Category: Watch Your Wallet

Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

A Peaceful Family Town

by 78 Comments on A Peaceful Family Town
Oooh, they's bad, bad men!

The anti-recall chuckleheads are trying to scare their few dozen elderly supporters with the notion that the Recall is some sort of scary thing that will upset the applecart in good, ol’ Stepford.

It's peaceful I tell ya!

The shameful fact is that Don Bankhead and Dick Jones turned downtown Fullerton into a boozy free-for-all with fights, rapes, and killings; and Pat McKinley sent in his goon squad of misfits, thugs, perjurers and killers to keep order in Jones’ “New West.”

Oh, no, not again!

Here’s the latest black-eye for Fullerton, a cabbie stabbed twice at Amerige and Harbor.

When are the folks of Fullerton going to wake up to the mayhem wreaked on their  peaceful family town by Mssrs. Bankhead, Jones and McKinley?

Real soon, I reckon.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Howard Jarvis Will Challenge Fullerton’s Illegal Water Tax

by 74 Comments on Howard Jarvis Will Challenge Fullerton’s Illegal Water Tax

It looks like our city may be in for another lawsuit. Check out this letter that was sent from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association just before Turkey Day (emphasis mine):

Mr. Joe Felz, City Manager
City of Fullerton
303 W Commonwealth Avenue
Fullerton,CA 92832

Re:  Water Department “In Lieu Fees”

Jack Dean, a friend of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, has brought to our attention that the City of Fullerton pads the rates charged to water customers in order to transfer funds from the Water Fund to the General Fund.  These transfers appear in the City’s Budget under Water Fund expenses and General Fund revenue as a 10% in-lieu franchise fee.  We believe the fee and revenue transfers are illegal.

If a private company provided water service to the residents of Fullerton, the City could charge the private company a negotiated franchise fee for occupying public rights of way with its pipelines.  That is not the case in Fullerton, however, as the City operates its own municipal water utility.  The rates the City may charge are governed by the California Constitution, which limits rates to just the amount required to provide service, and prohibits transferring rate revenue for use elsewhere.

California Constitution article XIII D § 6(b) states in relevant part: “(1) Revenues derived from the fee or charge shall not exceed the funds required to provide the property related service. (2) Revenues derived from the fee or charge shall not be used for any purpose other than that for which the fee or charge was imposed.”

We successfully litigated this issue several years ago in lawsuits against the cities of Roseville and Fresno.  The courts in those two cases ruled that a city’s utility enterprise can reimburse the General Fund for actual, documented expenditures incurred on behalf of the utility, such as the utility’s use of the City Attorney’s services, or the utility’s share of a common insurance fund.  However, the utility cannot serve as a supplemental source of revenue for the General Fund.  As the court in the Roseville case said:

“[T]he in-lieu fee violates section 6(b) of Proposition 218 in a more direct way. Roseville concedes that ‘[r]evenue from the in [-]lieu franchise fee is placed in [Roseville’s] general fund to pay for general governmental services. It has not been pledged, formally or informally[,] for any specific purpose.’ This concession runs afoul of section 6(b)(2) that ‘[r]evenues derived from the fee or charge shall not be used for any purpose other than that for which the fee or charge was imposed.’ It also contravenes section 6(b)(5) that ‘[n]o fee or charge may be imposed for general governmental services.’”Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. v. City of Roseville (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 637, 650.

By this letter we are formally requesting the City of Fullerton to stop charging the 10% in-lieu franchise fee, and to adjust its customers’ water rates accordingly.

If the City believes its 10% in-lieu franchise fee is legally defensible, then please consider this letter a request under the California Public Records Act for copies of the study(s) and/or accounting(s) that itemize General Fund costs on behalf of the Water Fund totaling exactly 10% each year.

Your response by December 10, 2011, would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Timothy A. Bittle
Director of Legal Affairs

The tax became a big issue back in July, when a guy named Jack Dean from the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers pointed out the illegality of this water tax to the council (during an attempt to double water rates.)

Well, it’s been four months now, and Fullerton residents are STILL PAYING that illegal tax on every water bill.

Of course Bankhead, Jones and McKinley are waiting for the city attorney to find a way to squeeze that tax through a legal loophole, instead of rescinding it and refunding the money they’ve been helping the city steal from taxpayers since Prop 218 passed fifteen years ago.

How about a refund?
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Posted onAbout Us

SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.

by 270 Comments on SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.
The City's eyes were badly "bloused." Again.

The OC Weekly’s Marisa Gerber has just written a detailed and painful catalog of offenses perpetrated by the Fullerton Police Department over a period of many years. It’s on the cover of this week’s edition.

No reasonable person can read this litany of arrogant terror and error, without concluding that the FPD sank deep into a Culture of Corruption under former chief and current councilmember, Pat McKinley; and that McKinley’s diseased poultry is still coming home to roost – two and a half years after his retirement.

But, as they say, where there is a will, there is way, and the anti-recall clowns will never acknowledge any of this scandal. They have far too much at stake – financially and emotionally.

Well, they can bury their heads in the sands, but the denial isn’t going to help. Their “esteemed” councilmen have dozed away, and looked the other way when all this was happening. It seems they thought their job was to attend ribbon cuttings, enjoy free drinks at Chamber of Commerce mixers, and give away millions of dollars worth of property to their campaign contributors.

And having everyone kiss your pale, withered butt means never having to say you’re sorry.

For Bankhead, Jones, and now McKinley, there has never been a thin dime’s worth of accountability.

Until now. And that’s the Recall!

 

 

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Posted onArts & Architecture

Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

by 49 Comments on Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

Friends of Fullerton’s future have read many pages on this site dedicated to cataloguing the manifest failures of Redevelopment and all the attendant boondoggles it brings with it. Blind support for these disasters is one of the reasons The Three Blind Brontosauruses are being recalled. One of the biggest disasters-in-the-making is the lamentable “Amerige Court” project, another gigantic monster to be plopped down into Fullerton, and a totally staff-created and driven mess.

Naturally Bankhead and Jones have supported this gross example of corporate welfare that we end up paying for. McKinley is bound to go along for the ride.   When he does we’ll be sure to let you know about it. Here is an update.

By Judith Kaluzny as published in The Fullerton Observer

The Amerige Court proposal is not dead yet.   The council will vote December 5, 2011, whether to extend a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) first approved February 7, 2006,  the third amended version having been approved by council March 4, 2008.

Since then, two extensions requested by developer Pelican Laing /Fullerton LLC (a Delaware corporation) were granted by staff June 2010 by Rob Zur Schmiede, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), and April 1, 2011, by Joeseph Felz, acting executive director.

Meantime, the Laing portion of the Pelican-Laing developers, had been purchased in June 2006 by a company in the mideast country of Dubai, and Laing subsequently filed for bankruptcy in February 2009.

“Amerige Court,” described as “mixed-use development with up to 124 residential units and as much as 30,000 square feet of commercial area” was to be located on the north and south parking lots in the 100 block of West Amerige.  At one time, the project was to be nine stories high on the south side of Amerige, with a five story parking structure on the north side of the street.

A Draft Environmental Impact Report was prepared in 2008 and concluded that there were “no potentially significant impacts that cannot be mitigated.”

Richard Hamm of Pelican Properties said recently, “It has been impossible to make any progress with the project since the State has attempted to end redevelopment.  Of course, the economy has not helped.

“We have four companies waiting in the wings to join us in Amerige Court. We want to get the extension to the DDA as well as a few details worked out with Redevelopment before going forward with a new partner. Amerige Court is still a great opportunity. Downtown Fullerton is still a great place (despite the recent events).

Points in the original contract included:

-Giving $5.5 million from a $6 million bond issue to Pelican Properties to build the parking garage.  The bonds were to  be paid back by the residents and businesses in the new development.  That will cause the businesses to cost $1.93 per square foot more than any other retail space downtown according to the city’s consultant, Keyser Marsten Associates, which advised the city to do “more due diligence” before they entered into this contract.

-The land Pelican will be given the by the  city was not appraised, but agreed as being worth $8 to $8.5 million.

-A guarantee of 10% profit to Pelican on the project.  Pelican can submit a new budget before escrow closes.  If that does not show they will get a 10% profit, they can withdraw from the project.  However, at that point, the redevelopment agency can volunteer to pay the required profit to Pelican.  The Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency can do this without further input from the city council/redevelopment agency.

-Tearing down the historic properties on the southeast corner of Malden and Amerige Avenues.

[The DDA and amendments are a maze of turgid language:  The Third Amendment provides for a “future amendment,” but if  “a Future Amendment is not approved by Developer and the Agency Board (city council) by April 5, 2009, or such later date as may be approved by the parties in the sole and absolute discretion of each of them, either party shall have the right to terminate the DDA… .”

[The third amended DDA also includes the following language: “However, the Entitlements have not been approved as Agency has not approved the Project or any other project for the Property.  The parties acknowledge that this Third Amendment does not constitute the third amendment that was contemplated under the Second Amendment.”]

Begun in 2001 with a “rendering” commissioned by Paul Dudley, then Director of Development, and shown to city council members in closed session, it has been said that this was a scheme to get more parking for the bars/restaurants downtown.  (In December 2002, restaurants downtown were exempted from having to provide parking or to obtain conditional use permits.)

FFFF has argued for years that this grossly subsidized monstrosity should be killed outright. As I noted, above, the extension of this agreement will become another issue in the upcoming recall campaign: a perfect example of corporate welfare of the type that has characterized massive subsidized apartment blocks in downtown Fullerton already approved by Bankhead and Jones over the years.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Cicinelli LAPD Pension Safe; Too Bad Fullerton Wasn’t Safe From Cicinelli

by 118 Comments on Cicinelli LAPD Pension Safe; Too Bad Fullerton Wasn’t Safe From Cicinelli

The guy who pounded Kelly Thomas’ face to bloody jelly (right after he got done torturing him with multiple Taser shocks) won’t lose his disability pension from the LAPD. In fact, the board that oversees such things won’t even review the case. Marisa Gerber relates the story in the OC Weekly, here.

What case is that? It stems from Cicinelli’s getting all shot to hell a few weeks out of the chute back in the mid-90’s. Among other injuries, one of his eyes was shot out. At the time, the pension board granted him a lifetime disability, but of course that decision didn’t contemplate Cicinelli going back to work as a one-eyed cop, which he did in Fullerton a little while later. And apparently nobody from Fullerton bothered to inform anybody in LA of Cicinelli’s new employment status.

So Cicinelli was making $40K a year from LAPD and made about $90K from Fullerton on that hot, sultry night of July 5th, 2011. Equitable? You decide.

Speaking of getting two pensions, I now roll around to the main point of this post. Which is Pat McKinley, the double barreled pension grabber who, as chief of the Fullerton Police Department hired Cicinelli and deployed the one-eyed cop on the streets of Fullerton. It was a favor for an old LAPD crony. In so doing, he placed Cicinelli, the public, and the taxpaying citizenry at dire risk.

He also hired the rest of the FPD gallery of rogues that has made the news lately: the druggies, pickpockets, perjurers, thugs, sex offenders and killers.

McKinley still insists he is proud of all these people (except for “the two!”) and has nothing to apologize for.

See, in Pat’s weird world mistakes are never admitted, responsibility for failure is never taken, and of course, accountability is utterly absent. McKinley won’t acknowledge what everybody else already knows: during his tenure as the head of the Fullerton Police Department his leadership failure created an obvious Culture of Corruption that culminated with the death of Kelly Thomas and the subsequent attempt to hush it up.

Well, I guess since McKinley won’t man up to his own failures, we’re going to have to do it for him

 

 

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Posted onDead heads

Anti-Recall Bozos Step in Own Droppings. Again.

by 70 Comments on Anti-Recall Bozos Step in Own Droppings. Again.
Yes, it's man-dated. Someone told me so.

You would think that politicians who have been around as long as the Three Deaf Dinosaurs would at least have enough savvy not to advertise their own misfeasance in office. If you thought that, boy, would you be wrong.

On their website the other day they were blaming the Recall campaign for making an issue of their illegal utility tax that’s been hidden in our water bills. Of course they have to explain that it’s been around for a long, long time; which doesn’t make it any more legal – or ethical. See, the City has been raising $2,500,000 a year by tacking a 10% increase to the amount of your water bill even though there has never been any justification for what is supposed to pay for some sort of “overhead” provided by the City to the water utility.

This big pile of money has been siphoned directly into the General Fund where it has contributed to the salaries, stipends and pensions of Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Pat McKinley and all of McKinley’s boys and girls currently on “administrative leave.” Last spring Mayor Jones defended the ripoff  here because it would pay for police – obviously people who have absolutely nothing to do with getting that water into your bath tub. And that’s illegal.

The funniest part of the attack on the Recall is some idiot named Larry Bennett’s ridiculous challenge to water rate payers to find any evidence of the this tax on their water bill. Larry even promises to pay your bill if you can find it.

Which begs the question: how stupid can these assclowns get?

Of course the 10% utility tax can’t be found on our water bills. It never has been shown on them. And that’s another one of the reasons it’s been illegal!

 

 

 

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

How To Blow $17,000

by 237 Comments on How To Blow $17,000

 

The good old days...

Item #3 on yesterday’s agenda was a request by Acting Chief-Until-Mike-Sellers-Pulls-His-Head-Out-and-Comes-Back-to-Work Hamilton to buy some spiffy raincoats for his lads. 200 to be precise, at a cost of $17,000. That’s $85 bucks a pop, and presumably Hamilton got a great discount for quantity.

These uber-raincoats meet some sort of Federal guideline for work in “federal-aid” highways right-of-ways (weren’t you losing sleep worrying about that?). And naturally the current coats are old and only “water resistant.” Typical. in government resource mismanagement is always used as an excuse for big, new, outlays.

But consider this: right now Fullerton’s entire police force numbers about 140 (give or take, depending on how many are on paid or unpaid administrative leave and can’t work on any highway, federal-aid or otherwise. Then there’s the fact that not all 140 are on duty at any one time. Then there’s the fact that only a fraction of the force will actually be on patrol when it’s actually raining and might be needed to stand around after a car crash. Finally there’s the obvious fact that these people really ought to  be able to share a few dozen of the same infrequently used garments.

Oh, it's raining all right.

Please note that because the money is from asset seizure and not General Fund, the requestor is unashamed to make such a profligate request.

So how did our esteemed city council vote? Apparently it passed on the Consent Calendar nod 5-0.

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Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

“Dick” Ackerman Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 3.

by 128 Comments on “Dick” Ackerman Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 3.
Heh, heh. When nobody was looking the collection plate went missing.

When you are a moral vacuum like Dick Ackerman, you really don’t stand for much of anything except your own well-being. Public service? Hell, no! It’s all about personal service. Everything else is just platitudes and bull shit.

An indication of Mr. Ackerman’s future career path was clearly established with the creation of a fake charity by his wife that was simply a mechanism to get state legislators (one of whom was Mr. Ackerman) alone on Maui with lobbyists for big corporate interests who actually paid for the whole junket. Ackerman is hilariously quoted as saying how beneficial these get togethers were, as if being lobbied in Sacramento (instead of Hawaii by the same cast of characters) was somehow just so much more darned inefficient. FFFF posted all about the utterly phony Pacific Policy Research Foundation, here.

I don't even know how I got into the room...

That was just the start of Mr. Ackerman exploiting Mrs. Ackerman for family gain. And it wasn’t enough that The Dickster got the missus on the Metropolitan Water Board where she naturally supported huge water rate increases (true, that bar was already set really, really low).

In the summer of 2009, while The Dick was illegally lobbying the State Legislature in the sordid the OC Fair Swindle, his protege, 72nd  District Assemblyman Mike Duvall was caught bragging of nasty sexual accomplishments with a lobbyist; maybe the idea of nasty accomplishments with lobbyists ignited a fire in Dick’s political loins. By the end of September his wife, Linda Ackerwoman was running to replace the disgraced Duvall!

Now people endowed with a normal dose of shame would have simply receded into the background after the man they promoted was busted for moral turpitude. But the Ackermans are not so endowed. Dick’s immediate impulse was to promote the candidacy of the wife, a woman who had, apparently, never even held a job except as a “consultant” raiding her husband’s campaign accounts.

Well, okay. Lot’s of unqualified dimwits run for the Legislature. The real problem was that the Ackermans didn’t even live in the district. The Ackermans live in a top-secret gated community in Irvine! The State Constitution says you have to live in a district a year, but what the Hell, the State Constitution is for losers!

So Dick and Linda cooked up a fake address in the rumpus room of a Fullerton stooge. Well, technically they were carpetbaggers; but since nobody really believed they spent a night living in Fullerton a better word applies: fraud.

You mean they never really lived here. I guess I slept through that. Again.

As expected, Mrs. Ackerwoman got the endorsements of the Three Deteriorating Dinosaurs, all the statewide Redevelopment money, and the big corporate interest lobbyists. They ran one of the slimiest campaign anybody could remember. It hardly mattered. The Ackermans still lost to Chris Norby by a whopping 20 points in the Republican Primary. Within a few weeks they had reregistered to vote in the leafy precincts where their Irvine mini-McMansion is located. How’s that for a big F-you, Fullerton?

The point of the story is simple:  there is no basement so low that Dick Ackerman & Co. won’t crawl into it in order to pull a string or make a buck. And if you don’t recognize Dick as the moral barometer of the anti-recall campaign, you don’t know Dick.

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Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

“Dick” Ackerman The Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 2.

by 84 Comments on “Dick” Ackerman The Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 2.
Swimming in taxpayer gravy is hard to give up...

Let’s just say you’re a termed-out California state senator who, through the vagaries of a law that requires a two-thirds majority to pass a budget, became a Playah in the capital. Bocce and cigars with the Celebro-Guv.

Well, if you are of a certain mindset, the thought of returning to good, honest toil as a private citizen is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Instead, you look around to see how you can capitalize off of all those political connections you made cutting deals and grinding the uncomfortable corners off of the truth. You recall fondly when the greasers, lobbyists, and bagmen were kissing your skinny ass and funding your campaigns. Lobbying is a lot more fun than real work. You want to become one!

And so it was when Dick Ackerman left Sacramento; and so it was for anybody willing to put Ackerman on their payroll. After all, who wants to hire a 70-year old, small-time lawyer to draw up wills for grandpa? No one, that’s who. And Nossaman, the big law firm that employed Dick obviously wanted him as a lobbyist, despite the website description that comically claims Ackerman is some sort of legal expert in a wide array of issues.

By nature lobbyists are supposed to remain low-profile, operate in the shadows and behind closed doors. What the partners at Nossaman think about Ackerman’s recent embarrassing high profile behavior is anybody’s guess, but it can’t be too good; and apparently Dick ain’t bringing home much bacon, either, which is the worst offense of all.

But so much for the long preamble. The purpose of Part 2 (and of Part 3) of this squalid tale is to relate some of what Ackerman has been up to lately, and to point out to anybody who cares, the low ethical trajectory of the leader of the anti-recall circus.

Termed out in 2008, Ackerman almost immediately latched on to an opportunity presented by his ethical soul mate, Dave Ellis: the Great OC Fair Swindle of 2009, an attempt to convert select members of the Board of Directors into a non-profit entity that would buy the Orange County Fairgrounds from a cash-strapped State, and run it for their own fun and profit. Ackerman’s role was buried in an obscure land-use contract with a company called LSA, presumably so nobody would know what the hell was going on.

Dave Ellis seen soon after emerging from the Fullerton sewer system. The transition to an oxygen breathing life-form was slow and painful...

Part of the deal involved slipping the necessary whereases into the state budget in the summer of 2009, and part of Ackerman’s job was to make sure legislators got the job done. But wait a minute, Dick! State legislators have to wait a full year before they can lobby their former colleagues! That’s the law.

When the details of Ackerman’s behavior became public in the fall of 2009, he twisted and turned the very meaning of the English language in order to squirm off the hook on which he had impaled himself. And it would have been in vain, too, except that our sleepy DA had clearly given instructions to his staff to whitewash Ackerman’s role. Not looking for evidence is a great way of not finding any.

It worked for a while, in 2010. Then in early 2011 Norberto Santana of the Voice of OC broke the story: he had copies of Ackerman’s billing invoices, and Ackerman’s scope of work – documents the DA thought unnecessary to collect, and they clearly revealed the truth about Ackerman – lobbying legislators was part of the contract, and The Dickster had made calls to several members of the Legislature, including locals Solorio and Correa. No bueno!

Although the DAs spokestress Susan Schroeder disingenuously invited anybody to submit new evidence for the DAs lethargic consideration, nobody did. And Ackerman slithered away, probably bragging, like John Mitchell to his cronies, that no one had laid a glove on him.

Stay tuned for Part 3, in which we explore carpetbagging for fun and profit!

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