Shana Charles Archives - Page 8 of 8 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

May 13, 2023May 13, 2023About Us

The Associated Road Saga. An Unnecessary Conflict

If I knew what I was talking about this wouldn’t be Fullerton!

Yesterday I posted a letter from the Gingerwood HOA claiming that District 3 councilperson Shana Charles lied at a public workshop about having consulted them about the proposed re-alignments on Associated Road that are being proposed by Fullerton’s Engineering Department. That’s a pretty bad look for a novice politician.

So now, Friends, let’s explore what’s being proposed. It’s one of those ankle bone-connected-to-the leg-bone kind of things.

First, the City is proposing a sewer and water line improvements in Associated Road between Bastanchury and Imperial. When this is complete, our engineers reckon, it would be an excellent time to repave the street. And then, why not reconfigure the roadway and reduce the lanes from four to two, and add street parking that will act as a physical barrier for a “Class IV” bikeway. Here’s an example of what it would look like, courtesy of Caltrans:

The City reasons that the reconfiguration is justified because the traffic “warrants” are low enough to re-designate this stretch of Associated Road to a mere “local collector” in traffic engineering terms.

The folks who live in the various condo projects along Associated, like Gingerwood, are up in arms about this, and who can blame them? They reason, among other things, that turning out into the one lane of traffic would become more hazardous as their lines of sight will be blocked by parked cars. They will also have to slow way down, in traffic, to turn into their entries. Then there’s the issue of strangers parking in their neighborhoods – overflow from nearby apartment inhabitants and visitors to Craig Park.

This entire situation smacks of social engineering on a small scale. I have no idea how many bikers use the existing bike path and if the new configuration is even safer using parked cars as a barrier. But this seems like an unnecessary battle for City Hall to fight against its citizens.

I can’t think of a convincing reason not to restripe the street the way it is and move on.

Anyhow, the discussion of this matter is on the City Council this week (Item #14) where we can expect a lively confrontation between the irate neighbors and the people, like Shana Charles, who are behind this.

May 12, 2023May 12, 2023About Us

Shana Charles. Liar?

by The Fullerton Harpoon16 Comments

Yes, apparently so, at least according to the Gingerwood Homeowners Association.

The topic of this alleged prevarication is the proposed reconfiguration of Associated Road that would remove a lane of auto traffic and permit on-street parking. I’ll be writing about the details of this “project” in a bit.

This proposal seems to have germinated within the walls of City Hall and was presented to affected parties along the road. One of them is the Gingerwood community HOA that wasn’t real pleased with comments made by their councilmember, Shana Charles.

Uh, oh. It appears the good doctor has been telling stories in order to pedal this project past wary homeowners who don’t want cars blocking their sight lines when they emerge onto the fast traffic of Associated.

Lying to constituents to push a project you like but they don’t suggests a moral and ethical vacuum.

May 10, 2023May 10, 2023About Us

Track the Tracks. They Said What?

by Mr. Peabody4 Comments

I’ve been relating the newest bit of Fullerton nonsense lately, to wit: the unfolding, bureaucrat driven, unfolding the disaster now know by the funny name The Tracks at Fullerton Station.

So far, we’ve found out that the 141 unit density of the apartment half of this hermaphroditic monster was based on the entire site size, despite the fact that that the “boutique” hotel, all 118 units, sits majestically on the other half. In essence, the Transportation Center Specific Plan limit of 60 units an acre – which is already ungodly dense – has been multiplied by two-and-a-half times, and the environmental documents that have already been approved by the City Council neglect to address this incompatibility with existing governmental strictures.

But it gets even worse.

It’s axiomatic that government minions will invariably cough up “solutions” to non-existent problems. It’s called job security, and the results, as these pages have amply demonstrated over the years, are never subjected to the embarrassment of scrutiny and accountability. This concept is not different.

At the recent Planning Commission hearing we learned that the project in question involves the complete remodel of the existing parking area just north of the Santa Fe Depot, south of Santa Fe Avenue. This further elimination of parking is being proposed to accommodate a brand new bust lane and stop. Why? No intelligent reason was forthcoming. Here’s the site plan:

Because the current bus stop is so far away…

The existing OCTA bus stops and canopies are only a couple hundred feet away. Is this deemed too far for the scant few travelers who use both bus and train? Of course not. Obviously some “transit” dreamers are hard at work, making work – for themselves.

And now notice at the right of the site plan the proposed hotel juts into the existing Pomona Avenue right-of-way. This will require an abandonment of part of a public street which would require an official abandonment. This is being done to provide outdoor eating for the proposed ground floor café. In order to provide an alternative, our thoughtful staff floated the idea of non-permanent elements in the same area, only requiring the issuance of an encroachment permit. Here’s the architect’s vision looking south along Pomona Avenue:

This wet, hot mess was all approved by the five gourds sitting on the Planning Commission dais. Soon it will make its way to the City Council. Will it pass, as the sale of the property did in December? Will the three who voted to virtually give away this useful public land – Whitaker, Charles and Zahra – vote to double down on their foolishness and approve the monstrosity, the unnecessary bus stop and the abandonment?

My educated guess is they will do it cheerfully.

April 23, 2023April 24, 2023Downtown Fullerton

First At Bat; Swing and a Miss

by The Fullerton Shadow12 Comments

I was perusing old drafts of posts and came across one that needed to be published. The issue itself is bad enough – the virtual surrender of useful public land to build a “boutique” hotel. The fact that the “developer” had no experience and no track record was bad enough; but the idea that any hotel patron would want to spend the night next to the train tracks or in the vicinity of the downtown Fullerton week-end train wreck was laughable. What was even worse was the dumb rationale our council used to keep this metastasizing idiocy alive.

Over several years the dream of our former lobbyist councilperson-for-sale, Jennifer Fitzgerald – a boutique hotel – refused to die, even after Fitzgerald finally bolted from Fullerton. It’s last iteration in December ’22 was approved by our typically befuddled city council.

Which brings me to the point of this post. In her first meeting as the councilperson representing District 3, Shana Charles voted on this embarrassment. She spent that opportunity to display the critical thinking one would expect of a PhD, but demonstrated just the opposite. Listen:

It’s real nice that Ms. Charles felt obliged to share her “thought process” with her constituents. But whatever that process was, the result was comical. The the good doctor believed that such a boutique hotel will support “County functions” and “event and community centers” in DTF, but she didn’t elaborate on what those events and centers are. Why not? Because there aren’t any, unless you think of the Fullerton Community Center across the street from City Hall to be the sort of place out-of-towners will be so keen to visit that they’ll book a room at the Shana Charles Hotel.

April 15, 2023April 15, 2023Ahmad Zahra

The Shana Charles Experience

by Mr. Peabody31 Comments

An alert Friend recently advised me to visit the web pages of the Fullerton Observer. There, according to this person, I could find an “open letter” written by our new councilwoman Shana Charles and addressed to Mayor Fred Jung.

Apparently Ms. Charles stood up and hauled herself out of the State of the City speech given by Jung and subsequently felt the need to share her reasons with the public. Maybe she thought nobody saw her leave, or cared.

Now going to the Fullerton Observer is not a task I undertake very willingly, but I was interested to see what sort of silly drama was taking place. Here’s a link to the aforementioned open letter.

The missive explains that she walked out of the lunch in protest of some sort of verbal mistreatment of Councilman Ahmad Zahra and follows with a recitation of all the wonderful things Zahra has done for District 5’s “underserved” folk, yadda, yadda, yadda, and reminds her readers that his brand is the only LGBTQ Muslim, and he deserves respect!

I get the vibe that that the whole stunt was pre-planned and that the dress rehearsal was probably staged in Zahra’s living room.

In any case, the preachy petulance shown by this woman is telling. She admonishes Jung to rise above his personal “vendetta,” obviously uninterested in publicly exploring her assertion and “urges” Jung to apologize to the poor, injured Zahra. “If you wish to continue as Mayor” she sternly intones, Jung must put aside his own interest, an ironic admonition given the ceaseless self-promotion performed by Zahra.

I don’t why or how Ms. Charles got her schnoz all bent out of shape, or if she was even really offended at all; and it really doesn’t matter. The fact is that those who have followed the self-serving “public service” of the serial prevaricator Zahra know what sort of creature he is and will find it hard to imagine that he is even capable of being offended.