Transparency Archives - Page 5 of 21 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

September 28, 2020Transparency

Your Roads Suck & Measure S Won’t Fix Them

The City of Fullerton is spending your money to promote a new sales tax to you. They want you to vote yes on Measure S in order to raise the sales tax in Fullerton. Don’t be a sucker.

True, they’re promising roads and infrastructure and all of the goodies that government is supposedly designed to provide. The problem is that they spend exactly ZERO of your local taxes on these things right now.

Zero of your Property Taxes go to the roads and infrastructure.
Zero of your Sales Taxes go to the roads and infrastructure.
It’s the same with all of the fees and permits, licenses and so forth.

Despite taxing people in Fullerton to the tune of over $97 Million dollars, not one dime goes to the most basic of road work. Seems like we could fill a lot of potholes with +/- $97 Million dollars a year.

So how does our little amount of road work happen?

After the City squanders all of the tax money you give them directly, mostly on salaries and benefits, they then rely on OTHER government agencies to tax you further in order to do the terrible job they do on keeping your city nice. Remember SB1? When Newman jacked up the taxes on every gallon of gas you buy? Yeah, that was because your city government doesn’t actually care about your city and they use the State (where your vote barely matters) as bad cop to their incompetent cop.

Here’s a snippet from Fullerton’s budget to outline my point:

Zero Dollars to CIP — Don’t worry, they promise they’ll spend more if you give them more

That “-” denotes exactly zip, zilch, nadda dollars.

The City Council of Fullerton cares so deeply about keeping your city nice that they can’t be bothered to allocate a single dollar out of the $97Million General Fund – a General Fund that comes directly from your property & sales taxes – to basic upkeep.

I cannot stress this point enough.

Oh they’ll promise that they pave “8 miles of road a year” or whatever hogwash they’re peddling during election season, but in reality they can’t be bothered to tell a single union “No” in order to keep the alignment of your car from freaking out.

So where DOES that money go? Here’s a chart that sums it up:

Taxes to Public Safety — What a coincidence that those lines match up so nicely…

That is a chart from our own David Curlee showing Fullerton’s Property & Sales taxes that you pay laid next to the amount the City spends on Police & Fire. Notice how they line up? The Police Department eats every single dollar (and some) brought in to the City through Property Taxes and Fire eats all of your Sales Taxes. They don’t do that directly of course, they have accounting gimmicks and various funds to try and hide this from you but this is basic math minus bureaucratic bullshittery we’re showing you.

That’s right. That’s where ALL of your money goes and a large chunk of that is to pensions for guys who retire at 55 and will outlive all of us.

And along comes Measure S.

Much like Newman’s SB1 lie, Measure S is full of promises that require you to suspend disbelief and history in order to believe. The same city that prioritizes precisely ZERO of those $97 Million in taxes to keeping up our infrastructure NOW wants you to believe that they can be trusted to do the right thing with Millions more of your money if you give it to them.

Don’t do it. Don’t believe them. Don’t trust them. Don’t give them another dime of your money until they learn how to prioritize spending what they already take from all of us every year.

If you give them more money, they will absolutely spend every dollar on whatever strikes their fancy and when your roads still suck in years to come they’ll put their hat back in their hands and start the begging all over again. End this abusive relationship. They don’t steal from you because they love you, they do it because you won’t fight back.

Join the fight. Vote NO on Measure S.

September 17, 2020September 17, 2020The Cost of Defeat

Fullerton Loses Another $1.2Million+ of Your Money to Incompetence

by Joshua34 Comments

No, not against us… yet. Or against the Rock Wagner family for that Kathryn Hamel created wrongful death nonsense. You know the one, that’s the case that led to Hamel “resigning” and the city illegally dropping their sustained findings against her. Yeah, that’s gonna be a pricey lawsuit as well.

But no, this particular million dollar lawsuit stems from the Fullerton Airport Manager, Brendan O’Reilly, lying about when a hangar contract with former tenant Air Combat ended to illegally take said hangar from them to give it to the City Council favored/connected event company Hangar 21.

Air Combat Contract Lies — You have to wonder who was pulling O’Rielly’s strings to make his lie so often…

The ruling was aired live on Wednesday (no archived footage is available), and it hasn’t been released in writing yet, but for those who watched live were able to witness the jury side with Air Combat. The jury agreed that the City lied about the start/end date of Air Combat’s contract and awarded Air Combat $1.2Million in damages. That number will move around a bit as legal fees and other costs are calculated by the judge but it’s a huge slap in the face for Fullerton taxpayers and another black eye for CIty Hall / City Council.

Chalk one more loss up to Jones & Mayer and our incompetent City Staff. I hope you enjoy continually paying out for this nonsense because more is coming (see above).

It was an obvious case of corruption/incompetence at all levels of City Hall & Council that allowed this to happen and nobody, I repeat nobody, at City Hall is being held accountable for this million dollar loss that was entirely avoidable. And THAT dear Friends is the real reason the City wants to raise your taxes with Measure S – because being responsible with your tax dollars is just too darn hard.

September 16, 2020September 17, 2020Behind Closed Doors

The Latest City Scam – Campaigning for Measure S

by Joe Sipowicz25 Comments

It’s supposed to be illegal to use public resources in support of ballot initiatives, but of course the concept of illegality only applies to losers like you and me, and not to government agencies.

Here’s an example of the City of Fullerton blatantly using your money to propagandize you about the proposed sales tax increase, Measure S.

Tell me how this is not obvious political campaign propaganda from start to finish.

September 15, 2020September 15, 2020Transparency

Defame Some Malcontents, Get a Million Bucks

by Joshua4 Comments

System Failure Matrix

A while back I talked about how the City, as a byproduct of suing us, found out that their network was broken despite years of paying IT “Professionals” and outside contractors to run the network. Nobody was held accountable and we’ve yet to be told EXACTLY what “Glass Box Technology” did to earn their initial $500,000.00 contract+ off contract money.

Except Glass Box did write a pretty dumb Declaration on behalf of the City in this patently ridiculous lawsuit against this blog. So this *could* just be good old crony corporatist back scratching. Who knows, the City ain’t sayin’.

Glass Box Stole Data — This Grifter Claimed we “Stole Data” and conflated the Network with Dropbox

I also mentioned how the City managed to go over that budget by about $41k. What’s $40k+ between friends anyways?

Well it turns out that the City kept on writing checks to Glass Box without renewing their contract, terms or telling anybody what was being purchased with your hard earn tax dollars.

From the time of my last post until their new IT contract was signed, the City went ahead and spent an additional $487,995.02 ON TOP of the $41k they were already over budget.

Glass Box Checks Sept 2020

That brings the Grand Total of “Whoops we need to fix things” emergency funding to $1,029,446.27.

I hope you think it’s worth it despite the City Council or City Staff not giving you a substantial reason for why they needed to spend a few miles of road repairs worth of your tax money.

Do you want to know why the City is trying to tax everything you buy in Fullerton come November? It’s stupid decisions like these which just throw good money after bad with nary a reason or real explanation.

As if you needed more reasons to vote No on S, don’t reward bad behavior and irresponsible stupidity. Yes, signs are available.

September 10, 2020September 10, 2020Transparency

Contra Costa Court Slaps Down Fullerton’s Argument

by Joshua8 Comments

In an interesting SB1421 tentative ruling out of Contra Costa County (CASE NAME: RICHMOND POLICE VS. CITY OF RICHMOND), a court in July slapped down the very argument used by the City of Fullerton to try and suppress the findings of dishonesty by former Fullerton Lieutenant Kathryn Hamel.

“If a sustained finding is made, the agency and the officer cannot undo that historical fact by private agreement.”.

It will be fascinating to watch as the city claims that no sustained finding of dishonesty exists, per SB1421, for Kathryn Hamel because they negotiated it away via a separation agreement.

Read the whole thing [HERE], it’s fascinating and VERY relevant to our case and will be interesting to watch upon appeal.

September 4, 2020Ahmad Zahra

Former Deputy DA & CHP Opinion Slaps Fullerton

by Joshua8 Comments

Joshua by Spencer — Trying to look passed all of the bullshit the city has thrown at me

A quick catch up for those of you who might not know. The City of Fullerton is suing this blog, myself and David Curlee. We’re being sued for allegedly clicking on links on the internet and for this blog then allegedly publishing things from those links.

Things such as police misconduct, employee theft, city malfeasance and police cover-ups and so on and so forth.

The city’s argument is, essentially, that we didn’t have permission to click links.

In discussing this issue lately I was reminded about a case from here in California from back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor. What happened was somebody accidentally put an audio file online on the governor’s website that wasn’t supposed to be there and somebody from the Phil Angelides for Governor campaign found it and sent it to the press.

It was known at the time as “TapeGate“.

Immediately the California Highway Patrol (the CHP had authority) sprung into action to see if anybody had violated the CA Penal Code – the same section (502) that we’re accused of having violated.

A 38-page report was submitted and that was the end of the story.

Until now. To see if there were any parallels I put in a California Public Records Act request and got the 38-page report from 2007 and it’s findings are quite illuminating in context. (more…)

June 26, 2020June 27, 2020Bad Cops

Fitzgerald Is Quitting, She Says

by Joe Sipowicz23 Comments

But the problem is that everything she says is a lie. Don’t believe me? Then read this self-satisfied “I’m Done” statement sent out this AM.

The bullshit was piling up so fast we needed wings to stay above it…

First let’s celebrate this announcement, if actually true. It means everybody’s life is going to get better in Fullerton as the sticky webs of self-interest entangling Fitzgerald and the taxpayers are cut.

And now let’s examine the stockpile of dishonesty this statement contains.

No, Ms. Fitzgerald, you did not “comprehensively” reform a corrupt police department. In fact, you permitted the fester to continue with zero accountability and more massive legal settlements. When anybody tried to uncover your malfeasance, you used public resources to sue them into submission. Even that failed.

No, Ms. Fitzgerald, you did not discover stable sources of revenue to address water and sewer. You continued the rip-off of the water fund by diverting a massive amount of money to pay for general fund expenses. And as you passed out more pay and pension increases to your union friends, you told everybody the budgets were balanced, a reckless lie that led Fullerton toward insolvency.

No, Ms. Fitzgerald, you did not increase road repair in your 8 long years. The roads in Fullerton are now the worst in the county according to your own pals at OCTA.

No, Ms. Fitzgerald, Hilcrest (sic) Park is not rehabilitated. It’s landscaping is still a disgrace and dying faster than ever, retaining walls and paving are deteriorating. Instead you wasted millions on poorly built, ramshackle woods stairs and a ceremonial bridge that nobody uses.

Yes, Ms. Fitzgerald at the behest of your developer buddies you are personally responsible for adding thousands of “housing units” – mostly in the form of massive, overbuilt tenements-of-the-future that made a mockery of Fullerton’s zoning and have placed an even greater burden on our frail infrastructure.

Yes, Ms. Fitzgerald you sure did prioritize “downtown revitalization,” if by that you mean running interference for scofflaw bar owners like Florentines and the douchebag Jeremy Popoff; defending a scene of nightly mayhem that cost the citizens $1.5 million more per year than it generates in revenue. Your “improved working relationship” with business owners meant directing staff and the City Attorney to ignore serial code violators and even to tolerate forged official city documents; and to harass people who didn’t fling themselves at your feet.

Sorry, dear, but nobody is going to be unhappy to see you go, if in fact and at long last you are finally telling the truth. You may feel “immensely proud” of all your alleged good works, but that’s just obvious self-delusion. Your constituents almost without exception – at least the ones paying attention – are feeling immensely relieved at the happy prospect of your departure; and immensely disgusted at your legacy of putting the interest of you and your friends above the interest of the city.

May 30, 2020June 1, 2020Bad Cops

Keep Protesting All the Way to November

by Joshua34 Comments

There was a protest today in Fullerton, like many cities around the country, sparked by the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. People are justifiably angry about the actions of the officers involved who killed Mr. Floyd.

This blog has long stood against police misconduct and abuses of authority from the Pre-Kelly Thomas days to my ongoing lawsuit trying to expose the ongoing Culture of Corruption within the City of Fullerton.

We’re allies on the issues of abuses of authority and unaccountable police.

That said I implore you to focus your anger.

Police abuse people not for such a simple issue as wrongthink. Manual Ramos threatening Kelly Thomas with his balled up fists wasn’t a Black vs. White issue. When 50% of the Officers fired for the murder of George Floyd are POCs it breaks the lazy narrative.

Police do terrible things because we as a society let them. We tell them it’s okay. We condone and support their actions. We give them endless benefits in their checks and qualified immunity in the courts.

We do it every election at the ballot box.

In 2016 Jennifer Fitzgerald, our current Mayor, won election with more votes than any candidate has ever received in the city of Fullerton. She won with these numbers despite being the biggest bootlicker on council since the 3 council members we recalled.

During her tenure, this woman has caused our budget to be absolutely CONSUMED by police pay and benefits. Public safety currently accounts for more than $7 out of every $10 we spend in our general fund. This is ridiculous but it has no end in sight and we’re getting less and less for it.

Our city cannot afford to fix our roads because she and those like her have never seen a police pension or pay raise she didn’t adamantly support.

Meanwhile she has fought, tooth and nail, against any meaningful reform of the Fullerton Police Department from her seat on council. She glad hands police and supports their militarization at every opportunity. She has supported asset seizures which is when the city steals your property to pad their budgets. She has gone so far as to support hiding records from the public by not demanding the City follow basic public records laws. Hell, this blog got sued for showing that FPD is RIGHT NOW doing everything they can to AVOID publicly disclosing wrongdoing by their officers.

This blog exposed a pervert cop who was caught filming up a 16 year old’s skirt while assigned to Fullerton High School and her solution was to vote, multiple times, to SUE US. Oversight? Accountability? Assurances that there is chain of custody and accountability? That FPD won’t turn more of our kids into victims of sex crimes? She’s been as quiet as a church mouse on those issues because she puts bad cops over our kids & our city as a whole.

Did she demand accountability after the Fullerton PD put their friend & then City Manager Joe Felz above the drunk driving laws? Nope. She cried that she’d miss her friend.

Did you know that Fullerton purchased 160 AR-15s? That’s more than one PER officer. Why? Why does FPD need that kind of firepower? It certainly isn’t to protect you. And if it’s not to protect you, it’s to protect the very police that our elected officials refuse to hold accountable from you.

Fitzgerald eagerly supported this purchase and militarization without hesitation. As did Jesus Silva & County Supervisor Doug Chaffee.

They do the bidding of the Fullerton Police Officer’s Association and the FPOA cares about one thing and one thing only – keeping cops with fat wallets above the law at your expense. Remember that the less accountable they are, the more you pay when they screw up. Those millions that Fullerton paid Ron Thomas certainly didn’t come out of any police pensions or FPOA bake sale.

In the near decade since Kelly Thomas was murdered we have seen no meaningful reform of the Fullerton Police Department. No transparency. No real oversight. Jennifer Fitzgerald has now been Mayor twice in that time. She was put onto council in the election months after the recall resulting from the Kelly Thomas murder – she even ran on exploring changes to the police department and it was all bullshit to placate you. She allegedly refused to even watch the Kelly Thomas video unless her buddy, Chief Danny Hughes, was there to guide her opinion. Imagine somebody saying that about the George Floyd video – that they wouldn’t watch it without the Commander in charge to guide them through it? That’s our Mayor.

If you care about police accountability. If you care about justice. If you care about any of the things the protesters claim to care about in this moment of national outrage – make your voice heard at the ballot box AND the in the streets.

Don’t forget. Don’t get complacent. Vote against anybody who puts the FPOA above we the people. Kick the Jennifer Fitzgeralds with their constant bootlicking to the curb. Be a part of the change that stops the platitudes.

May 13, 2020May 13, 2020Behind Closed Doors

Press Release – City of Fullerton – Notice of Data Breach

by Joshua37 Comments

FULLERTON, California (May 13, 2020) – The City of Fullerton (the “City”) announced today that we’re too dumb to use Dropbox and that led to the internet having access to things we’d rather you not know about – such a pervert cop filming up skirts and having child porn on his phone while stationed at Fullerton High School, a Lieutenant in Fullerton PD having not one, but two, Internal Affairs investigations against her that we dropped in order to bypass Public Records laws (SB1421 specifically), employees stealing things and us cocking up the investigation so badly that they got away with it, a City Employee overturning a Parks Vehicle while likely under the influence and on and on and on.

This isn’t new, in fact most of it came to light against our will almost a year ago so none of this is recent but we’re calling it a “recent event” that “may have impacted the security of personal information of some City residents and employees” because that sounds better than “our lawyers, who we refuse to fire and stand behind 100% are too stupid to use Dropbox and they totally screwed the pooch”.

The City became aware of posts on a public website, we all know which one but we won’t say because reasons, which contained confidential City information – see the list above. The city immediately began throwing money around trying to figure out who to blame and how we can get away with avoiding any responsibility. During the City’s investigation, it discovered that we are in fact too stupid to use Dropbox. We’re calling Dropbox “an internal data storage account” because it sounds better but yeah it was Dropbox. We gave out the website (CityofFullerton.com/outbox) on multiple occasions, to countless people, made it a legal public record and then sued some guys and a blog because they allegedly clicked links we put their names on in that Dropbox account – again that we told them about.

We gave them access and ignored that we had total control over who could see what and then our crack team of bureaucrats, lawyers and IT professionals somehow missed that we were too dumb to figure out Dropbox from about 2016 through June 21, 2019. The investigation further revealed the data included copies of emails and attachments that contained certain protected information. Information we never should have put online in an unsecured fashion but you don’t pay us the big bucks and for our lifetime pensions so we’ll be smart – you do it because we extort it out of you by taking away your toys (the library, roads, parks, etc) if you don’t give in to our mercenary demands. As a precaution, the entire contents of the Dropbox account were reviewed to identify the information that may have been accessible online for all the world to access. The City provided written notice to those individuals whose information was found on Dropbox. However, a small number of files we uploaded to Dropbox between 2016-2019 we totally deleted and therefore were not recovered and were unable to be reviewed and now we have no idea who’s information we negligently put online for the whole world to find. Whoopsie.

What Information Was Involved? On October 25, 2019, a day after suing the FFFF blog over our cockup, the City provided written notice to a small number of individuals whose sensitive information was found on Dropbox despite knowing about it for months. However, because we’re dumb and deleted things, a small number of files we uploaded to the non-password protected, public facing Dropbox account (at CityOfFullerton.com/outbox) were not able to be recovered and now the City is providing this additional notification. The personal information that we may have totally put on Dropbox in the files we absolutely deleted may include your name, Social Security number, driver’s license number, payment card information, medical or health information, and/or passport number. However, the City is unable to confirm the contents of these files or whether sensitive information was present in these files because, again, we’re dumb and don’t pay attention to what all we put on Dropbox despite us giving that account out willy-nilly. Hey, we waste your money and you don’t say anything so we figured you wouldn’t mind if we did the same with your data.

What Are We Doing? Suing people to cover up our incompetency mostly. The City takes the security of our employee and citizen information very seriously. So seriously that The City put that information on a non-password protected, public facing Dropbox account (CityofFullerton.com/outbox) in violation of HIPPA, Dropbox Terms of Service, Legal Best Practices, Common Sense, etc. In The City’s diligence The City immediately secured the Dropbox account at issue by deleting everything because passwords and access controls are too hard for our IT department and lawyers to figure out despite The City maybe needing those things for our pending lawsuit and to find out what we put online. The City reviewed existing security measures as a byproduct of our Dropbox screwup and finding essentially none paid $541,000+ to a digital security expert to do what our IT department should have been doing all along – ensuring the security of The City’s network and keeping our idiot lawyers off of Dropbox.

The City is also providing information about our stupidity and about the steps individuals can take to help safeguard personal information – basically just don’t trust The City to be competent.

In addition, the City is offering to spend more of your tax dollars to offer identity monitoring services through Kroll because nobody in The City pays a price even when it costs you over half a million dollars and counting.

What You Can Do. The City encourages individuals to remain vigilant against incompetent city staff and council members who would compromise your information while putting you at risk of identity
theft and fraud through gross negligence.

Under CA law, individuals are entitled to vote incompetent asshats out of office every election cycle and we strongly recommend throwing circus ringleader Jennifer Fitzgerald out on her ass along with Go-Along-To-Get-Along rejects Ahmad Zahra, Jesus Silva and Jan Flory should Flory’s corrupt self decide to grace us with another council run.

For More Information The City also encourages individuals to read our other press releases where we pretend that we didn’t get slapped down by the Appellate Court and that we’re winning this ridiculous case that we filed against our own watchdog citizens to cover our asses.

Again, at this time, there is no evidence that any information has been misused but we want to drag a few guys through the mud and hope that our infinite resources (your tax dollars which we’ll be taking more of soon) are enough to scare them into submission so we don’t ever have to take responsibility for our own government incompetence. After all, would YOU keep voting for City Council members (Fitzgerald, Zahra, Silva, Flory) who stood by lawyers as dumb as mentioned above OR who let a City Manager attack citizens in the courts and press while taking home $242,931.63 in 2019? We think not.

April 20, 2020April 20, 2020Ahmad Zahra

The Cost of Suing Us

by Joshua33 Comments

Fullerton just “separated from employment” 150+ non-union part-time staff. Why? Because despite years of Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald’s lies about a “Balanced Budget” and our mythical reserve fund – we had no plan for a rainy day.

During meetings, myself, David and others warned the City Council that a downturn was likely in the future and with CalPERS continually raising our pension costs we needed to be smarter financially.

Fitzy & Flory wanted none of that and spent like floozies in Vegas throwing every dollar we had at every uniform in sight with Silva, Chaffee and so on along for the ride.

Now here are we looking at a month of limited tax revenue and 150+ people lost their jobs with the city. 150+ positions aren’t being eliminated – no no no, they’ll tax us more to fill those again later and cry about not being to staff the libraries and parks to justify the new taxes/fees and whatever added costs to us they can cook up along the way. But 150+ people are now wondering how they’ll pay their bills.

But let me drive this home for you some more – the city is suing myself, David and this blog because we allegedly clicked some Dropbox links in an account they sent us and told the world about in PRRs. Remember, according to Kimberly Hall Barlow this isn’t about publishing or the 1st Amendment – this is about alleged theft and “hacking” because we allegedly clicked some Dropbox links.

In the process of investigating that alleged crime, the city found out that their network (which has fuckall to do with Dropbox) was incompetently setup and they hired an outside firm to fix it. This was the reason they claimed they waited to sue us for months on end – that they had to secure their network – which again has fuckall to do with Dropbox.

Glass Box Discussion

The firm they hired, Glass Box Technology, has a contract with the city for $60k/month not to exceed $500k.

Glass Box Contract

So far, according to the City Council approved Check Register, they’ve paid Glass Box $541,451.25 to date which is $41,451.25 over their “not to exceed” limit.

Glass Box Checks

That’s over half of a million dollars SO FAR because the City found out that they suck at running their own network as a BYPRODUCT of suing us which has nothing to do with what they allege we did. This was an unnecessary expense that has to come out of next year’s General Fund because it’s yet another major cockup for which nobody will be held accountable.

How many of those 150+ people wouldn’t need to be unemployed right now were it not for sheer incompetence in City Hall? Seems that $500k+ would have covered quite a few part timers.

Then we have the expense of our idiotic City Attorneys, Jones & Mayer. Since this nonsense started back in June with their Cease & Desist letters, the city has paid Jones & Mayer $891,074.49. We have no way to know how to split that up or what to attribute to the lawsuit against us because City Hall has a long history of lying about funding and hiding expenses in the wrong accounts. Just because something is coded to the Library, might not mean it has anything to do with the Library.

J&M Checks 2020

But if we assume that just 5% of their work product can be attributed to the lawsuit against us, and considering the reams of paper they keep filing with the courts we know their billable hours are stacking mile high, we can attribute approximately $44,553 to this stupid lawsuit. Seems to me that’s a few more part timers who could still be employed were it not for the malicious lawsuit being pursued by Fitzgerald, Flory, Silva and Zahra.

We don’t know how much the city has paid their other experts or consultants in their pursuit of the evil “hackers” who allegedly clicked Dropbox links – some with my name on them – but so far we know it’s pushing $500k+.

Remember this come election time & demand answers from these idiots on council who would rather spend your money, and it is your money, attacking us over their own stupidity than spend it providing the very services they’re elected to oversee in our city.

Shame on Fullerton. Shame on Mayor Fitzgerald. Shame on the City Council for always squandering your money pursuing their egos instead of your best interests. Sure, they’ll blame the need to “separate from employment” those 150+ people on this “global pandemic” – but that’s only because they constantly spend all of your money elsewhere while lying to you about our “balanced budget”.