Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
The real blood on the Transportation Center pavement hadn’t dried yet on July 7th. Here is FPD PIO Andrew Goodrich communicating with his soon-to-be vacationing boss, Mike Sellers.
Of course Goodrich is not interested in public information. He’s interested in perception and propaganda. “In-custody injury ” must be some sort of PIO code for “bludgeoned to death.”
File under better late than never. Teri Sforza of the Register has advertised Fullerton city government’s dirty little secret. Well, I guess it was really a big secret. Not any more.
A little MSM attention will help get the word out: F. Richard Jones and Don Bankhead have been ripping us off for 15 year by adding 10% to our water bills to pay for their perks and pensions. A $27,000,000 rip-off. Now that’s not very nice, is it?
In case you’re not aware, there’s a “study session” this afternoon focusing on the water utility. According to the press release, it will cover all aspects of the city’s water utility, including “the public notification process and the legality of the ‘in-lieu franchise/property tax’ transfer of funds from the Water Fund to the General Fund.” The meeting is open to the public and will take place at 4:30pm in the new conference center in the main library.
It is now August 4th, 2011 – about a month since six of now-MIA Chief Mike Sellers’ cops participated in the brutal beating death of a homeless man – and in the middle of a full-bore campaign of obfuscation by his underlings.
Here is Sellers scoping out his contract and his “executive” benefits a few days before his doctor told him he was really, really “sick.” He is looking forward to “wrapping things up.” And how.
And then an inquiry into the IRS to get “squared away.”
The date is July 19, 2011 and Fullerton Chief of Police Mike Sellers has just returned from his cruise and is still on vacation. FPD murder victim Kelly Thomas has been off life support for one week. Clouds are gathering, alright.
“Chief” seems interested in sharing his knowledge of some newfangled strategy called “predictive policing,” which, presumably, would not predict crimes perpetrated by the cops themselves. His correspondent, Dennis Kies, then Interim Police Chief of Costa Mesa, is suitably unimpressed.
Some folks may remember Kies from his days as police chief in La Habra, a tenure punctuated by the over-reaction cop shooting of 25 year-old Korean-American artist Michael Cho on the final day of 2007.
Then discussion of a new job at Seal Beach comes up, and apparently Kies name had popped up. “Chief” shares the bennies package.
I don’t know what a “medical retiree clause” is, but it probably has something to do with Chief’s Disease. Ironic that in less than a month Sellers himself would be rollerskating out of Fullerton with a bad case of it.
Which is a lot better than none. We would be remiss not to offer a tip ‘o the cap to County Supervisor Shawn Nelson for taking on the obscene pay raises handed out by the County CEO Tom Mauk to a couple of his cronies.
The egregious raises were given out three or four years ago within months of these employees being promoted to new jobs by Mauk. The multiple raises went well into double digit territory, as uncovered during a Performance Audit of the County’s own Human Resources Department.
As an ad hoc subcommittee studying the findings of the audit, Nelson and Supervisor Pat Bates recommended reversing the raises, and were supported by John Moorlach at the December 6th Board meeting. Supervisors Bill Campbell and Janet Nguyen fought hard to keep the astronomical raises in place.
Well, kudos to Nelson, Bates, and Moorlach for calling the CEO on his hypocrisy and for taking a big step in the direction of accountability at the County Hall of Administration.
Now that the Governor’s decision to put the kibosh on Redevelopment in California has been upheld by the State Supreme Court, our lawsuit to stop the illegal expansion of Fullerton’s Redevelopment project area is becoming something of a moot point.
Too bad, because we really wanted the City to try to defend its ridiculous findings of blight in front of a judge.
Well, we’re not going to forget that the bogus attempt was made, and made hard by Fullerton’s Redevelopment junkies – Bankhead, Jones and McKinley. These guys are absolutely hooked on government creating dimwitted master plans, buying into stupid boondoggles and handing out taxpayer subsidies and freebies to their pals and campaign contributors.
In the coming months we will be sure to remind Fullerton citizens of the City’s history of expensive Redevelopment failures and the part played in these disasters by our “esteemed” City Council.
So reports the Register, here. Seems a serious accident took place. Wednesday, at 1:45 in the morning.
Apparently some pedestrians (i.e. jaywalkers) were crossing mid-block on Harbor between Santa Fe and Commonwealth. They were smacked by a northbound vehicle into the southbound lane, where injury was added to injury. The victims were reported to be in critical condition at UCI, favored treatment locale for DTF trauma victims.
In what must have been an attempt at deadpan humor, the register’s Denisse Salazar’s writes:
The investigation is continuing, and it’s not yet known if alcohol played a role in the accident.
Of course we will be told that the open air booze-a-thon created by the Fullerton City Council played no part in the accident.
My grandfather Casimir once told me you can always gauge the overall performance of an organization by its attention to seemingly small details. Here’s a video that shows that something’s not quite right at the Fullerton Public Library.
The idea that these folks are disabling their own DVDs is just sort of funny. But really? It takes the City four weeks to cut a $2 check? Of course processing and mailing that check is going to cost a lot more than two bucks.
Almost on cue, who pops up to start cluck-clucking anti-recall nonsense? That’s right, the old dithering bird-brain herself, Molly McClanahan, who was recalled in 1994 for instituting an unnecessary utility tax.
Enjoy the vague abstractions and self-righteous pontification. You are left to your own devices to figure out what in the hell “emotional mischief” is. It’s anybody’s guess.
Let Molly do what Molly does best: babble idiocy about “the body politic” and the “soul of the City.” Let Molly roll out the same garbage she did eighteen years ago: that recall is only supposed to punish “malfeasance.” Wrong, dingbat. That’s what the Penal Code is for. Recall was instituted in California to get rid of politicians who had obviously failed in their duty to their constituents by placing special interests first. And that is precisely what has happened in Fullerton. And that’s why the recall of ’12, like that of ’94, is going to succeed.