Here’s a fun image of the house of an anti-recaller who seems to want people to believe that Fullerton is not for sale. Whose abode is it?
Why none other than Mr. Jim Blake, Fullerton’s Metropolitan Water District (MWD) Representative for Life, who was recently busted by a local news watchdog for his high living on the water rate payer’s dime. Blake also got some unwanted publicity from Teri Sforza at the Register for racking up huge travel bills a water junketeer. Blake has every reason to support the Three Hollow Logs, just as I’m sure they appreciate his ethical backing.
So there you have it folks: the Culture of Corruption in high dudgeon as it misrepresents itself to what it fervently hopes is an unsuspecting public.
Last fall anti-recallers wanted folks to believe that everything in Fullerton’s great and it was just a wholesome family town. Of course the facts are that City Councilmembers Bankhead, Jones and McKinley have turned downtown Fullerton into an all night free for all of drugged-up, boozing, fighting, defecating thugs from who knows where. And of course an out-of-control gang of badged thugs was deployed to try to keep the other thugs in line.
All of this is just a long preamble to advertise the fact that another shooting took place in Downtown Fullerton early this morning, in the parking structure in the 100 block of east Wilshire Avenue.
Who benefits from this mayhem besides the liquor peddlers? Ask Bankhead or Jones or McKinley next time you see them.
For those who really and truly want added proof of the fiscal irresponsibility of City Councliman Don Bankhead, here he is casting his vote to pay $6,000,000 to move a perfectly good McDonald’s restaurant about 200 feet to the east.
Bankhead’s only arguments? One, that he’s already wasted a bunch of money on this titanic Redevelopment boondoggle; and two, that without the relocation the titanic Redevelopment boondoggle might be harder to build!
Fortunately (somewhat) wiser heads prevailed, although nobody in City Hall ever admitted that the monstrous “Fox Block” was just a plaything for the Redevelopment staff, a source of government handouts to the so-called ‘developer,” and had absolutely nothing to do with the restoration of the historic Fox Theater.
Really and truly, Bankhead has been supporting massive boondoggles, huge corporate subsidies and crony capitalism for the better part of 25 years. High time to hit the road.
When you’re getting top-notch service you might not be inclined to quibble much about the price. But if you’re being provided law enforcement services from an organization that has employed perverts, perjurers, thugs, con men, pickpockets, and killers; and that has, and will ring up millions more in costly civil lawsuit judgments and settlements, you may not be inclined to feel so charitable.
Here are some interesting facts on the per capita cost of law enforcement services from some surrounding towns. The formula is pretty simple: take the total 2011-12 budgeted cost for the cops (lock stock and gun barrel), and divide by the number of people in the city based on the 2010 US Census data. The results are interesting.
The 60,000 citizens of the City of La Habra pay $15,000,000 for their police force, and that equates to $250 per capita. In Placentia the 50,500 inhabitants budgeted just over $11,000,000 for their cops for a figure of $219, per capita. The City of Yorba Linda pays the Brea PD $11.3 million to police its mean streets at about $176, per capita. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has just submitted a proposal to do the basic job for $9.6 million, or just under $150 per person.
In Fullerton the budgeted cost of the Police Department for 2011-12 is $37,259,455. For the $135,161 people of Fullerton that equates to $276, each.
Why does the Fullerton Police Department cost so much more than surrounding jurisdictions with smaller departments, and hence with less opportunity for economies to scale? Well, there’s a jail to operate, I guess. Other that I haven’t got a clue. You’ll have to ask Jones, or Bankhead, or McKinley or maybe one of their supporters. They must know. After all they are boasting about their support from the law enforcement union.
The abode of F. Paul Dudley, possibly designed by Mike Brady
The anti-recall forces keep chanting the mantra that Fullerton is not for sale, despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, and that under the Jones, Bankhead and McKinley regime, Fullerton has been very much for sale.
Here’s a picture of an anti-recall sign in the front yard of former Development Services Director, F. Paul Dudley, the man who, for over twenty years, participated in a series of calamitous boondoggles, oversaw the over-development of downtown Fullerton, the cookie-cutter development of Coyote Hills East, and the fake New Urbanism of Amerige Heights. F. Paul Dudley is the man who gave the Florentine family a permanent building on a public sidewalk. Apart from being a dyed-in-the-wool arrogant bureaucrat, Dudley is also a happy member of Fullerton’s $100,000 Pension Club, pulling down a whopping $139,420 for doing nothing.
The original, and the best.
But get this: Dudley now peddles his relationship with the Three Hollow Logs acting as a lobbyist for developers! So you see, for Dudley Fullerton is very much for sale. He and a small handful of people like him need a compliant majority on the council so that they can get massive entitlements and stick the rest of us with the impacts.
Makes ya feel good. Oops, watchit there, just step over the bodies and the civil rights!
Thus spaketh Lou Ponsi who seems to be doing his level best to avoid real news and even to parrot the nonsense peddled by the anti-recall crowd.
Ponsi seems really impressed with banners stating how much folks love Fullerton. Ponsi doesn’t seem interested that the operation is the brainchild of downtown businesses who have profited off of the City Council’s crazy wild west show; nor in the irony that these essentially anti-recall messages are hung on public property. No, that would take independence and intelligence, traits that Ponsi simply doesn’t possess.
Of course Ponsi echoes the notion that the one and only problem is the minor altercation last summer that left Kelly Thomas’ brains in a Transportation Center gutter, and of course he ignores the reality a phone call made by – a downtown business, that may very well have an I Love Fullerton banner in front of it.
Really? I don't know anything about that stuff. Wow!
Lou must have a short or self-serving memory if he can’t remember:
FPD cop Todd Major – convicted of fraud, 2011.
FPD cop Kelly Mejia – plead guilty to grand larceny, 2011
FPD cop Albert Rincon – accused of a dozen sexual batteries while in uniform causing a rebuke from a federal judge and a $350,000 settlement (so far), but actually “separated” for something else (jeez how bad could that have been), 2006-2011.
FPD cop Vincent Mater – “separated” after destroying evidence in a Fullerton jail suicide, identified as an untrustworthy “Brady cop” and suspected of a roll in the false identification in the Emanuel Martinez case. Charged by the District Attorney,2011.
FPD cop “Sonny” Saliceo who through laziness or malice, permitted or encouraged the mis-identification of Emanuel Martinez who subsequently spent five months in jail.
FPD employee April Baughman who was recently arrested on charges of theft from the FPD property room over a period of two years. 2012.
A lawsuit by Veth Mam against the police department and FPD cop Kenton Hampton for a laundry list of civil rights violations and false prosecution. 2011.
A lawsuit by Andrew Trevor Clarke against FPD cop Cary Tong and half the FPD for a laundry list of civil rights violations. 2012.
A lawsuit by Edward Miguel Quinonez against the FPD and Kenton Hampton for even more civil rights violations. 2011
And let’s not forget the eventual civil and civil rights suits against the balance of the FPD Six (including our old friends Kenton Hampton and Joe Wolfe). 2011.
Then in non-police matters there’s the little problem of the City Council giving away land worth millions for free to campaign contributors; and giving away huge subsidies to the bag man who runs the anti-recall campaign. 1996-2012.
And finally let us recall the biggest scam of all – the perpetuation of the illegal water tax for fifteen long years that went, in part, to pay the salaries and pensions of the very city council that looked the other way year after year. 1996-2012.
I know I said that. But that was way back yesterday!
Tuesday was a big day for Fullerton Mayor Sharon Quirk Silva. Only the day before Quirk-Silva had issued a bold press release to her pals in the liberal blogosphere stating that she was going to request that her colleagues on the city council suspend the illegal 10% water tax. She even helpfully explained why the new 6.7% number was a load of manure.
Here’s what she said, quoted verbatim from a press release sent to an admiring Liberal OC: “I will also call upon members of the city council to join me in a motion to stop any further diversions of water revenues to the general fund until these questions are answered,” Mayor Quirk-Silva asserted.
Naturally, when the chips were down, SQS chickened out. Don’t believe me? Here she is, right after Councilman Bruce Whitaker made the motion she herself had said she was going to make, that is, agendize the suspension of the illegal 10% tax on our water.
Oops.
Well, there you have it. Quirk decided to side with the blowhard who attended (and fell asleep at) the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee meeting, and put off the decision to do the right thing for some other day.
The courage of Monday morning evaporated by the next afternoon.
Nearly a year ago FFFF started what would turn into a long string of investigations into the FPD Culture of Corruption by telling the tale of a young man who claimed that he was beaten and abused by Fullerton cops during a downtown arrest.
There were plenty of skeptics here, and there was a barrage of personal abuse leveled against the man by anonymous FPD goons. At least there was until we published the results of an internal investigation, here, in which at least part of the victim’s assertions were confirmed.
Well last week another of Pat McKinley’s chickens emerged on the horizon, coming home to roost. Andrew Trevor Clarke filed a federal civil suit against Fullerton PD employees Tong, Contino, Hampton, Bolden, Salazar and Sellers.
Sellers? Good call, but I wonder why Clarke didn’t include former Chief, present councilman Pat McKinley. After all, he will proudly tell us he hired all of ’em.
All I can say is the lawsuits are piling up so fast we’re going to need wings to stay above the legal paperwork. And I wonder how much this one is gonna cost us.
When the topic of the Fullerton’s illegal 10% water tax was brought up the other night, Councilmember Bruce Whitaker was right there to propose agendizing the immediate suspension of the tax. And Triassic, soon-to-be recalled Don Bankhead was there to stall, stall, stall.
The funny thing is that Bankhead cited his presence at the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee meeting as some sort of evidence that he knew something the others didn’t. Bad idea, Bonehead.
See, if you’re going to brag about going to a meeting it might be an excellent idea to stay awake during it.
It never rains, but it pours, as some folks say. It seems that the City of Fullerton has been hit with yet another lawsuit, which likely means more payout from us and more pelf for the City’s contracted attorney, Dick Jones (no, the other meat head).
Lou Ponsi of the OC Register, writes about the lawsuit, here.
It transpires that a 58-year old Fullerton High teacher and motorcyclist named Jeff Rupp was wiped out at the intersection of Euclid and Malvern in early 2011. He died from his injuries and the family has brought a wrongful death suit against the City. The basis of the suit is that the intersection is deficient and dangerous. A $2.9 million claim by the family was denied by the City last year.
Well, the intersection is dangerous. No doubt about it. It’s got that funky flashing yellow left turn arrow which is confusing the first time you see it. Anybody turning left in either direction had better be careful; and anybody going straight through had better be careful, too.
Still, it’s pretty hard to lay the beatdown on the taxpayers of Fullerton because of bad drivers.
