Because so many things in our town are ass-backward we almost never get to report on anything fun or even whimsical.
The other day we received an email sharing an example of a folk art assemblage in the alley in the 200 block of West Santa Fe Avenue. We don’t know who put together this amazing collection, but it’s obviously an attempt to bring a smile to the passersby. The sender asked me to call him/her “Fullerton Art Lover,” so I’ll leave it at that.
In the old Redevelopment days this would have been shut down, but now we can enjoy some private sector creativity, a statement without official imprimatur.
It’s always gratifying to see folks express themselves and I wish we had more of this sort of uninhibited individual expression in Fullerton.
And maybe we can get Fullerton Art Lover to become a regular contributor to FFFF.
The City Council meeting agenda for March 4th has some interesting “Closed Session” items on it. For those who don’t know, Closed Session is a private meeting of the Council when legal, personnel or real estate issues are involved. The City Attorney attends the session, too, in our case the hapless buffoons of The I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm of Jones and Mayer.
Here’s the line up of issues.
Number 1 is about something up at the City Owned golf course – one of the too little scrutinized assets of the City of Fullerton. This has been a source of embarrassment for City staff and FFFF instruction in the past.
Ferguson and Curlee. The easy winners…
Our Friend David Curlee ran afoul of City Staff when he uncovered the rank incompetence of Alice Loya and Hugo Curiel as well as the misappropriation of Brea Dam Enterprise funds. And that’s likely the reason they dragged him into the FFFF/Joshua Ferguson lawsuit.
Why is Johnny smiling?
Number 2 is about the idiotic “boutique” hotel fiasco in which the City up-zoned the Hell out our property and then virtually gave it away to “Westpark/TA” an operation run by a couple crooks whose prior record was never disclosed to the City Council or the public. Well we found out all about it, even if our highly paid “professionals” in City Hall didn’t bother.
Any reasonable representatives of the people would have shit-canned this deal on Day 1. Not Fullerton, of course. What in the world could they be negotiating? TA hasn’t met any of its deadlines, got caught recording a phony deed, etc. TA should have been dumped a long, long time ago and their purchase amount forfeited. Interestingly the City seems to have brought in Best, Best and Krieger to do represent the City. At least it isn’t Jones and Mayer. Still, I wonder why.
Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.
Number 3 is about our old friend Mario “Bump Out” Marovic, the scofflaw who took over from the Florentine Family in ripping off the public. He’s still illegally occupying the space he was supposed to have demolished two goddamn years ago.
Forgotten but not quite gone…
He is obviously in default of that agreement – a deal that moronically permitted him to open up his businesses and profit off our building on our sidewalk. Our indifferent City staff and Council doesn’t seem to have the stomach to give this weasel notice that he has been trespassing and that they were going to demolish the building add-on and restore the sidewalk themselves.
No, we don’t have to say shit…
Number 4 is one of those “anticipated litigation/significant exposure to litigation” items in which secrets can be withheld from potential litigants – like Friends for Fullerton Future – based on the squishy definition of the word “significant,” and self-serving public servant who happens to be defining it. Could this item be related to FFFF’s request for presence on City property? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Yeah. It’s about time. For decades Fullerton’s citizenry have picked up the tab for one bad idea after another. So if Mayor Jung really did say he wanted the City run with an iron fist, let’s get going with the plug pulling.
It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…
The Trail to Nowhere
The abysmal Trail to Nowhere, a bad idea that was germinating for 14 years before the grant was finally approved at the end of 2023. City staff has never told the truth about this fiasco, and because of incurious and stupid councilmembers, they never had to. I can simply say that it would accomplish none of things its backers promise, mostly because the wishful thinking behind it was so untruthful from the start. No users, possible contamination, no linkage to anything, no destination at either end. Just a waste of 2.1 million bucks.
Oh, and yeah – the milestones for design submittal to the State and start of construction were blown past 9 months ago and still no status update from anybody.
Enhanced with genuine brick veneer!
The Boutique Hotel
The boutique hotel next to the train station started out as just a stupid idea by then Mayor-for-Hire Jennifer Fitzgerald. Then as the likelihood of failure increased, the City kept doubling down on dumb, adding density to density until an appended apartment block raised the density to at least 2.5 times the already dense limit in the Transportation Center Specific Plan. No one seemed to care, because those plans are only occasionally adhered to.
Nobody bothered to ask why useful City property had to be deemed “surplus.” Bruce Whitaker didn’t.
And last we looked the whole thing had been turned over to a couple of con men who paid 1.4 million for a property whose new entitlements made it worth ten times that much. Fullerton, being Fullerton. Those guys haven’t met any of their milestones and must certainly be in default. Not a peep out of City Hall, of course. I’ll bet my last dollar Sunayana Thomas is desperately looking for a new “developer” to assign the mess to, without a backward glance.
Forgotten but not quite gone…
The Florentine/Marovic Sidewalk Heist
This 20 year+ scandal is still alive and kicking thanks to the stupid and cowardly attitude of staff/city council toward first, the Florentine Syndicate, and now, a new scofflaw, Mario Marovic. Somehow, the City let Marovic do remodeling construction work on our building on our sidewalk – an illegal trespass if ever there was one. Then the City let him open his newly remodeled place with promises to remove the “pop-out” as a condition of re-opening.
Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.
Naturally, Marovic gave the City a big fuck you on that agreement, as he no doubt planned to do all along. He had six moths to start and nine months to finish. That was two fucking years ago, and Marovic is drawing income from our property the whole time. Nowadays this matter is safely hidden in closed session, where the painful subject of accountability for this quagmire can be safely discussed away from embarrassing public revelation.
Fortunately for the cast of characters involved there are so many culpable people in this story that blame can be diluted to the point where nobody feels the least bit compelled to explain what happened over two plus decades, just so long as the municipal humiliation goes away once and for all.
So, yes. Let the Fullerton Observer sisters and their ilk boohoo about iron fists and poor, intimidated staff. Fullerton has been in need of some accountability, even a tiny bit, for a long, long time.
Poor, disheartened Diane Vena reminded the City Council about the Trail to Nowhere at their last meeting. Poor Diane, a liberal activist, and a member of team Jaramillo, is best known for her suspicious nomination of the phony Republican candidate, Scott Markowitz, in the 2024 4th District election.
It may be a total waste of money, but it sure is short…
Well, thanks, Poor Diane. It’s about time someone mentioned the Trail to Nowhere, even if in passing.
Friends will recall that the Union Pacific Trail project – funded by the State of California Department of Natural Resources – was finally approved by the City Council over a year ago. The conceptual “trail” goes from nowhere to nowhere and was going to cost $2,100,000 to build.
Nothing left but empty bloviation…
As usual, the idea was cooked up by City staff as a make work project, and was then vigorously supported by the Fullerton Observer Sisters and a few dozen knuckleheads taken in by the ingratiating Astroturfer, Ahmad Zahra.
Maybe the less said, the better…
Anyhow, Poor Diane believes the Trail has been deliberately put on the back burner due to the Council’s desire to first open the Union Pacific Park, more commonly referred to as the Poison Park. This is true – sort of. In August, 2023 the council majority directed City staff to drop or redeploy the grant and re-open the fenced off park. There was no timetable, and apparently no money either, since the empty park site still sits there 18 months later, even though a conceptual plan was drawn.
Pickleball for La Communidad…
Poor Diane believes lack of progress on the park is deliberate – a cynical ploy to delay the Trail until the grant money time allowance runs out. This could be true, and I certainly hope it is. Fullerton did renounce the grant in August, 2023 and then backtracked after months of harassment from Zahra’s annoying claque.
The deadline in the grant agreement was October 2025 for completion of the project – including “plant estabishment.” That’s about eight months away. But there are already original milestones that have been missed. Here’s the schedule from the grant agreement:
Final plans were due last June, and construction was supposed to start last August. Has the State granted Fullerton time extensions? If so why doesn’t the public know about it? If not, why hasn’t the State demanded its money back, per the agreement? Good questions, no good answers.
If working drawings have been completed and submitted, the public hasn’t been favored with a glimpse. And you need completed construction drawings to bid a public works project, let alone build it. There’s the hitch. At this point Fullerton would have only eight months to publish plans, receive bids, get a responsive bid, sign contracts and then construct the trail, a project that would turn out to be a lot more complicated and expensive than any of the conveniently departed Parks officials could have imagined.
Alice Loya’s pretty palette…
Why more complicated and expensive? Because of all the toxic water monitoring wells, the need for new water lines, new storm drain systems, and resolution of cross lot drainage issues – none of which are even included in the grant scope of work! It’s a pretty good guess that the cost of construction in the grant application was woefully underestimated. And nobody in City Hall ever admitted the presence of TCEs along the happy trail.
Well, well, well…
I suppose the City could get down on their knees and sing the blues to the state, asking for more time. Maybe staff already has. Or maybe, just as likely, the Department of Natural Resources and its chief, Wade Crowfoot, don’t even keep track of what happens to their money despite specific performance requirements in the grant agreement. After all, it’s not their money. Remember the $1,000,000 Core and Corridors Specific Plan, paid for by a State “sustainability” grant, that vanished into thin air?
Bon appetit!
Well, I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on this to see what’s happening. I’d hope that the Council provides an honest appraisal of the status of this hairy boondoggle, but that’s unlikely. So far nobody but FFFF has told a single truth about this fiasco.
After votes were counted today the Fullerton City Council District 4 leader is Jamie Valencia. Again. She gained 15 votes in today’s count and has a skinny six vote lead. Here’s the updated data.
This is good news for those opposing Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, darling of the OC Democrat Party officialdom, and the bride-candidate of the Long beach Marijuana cartel who pumped $60,000 into an Independent Expenditure Committee dedicated to getting her elected; and to get themselves an MJ ordinance in Fullerton.
Miss Kitty. The “good guys” were stoned and happy…
Jaramillo had chipped away at Valencia’s Election Night lead over the week succeeding the election until she had a 13 vote lead on Wednesday night. But yesterday, Valencia gained a little ground back – 4 votes, and today 15 votes.
People way smarter than I am might be able to explain the ebb and flow of these things. I suspect last minute ballot bundling on the part of the OCDems/Marijuana League may have accounted for the 150 swing last week. If so is that over? Let’s hope so.
Fake candidate Scott Markowitz may get a 1000 votes. After Pleading guilty to to perjury and falsifying election documents. This is not a ringing endorsement for the intelligence of the 4th District voter. His mission was to help dupe or be the dupe of Democrat nominators, to create a fake election committee with an R next to his name; to get his name on the ballot; and, to submit a Trumpy ballot statement. After that Markowitz disappeared. He attended no election events and raised not a penny.
Markowitz’s role was simple: take votes away from the conservative in the election, Linda Whitaker for the benefit of Vivian Jaramillo.
It’s just a few cents a gallon. Suck it up poor people!
Meanwhile, in our State Senate District, Fullerton’s Gas Tax Josh Newman keeps gaining ground on the dopey Steven Choi from Irvine, but still trails by well over 7,000 votes. He’s come from behind before, but this one is starting to look like game over. If it is, Josh can go back to moderating Neighbors United For Fullerton meetings where I’m told he got his start in OC politics.
According to the OC Register, phony 4th District candidate, Scott Markowitz pleaded guilty yesterday. In exchange for the plea Markowitz gets a day in jail, probation and a month of community service. Felony charges are dismissed by DA Todd Spitzer.
I’ve never seen the wheels of justice grind out a product so quickly.
But what is the product?
As FFFF writers and commenters have noted, Markowitz’s fate was largely irrelevant given that the whole thing was orchestrated by others connected to the cause of electing Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, including politicians and Democrat operatives.
Since prosecutors are not given to giving anything away I think we can speculate that Markowitz named a name. Or two. We may surmise, I think, that the investigation into who set Markowitz up in the first place is ongoing. On the other hand this sort of case is probably perceived by the DA as a hassle without a lot of glamor and some potential political pushback from Dems he needs in a non-partisan election.
As to Markowitz, maybe we can let the poor sap get on with his life, free of the encumbrance of a felony rap.
Those pesky Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform are at it again, updating their previous introduction of Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo to reflect the fact that the stooge candidate created by her team to draw votes away from her opponent Linda Whitaker is now charged with perjury and got hauled off the the Santa Ana Jail a few days ago. Busted.
Poor patsy Scott Markowitz, the stooge in question is facing two felonies while the identity of his manipulators remains a secret. For now.
However we do know the name of the one and only beneficiary of Markowitz and his MAGA ballot statement: Vivian Jaramillo who disingenuously referred to Markowitz as her “opponent.” No, we meant to be an ally in her election and of course she knows it.
Meantime, Republican Central had this to say about the Markowitz Scandal, laying out some facts, and teeing up additional questions.
“Markowitz was a registered Democrat, who switched parties before submitting fraudulent nomination documents hours before filing then proceeded to campaign as a ‘MAGA Republican’ to split the vote away from our only endorsed Republican and help the lone Democrat in the race,” the statement read.
The OC Republicans know all about this bad behavior. They did it in 1995 and the scandal drew in Curt Pringle, Scott Baugh, Dana Rohrabacher and some of their underlings.
Phony Fullerton 4th District candidate Scott Markowitz has been arrested by the DA and charged with perjury and falsification of public documents. Somebody other than Markowitz circulated his nominating papers, but he attested that he did.
Normally, in these types of situations that would be the end of the story. Except that in the case of Markowitz – a political unknown – he had help. How much coaching he got, and by whom, remains something of a mystery, but it’s obvious that his perjury was suborned by others.
I’d sell out my own mother for 10 votes, and I have…
We do know that one of his manipulators is the former Executive Director of the OC Democrat Party, one Ajay Mohan who accompanied Markowitz to the City Clerk’s office to pull papers. Was Mohan the circulator? Was it somebody else, somebody that the nominators trusted? Who wrote the carefully crafted and cynical MAGA statement Markowitz got on the ballot? Certainly not Markowitz.
Happy Jaramillo…
Who else may have benefitted from the scam will give us a clue to the extent of the election rigging. Vivian Jaramillo is the number one suspect since Markowitz’s candidacy was meant to attract non-Latino voters from Linda Whitaker.
I will get what I want, one way or another…
One layer deeper, we can discern the shadowy figure of Ahmad Zahra, Fullerton’s 5th District representative who desperately needs Jaramillo’s support to finally become America’s first gay, Arab, Muslim Mayor; and who also needs Jaramillo to finally bring home the marijuana dispensary bacon.
Then there’s Ada Briceno, the current Chairwoman of the OC Democrat Party, the group that endorsed Jaramillo without even talking to anybody else. There’s a big prestige issue here, the ambitious Briceno has a record – she was certainly aware of the Tony Castro scandal in 2022, when her ED Mohan created the fake Latino candidate in Fullerton’s 5th District to protect the egregious Ahmad Zahra.
Slithering things…
The name Aaruni Thakur has also been mentioned, in the comments section below. He deserves special attention. Apparently his family lives and owns property on Wooodcrest, not far from the abode of Scott Markowitz. He and his family have given a lot of money to Jaramillo, and his previous fake carpetbaggery in the 4th District in 2020 gives a fine example of his moral compass.
Above the lowly riffraff are politicians who have invested their political prestige in Jaramillo’s candidacy and who may want to protect that investment while also creating office holders beholden to them. These include Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk, State Senator Josh Newman, and Congressman Lou Correa. How shallow or how deep are the roots of the Markowitz Conspiracy?
Bushala says stop!
All of these issues are presented as a prelude to the topic of this post, which is a letter from Fullerton activist, Tony Bushala to the District Attorney Todd Spitzer asking that the investigation into the situation be continued to find out who got Markowitz to lie.
It’s very clear that at least one other person was involved in suborning perjury. One would have to be relentlessly stupid, a Kennedy Observer, in fact, to believe that Markowitz the political novice, himself was the sole director of this play; that he cooked up the plan; that he decided to create a campaign committee for appearances; that he decided to change his party affiliation; that he that he made sure his new affiliation was on his FPCC documents when it wasn’t required; that he, for some reason, needed and recruited a surrogate to circulate his petition; that he conceived and wrote his ballot statement; that he knew nothing else was required and quietly disappeared, his apologists at the Observer saying he was somehow “threatened” into hiding.
There is an old Latin apothegm: qui bono? Roughly translated the question asks “who benefits” from a given situation whose origins may not be completely clear. Well, let’s find out.
As FFFF has continually claimed, Markowitz was a set-up candidate, created by prominent Democrats to draw votes away from Linda Whitaker to help her opponent, Vivian Jaramillo.
I’d sell out my mother for 10 votes, and I have…
Apparently, Markowitz’s nominating signatures were collected by somebody else, but he signed the affidavit claiming he did. That’s perjury, and substantiates our conclusions about the rest of the sordid scheme.
Perjury is a felony, and whoever set him up for this had better hope that Markowitz is willing to keep his mouth shut. If he sings he may very well incriminate the people who dragged him into this perjury, in which case we would have a conspiracy to commit a crime, which is also a felony.
Another DA investigation…
Democrat Ajay Mohan is in this up to his eyeballs, of course. What about others? I keep hearing the names Ahmad Zahra and Aaruni Thakur, Ada Briceno and even Congressman Lou Correa.
On a clear day you can see forever…
Did Fullerton Observer Diane Vena know about this? She seems to have concocted tales to tell the gullible about the details of her participation. What about any of the other nominators? What about the Fullerton Observer itself, that has studiously avoided any mention of the perjury scandal.
The immediate question is what impact this will have on the 4th District election. Mass circulated campaign material has already tied Markowitz as a set up to help Jaramillo, so this is just more ammunition for the next couple of weeks. The beneficiaries of this news are obviously Linda Whitaker and Jamie Valencia, the former of which can point to the conspiracy as evidence of her own election chances.
If you watched the so-called Fullerton City Council candidates forum a few weeks ago, you’ll have noticed something very funny.
New and improved. At least that’s her story.
On the question of marijuana dispensaries, candidate Janesse “Jan” Flory displayed some mental gymnastic exercises.
She first noted that on the City Council she approved Ahmad Zahra’s dope ordinance that would have allowed dispensaries within 100 of somebody’s house. That ordinance was crammed through at the end of 2020 before a new City Council majority could take over. When the new majority did take over they almost immediately pulled the plug on the ordinance in 2021.
She has seen the light!
At the forum, Flory claimed to have had an epiphany, in which she finally educated herself (a little late, no?) on the matter, and discovered to her surprise that the issues of revenue and impacts to communities had been overstated and understated, respectively. She had changed her mind, she said. Oopsy. Could Flory have been misled by her precious “staff?” Well, let’s not go to that inevitable outcome of Flory’s thought process.
They always cleaned up after me!
But Janesse wasn’t through. After establishing her case against dispensaries she concluded that she was “on the fence,” a sort of tie the bow on the ribbon of saying nothing that really mattered.
Just keep moving…
Although she tried real hard to make herself sound informed and decisive, listeners still have no idea where Flory sits on the matter of marijuana dispensaries But where she sits doesn’t look very comfortable.
