpayers millions going back 25 years.

I’m sure Jonesy has already tried hard to wheedle himself into Valencia’s good graces, because that’s what he has always done. Will she go for it?

Hanging on to Fullerton should be a big deal to Jones and Mayer in terms of the future legal partnership. And I’m sure Jones figures that the loss of Fullerton could jeopardize his jobs in other cities like Westminster, La Habra, and Costa Mesa. True, Jones is 75 years old and may not even care anymore. Still, the firm must go on, and the junior partners such as the terrier-like Kim Barlow and the obnoxious hand-job lawyer, Gregory Palmer may still have a few years of legal bungling ahead of them.

December 30, 2024January 1, 2025Ahmad Zahra

Welcome to the No-tell Hotel

by The Desert Rat21 Comments

One thing you can always count on in Fullerton elections is that concrete, real issues will never be discussed. You’ll hear mostly generalities about this or that topic. Even roads and taxes melt away in general promises and vague hand-wringing. But, when it comes to specific projects with all sorts of facts and figures involved, you can forget it. A charming characteristic of all local elections, and especially in Fullerton, is that people aren’t elected on their knowledge of anything, but, rather on their acceptability as wise people who will do the right thing given the opportunity.

This is all nonsense, of course. The electeds, knowing nothing are in no intellectual position to push back on the lamest of lame ideas that percolate through the “experts” in the bureaucracy. Not knowing and not learning and not working are the natural siblings of the councilmember’s natural tendency to acquiesce to City Hall staff anyhow. It’s easier just to attend ribbon cuttings and golden shovel ceremonies, I suppose.

And so it is that zero attention has been given by anybody (except FFFF) to various nonsense projects, the worst of which is the so-called boutique hotel project that started out as an idiotic scheme and naturally morphed into the worst kind of Redevelopment boondoggle. It even has a stupid name: It’s called The Tracks at Fullerton Station.

I’m not telling the truth and you can’t make me…

You may recall that the hare-brained idea was hatched by your former Mayor-for-Hire, Jennifer Fitzgerald who pushed a non-competitive agreement with some local dude who couldn’t build a birdhouse. Because the City had to declare the land on which the thing was supposed to sit as “surplus property” a deadline had to met to dodge a State law requiring first right of refusal to low-income housing “developers.”

Rather than shit-canning the whole thing, boobs Bruce Whitaker, Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles approved of the project and the City actually deeded over the land before any agreements were in place. Pretty amazing, huh? Their convoluted reasoning was so dumb it doesn’t even deserve a description. That was December 2022.

The even bigger problem was that by then the original guy (now deceased) had been pushed out and a whole new partnership had taken over. The new players were a pair of bums – Johnny Lu and Larry Liu who had a record of fraud, embezzlement, and bankruptcies in their wake, and creditors foreclosing on them. Why Fullerton’s crack economic development team and City Attorney failed to pursue even the slightest investigation of Lu/Liu’s record like FFFF did, has never been discussed. And it never will be, Fullerton being Fullerton.

I don’t know the current situation with this project. Two years have passed. Johnny Lu and Larry Liu had many milestones to accomplish certain actions per the agreement they finally signed. Did they? Who knows? Not the public, that’s for sure. Obviously, no one in City Hall wants to talk about this vast embarrassment, and an insecure council isn’t making them. And naturally, the Fullerton electoral process doesn’t discuss such things – bad form to discuss City failures, you see.

But the public has a right to know the whole story, because in the end, the entitlements granted to Lu and Liu are worth a fortune; even worse, the sales price of 1.4 million, less site clearance, is a tenth of the market value the City created with those entitlements. And the new density with hotel and with the new apartments Liu suckered the City into approving, just to keep the mess alive, is two and a half times the density the Transportation Center Specific Plan allows for housing. Go figure.

The mileage is terrible and the wheels are bald…

It’s also critical to remember that in Fullerton projects take on a life of their own through institutional inertia and the human instinct to dodge responsibility whenever possible. The Fullerton Clown Car has never had a rear-view mirror.

December 18, 2024December 18, 2024A Step in the Right Direction

“Dr.” Ahmad Zahra is Still Not Mayor of Fullerton

by Joe Sipowicz120 Comments

Last night the City Council appointed a new Mayor for 2025. And guess what? It isn’t Ahmad Zahra, the evasive and prevaricating Middle Eastern medic. He’s been on the City Council for 6 years and has never been able to get two other votes to make himself Mayor.

Why not?

It’s because the majority of his colleagues don’t like him. Not at all. From his self-serving behavior, his sanctimony, his manic publicity seeking, his peddling salacious gossip about his colleagues to local blogs, and his filing a false police report against the new Mayor, he has demonstrated time and again his toxic personality, clearly unfit to be the figurehead of the city.

It’s never even been necessary for the other councilmembers to consider Zahra’s illegal immigration into the country through a phony marriage to a woman in Arkansas; or his assault and battery case against a woman; or his serial plagiarism of water articles written by an Orange County Water District bureaucrat to appear to be some sort of expert.

Last night meeting did have some fun moments, too, that FFFF will share from the video stream when it’s up.

Of course there were the usual gaggle of boohooing Zahra disciples, people dumb enough to fall for his routine. But one man, George Bushala stood up and completely dismantled Zahra – by actually citing the facts about the man’s background narrative – not the bullshit his followers like so much to lap up. It was a damning bill of indictment and it was beautiful to behold.

Bushala’s statement wasn’t stoically accepted by Zahra, who cried out that he was the victim of a personal attack – pretty rich coming from the creep who has been orchestrating public demonstrations against Jung, Dunlap and Whitaker for several years; demonstrations full of insult, character assassination and innuendo. Personal enough? The non-plussed Zahra had to be admonished not to interrupt public speakers.

From the back of the audience one crazy-bonkers woman started screaming about lies against Zahra. She kept interrupting Mr. Bushala, who calmly waited each time before requesting to able to continue. After being castigated by Dunlap to shut up, the belligerant shrew finally left the chambers in a fit of purple pique, before the cops could hustle her out.

And guess what? It was none other than one of the operators of the “independent newspaper” The Fullerton Observer, Sharon Kennedy!

Anyway, as far as the vote went, Nick Dunlap decided to nominate Shana Charles for Mayor, a gambit no doubt mean to get some love from Fullerton Democrats. Of course it won’t; and in any case Shana Charles nominated Zahra. Jung nominated himself. And the result was Charles 1, Zahra 2 and Jung 2. On the second try it was 3-2 Jung, with newcomer Jamie Valencia supporting her political mentor. So we’ll be favored with Jung’s rich baritone act for 2025. We’ll also hear about the horrible unfairness of it all for a while, but if you think about it, Zahra could have made Charles Mayor but he obviously didn’t want to. Misogyny?

December 14, 2024December 14, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Let the BooHooing Begin

by Joe Sipowicz56 Comments

Yes, it’s that time of every year comes up when the Fullerton City Council chooses one of its own to be Mayor for the upcoming year. Another is chosen to be Mayor Pro Tem, which is Latin-ish for back up guy.

This will occur on Tuesday after newcomer Jamie Valencia is sworn in to replace Bruce Whitaker. The jobs are basically ceremonial, but the Mayor gets to run the meetings.

For the past several years the Council majority of Fred Jung, Nick Dunlap, and Bruce Whitaker have chosen one of their number to hold these offices and have deliberately excluded “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra. They have offered no explanation for this exclusion, which is too bad.

Zahra and his claque have attributed this exclusion to discrimination against his (dubious) Muslim beliefs or alternatively, his gayness – the two attributes that he relies on to promote his unique “brand.” What the public doesn’t get, but that council watchers know to be true is that those three really don’t like Zahra. Why? Maybe because of his public pontifications against them, and his even more egregious behavior behind the scenes that sometimes becomes hysterical, and one time led him to file a false police report against Fred Jung. We are aware of Zahra attempting to smear his colleagues via OC political blogs.

The Council majority is well-aware of Zahra’s penchant for self-promotion and camera hogging, even going so far as to leave a council meeting for a photo op.

Of course there are other good reasons to exclude Zahra, reasons that people are too polite to express, Fullerton being Fullerton. Like Zahra worming his way into the USA via marriage fraud – to a woman. Or his shifting biography, or his blatant plagiarism while pretending to be a water expert. Then there’s his assault and battery case, safely sealed now, in which he claims, fraudulently, that he was exonerated. Lying seems to be Zahra’s modus vivendi.

It turns out that there is a policy suggesting that everybody gets a chance to put “Mayor” in front of their name. Policy No. 226 in the Policy and Procedures Manual spells it out. The problem is that a policy is not an obligation, especially for those who didn’t cook it up in the first place. But this is what Fullerton BooHoo rests its confidence on year after year, as they turn up in their numbers to promote their darling, Zahra.

What will happen Tuesday? Will Valencia go with Jung and Dunlap and keep Zahra and his acolyte Shana Charles from being Fullerton’s figureheads?

Let’s hope so.

December 11, 2024December 11, 2024Ahmad Zahra

The Hypocrisy of California’s Government

by Mr. Peabody9 Comments

For 50 years California has enjoyed/suffered the benefits of CEQA – the California Environmental Quality Act. The intent of the law was to assess the environmental impacts of various projects proposed by private developers and even the government itself – be it dams, roads, civic projects, etc. Some projects, mostly the big ones, required EIRs – Environmental Impact Reports, that cited impacts and measures of mitigation.

Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert on CEQA, but I’ve been told that all too often it is just a bungling paper chase that enriches “consultants,” and instead of addressing impacts, coughs up lots of gobbledygook and ginned up “studies” to talk around the problem. And this is just as true for governments’ reports as for those of developers.

Last night I listened to Fullerton’s beloved City Council vote for a new zoning law – the Housing Incentive Overlay Zone (HIOZ), including an explanation of why it was exempt from CEQA even though over 13,000 new units were being incentivized. The excuse was that no specific building was being proposed. You might think that is reasonable enough given that specific location has a lot to do with environmental impacts on thing like roads and street lights and traffic, etc.

And yet the new mandates from Sacramento dictate that because there is some sort of housing “crisis” new developments may be built “by-right” that is to say, without local controls over specific aspects of projects that would normally be comprehensively addressed in Conditions of Approval. Which means that those 13,000 units may not be attached to amelioration of the impacts they create.

And of course 20% of the new units must be reserved for low income tenants, another philanthropic mandate with unknown repercussions on the community.

Here’s the summation: the single-party legislature has serially made such a mess of California over the past 30 years that the fixes for the problems require that they jettison other mandates previously deemed critical, such as CEQA.

Locally, cities have been threatened with legal action by the State’s Governor and Attorney General if they don’t comply; and they are threatened by deprivation of State funding and grants by the Housing and Community Development Department, run by faceless bureaucrats. If cities try to fight back, like Huntington Beach has, the legal results are costly and a foregone conclusion.

And so Fullerton’s City Council went along with the inevitable, acquiescing to the demands of Sacramento in a sad 4-1 vote. Only Bruce Whitaker voted no in what is his last official vote.

I’ve heard it said that government spends half its time trying to fix problems it created during the other half. Sounds about right.

November 26, 2024November 26, 2024Ahmad Zahra

They Did What?

by Mr. Peabody14 Comments

I have to admit I haven’t been paying much attention to the development of Fullerton’s “6th Cycle” General Plan Housing Element. I figured it to be a fruitless paper chase in which a consultant got paid a bunch of money to produce umpteen pages of incomprehensible gobbledygook. Turns out I was right about that.

The other thing that caused indifferent resignation on my part was the housing mandate decreed by the State Housing and Community Development Department, often referred to as “State HCD.” It so happens that their mandate for Fullerton was to create the opportunity for 13,000 new residential units, as determined by yet another faceless bureaucracy, Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), whose mission is to do whatever the State wants, regardless of what is good for its constituent members. The 13,000 units are part of SCAG’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA, pronounced ree-nuh). These people sure love them some acronyms.

Where these 13,000 unit opportunities are supposed to go in a built out city is no mystery. It will require re-zoning commercial, office professional, and industrially zoned property to admit new residential use. Lots of it.

Well, that’s bad enough, but our crack Community Development Department saw fit to propose a new zoning overlay that could accommodate 30,000 new units. You read that right. 30,000 units, a sum that could increase Fullerton’s population to near the quarter million mark. Their justification? It’s so they won’t have to do anymore bowing and scraping to State HCD. At least not for a while. Or so they say.

The whole thing is ludicrous. First, the rationale for giving the Sacramento boneheads more than they demand is crazy. It’s like paying a million bucks in ransom when the kidnapers only asked for half a mil with no guarantee they won’t do it again. Then there’s the practical side of this. There would be no new roads, no new sewer and water superstructure added, no new schools built, and sixty thousand new auto trips daily. And don’t forget the inadequate parking. It’s a farce piled on top of another farce. But somehow everything will work out, our six-figure experts tell us..

The mechanism to perform this new housing miracle is the called the Housing Incentive Overlay Zone (you guessed it, there’s an acronym – HIOZ). Staff and their consultants have identified hundreds and hundreds of real estate parcels that would receive the new overlay zone, but they don’t seem to be unduly concerned about the effect to the City of Fullerton of losing land for commercial and industrial purposes. It seems that in the grand bureaucratic scheme of things, satisfying other bureaucrats in Sacramento is even more important than losing that sales tax revenue they’re always hunting around for like rabid wolverines.

Well, fear not, Friends. In reality the 30,000 units was likely just Kabuki theater meant to look like a good faith effort to outdo even the demands of anonymous paper-pushers at SCAG. The City Council discussed this issue last week and there’s no way any of them are going to give the State more than it wants.

Of course, there’s another possibility, too. A political one. The utterly incompetent Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles, Fullerton City Council’s two ultra-liberals, are up for re-election in 2026, and, cynic that I am, I have to wonder if they both won’t use this silver-platter opportunity to campaign on how they defended Fullerton’s quality of life by fighting hard against 17,000 apartments that were never going to happen anyway. Now that would be cynical, wouldn’t it?

November 14, 2024November 14, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Jaramillo Goes Ahead

by Grover Cleveland33 Comments

Otiose Fullerton 4th District candidate Vivian Jaramillo pulled ahead of her rival, newcomer Jamie Valenzuela yesterday – by 13 votes. Jaramillo has steadily gained since election night in what seems to be a non-statistical anomaly. It’s pretty clear that the late Jaramillo GOTV mail-in effort is paying off now.

We now know who paid for that effort – the Marijuana Dispensary Cartel – who dumped in an astounding $60,000 into a pro-Jaramillo PAC, the green laundered through the grocery store union.

We can also surmise with a lot of confidence that it was the Dope Cartel that had a hand in the creation of the fake candidate, confessed perjurer, Scott Markowitz.

If Jaramillo wins, Fullerton will have a pro-dope majority, and Jaramillo, the candidate who made it her platform to bitch about incumbents “not listening to the people,” will, ironically, jam the dispensaries into Fullerton, despite overwhelming opposition from her common folk – real working families.

I will get what I want, one way or another…

Just as importantly Ahmad Zahra, the immigration fraud, “doctor” and “film maker” would finally get to play gay Arab Muslim Mayor. One wonders how the often hysterical Zahra would handle a steady stream of abuse like the kind he orchestrated against his colleagues over the past four years.

As far as municipal finance goes, a new majority could exercise its wisdom without being able to blame Mssrs, Whitaker, Dunlap, and Jung. There still would not be a 4/5ths majority to put a general tax on the ballot, but Zahra, Charles and Jaramillo could certainly put a specific tax on a 2026 ballot. And all that new brainpower ought to be able to come up with something to address Fullerton’s economic cliff.