Category: Watch Your Wallet

Posted onParks and Trails

News Flash From Hillcrest Park Pals

by 1 Comment on News Flash From Hillcrest Park Pals

On Saturday morning from 9:00 to noon, the City of Fullerton and landscape architect Mia Leher will present two alternative master plans for the restoration/preservation of Hillcrest Park. The meeting is open to the public and will be held at the picnic pavilion near the recreation center.

Mia Lehrer

Recently the north hill of Hillcrest Park was raped of it’s natural grade and historic landscape. For those of you that don’t know, the city of Fullerton Landmarks Commission is required by law to review and approve (or disapprove) of any changes to local and/or National Historic Landmarks. Hillcrest Park is both. To this day, the Fullerton Landmarks Commission has never addressed the issue of the Lyons Field renovation which included the north hill of Hillcrest Park.

This may be the last chance for real public input. If you want to be heard, the time is NOW. Please show up at the meeting on Saturday. If you can’t make it, you can still join Hillcrest Park Pals by sending an email to: HILLCRESTPARKPALS@GMAIL.COM.

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Posted onBig Brother

Another DUI Checkpoint

by 19 Comments on Another DUI Checkpoint

Tomorrow night hundreds of law-abiding citizens will be stopped and questioned at a Fullerton DUI/license checkpoint while a few dozen officers stand around drinking coffee and earning overtime pay.

Unlike the previous checkpoint in May, the location of this one is being kept secret. If you want to know where the checkpoint will be, try hanging out at the local bars, where word of the location will spread immediately.

We’ve talked about how these checkpoints are extremely ineffective, nabbing only a couple of drunks while deploying a huge amount of police resources at our expense.

The police department has struggled to explain the lack of significant arrests, and has resorted to justifying the checkpoints as mere “safety education.” Our highly trained and well-compensated police officers have been reduced to handing out M.A.D.D. flyers in the middle of the street, one car at a time. That’s a task that could easily be done for free by M.A.D.D. volunteers in the bar parking lots. Of course, that approach wouldn’t be very lucrative for the police department.

These checkpoints are ineffective, invasive and expensive. It’s time to replace them with regular DUI patrols.

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Posted onBrick Veneer, Fake Old, And Other Horrors

Look Up In The Sky! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! No It’s a Pringle!

by 3 Comments on Look Up In The Sky! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! No It’s a Pringle!
The boondoggle takes to the air

Don’t feel so bad. The consultants, lobbyists, con men,  and other assorted rip-off artists are pushing the multi-billion high speed rail in other places, too.  Here’s an article from the Fresno Bee that tells all about how the local gentry are trying to grab their share of the HSR gravy that they think will be a big deal for the raisin capital of the state.

You are becoming very sleepy...

The common denominator, of course, is Anaheim’s termed-out Mayor-For-Hire, the irrepressible Curt Pringle who figures to make big bucks as a “consultant” for this boondoggle when his days as a conflicted politician are over. The Fresno crowd wined and dined hizzoner and he was clearly impressed with the show of unanimity – much more than he’s getting down south these days. He even promised them a 2012 start for the project.

Come December Pringle will be out of office, and will no longer be able to pull the strings at OCTA either, although it sure looks like he’s getting his ducks in a row, puppet-wise there and at Anaheim’s City Hall.

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Posted onBoohooism

OC Human Relations Commission Working Hard, But For Who?

by 4 Comments on OC Human Relations Commission Working Hard, But For Who?

By Friend Helen Logan.

Our $300,000 tax dollars a year working hard for us?

I found this article in the PR Newswire, United Business Media dated 17th June 2010.

“This was an invaluable opportunity for our mediators to experience the common physical and emotional challenges that are a part of the aging process,” said Mike Finkle, Human Relations Specialist for OC Human Relations. “For awhile, our mediators were able to, nearly literally, ‘take a walk in the shoes’ of seniors and others who live with such challenges every day.

To simulate experiencing the difficulties of living with arthritis, for example, program participants were asked to don heavy, clumsy gloves and then button their shirts or open medication bottles and handle small pills. Participants also put popcorn in their shoes and walked around to simulate the feeling of painful joints.”

The Orange County Human Relations Commission, a dinosaur agency foisted upon  tax payers for thirty years, again shows how negligible its services are to our community.

Orange County Human Relations Specialist Mike Finkle, an employee of this commission, earns his tax dollar subsidized paycheck by walking around a room with popcorn in his shoes and attempting to button his shirt and open pill bottles while wearing, thick, clumsy gloves.

When will our county government leaders wise up to this sham agency and pull the plug on funding this silly tax dollar subsidized commission and its executive director who pulls down a six figure salary.

Our economic crisis that experts predict will be a double-dip recession, forces our county government to cut needed police and fire protection to Orange County’s residents. Yet, our county’s board of supervisors is afraid to stop funding this piece of fluff called the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

I believe most will agree with me when I say I would rather have more police or fire protection in Orange County than a person walking around with popcorn in his shoes who puts on thick, clumsy gloves to button his shirt.

For our county board of supervisors to have credibility with the voters, they must sensibly act and trim the real fat from government by cutting funding to the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Pacific Strategies – A Few Days In The Life

by 14 Comments on Pacific Strategies – A Few Days In The Life

Hey, I got kids in expensive schools!

Check this out. Here are a few days in the life of supposed conservative pontificator, Matthew J. Cunningham as he dishes out his stellar wordsmithing on behalf of the uber-liberal Prop 10 funded “OC Children and Families Commission.”

I’ll let you tally up the big bucks this hypocrite pulled down doing battle with the forces of…well, forces like the “Flash Report” of which he was a blogger, its editor Jon Fleischman, and of course those insensitive beasts at the OC Register.

And be sure to enjoy that monthly $800 catchall bill for, well, who knows what it’s for? Just stuff. But Hell, when you’re milking the cash cow be sure never to leave anything on the table, right?

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Why Public Works Projects Cost So Much

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If you build it they will come.

Well, paying legally required “prevailing wage” to union workers, for one thing. This adds from 33-50% to the straight labor costs.

But there’s a more insidious cost to reckon with. And that’s the often overlooked administration costs tacked on to construction projects by the City Engineering Department. By gouging these projects with inflated bureaucratic costs, the Engineering Department can pad its own budget without leaning on the General Fund. The monies for capital projects comes from CDBG funds, Redevelopment tax increment, Gas Tax revenue – a whole crazy Byzantine funding network that fortuitously disconnects the payer from the beneficiary.

Yesterday our blogger Christian noted that a contract to upgrade traffic signals at three intersections was let out to a contractor for about $102,000; but that the City’s Engineering Department tacked on a whopping $39,000 for its own administration and inspections. That’s about a 38% increase, and is anomalously high – even for a typical project in Fullerton. Smaller projects get disproportionately nailed. But the point is that actual infrastructure improvements – the very stuff that everybody says they want to promote – is getting, and has gotten robbed by featherbedding in the Engineering Departments.

Of course this has been going for years and years and years. It’s a standard practice. Probably everywhere. So why haven’t the politicians ever cottoned on to this sleight of hand? Maybe they have. But its just so much easier to go along with the “experts” and not ask any questions; or if you do, don’t demand any cogent answers.

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Posted onOrange County Government

$1.4 MILLION – THE COST OF CLERK-RECORDER TOM DALY’S CRONYISM

by 25 Comments on $1.4 MILLION – THE COST OF CLERK-RECORDER TOM DALY’S CRONYISM

Dear Friends, we have just received this essay from one of our long-time readers. Enjoy.

If the election for Clerk-Recorder had anything to teach us, it is that the best candidate doesn’t always win the election. And we wonder why we have the ineffective government we have. I guess all I can say is that we deserve the government we vote for.

As the County budget approval meeting approach we found even more government waste by election victor Tom Daly.  If you look at the previous three years you’ll become aware of yet another way in which this inept “Manager of the Year” continues to waste the taxpayer’s money. In the past three years, Tom Daly has doled out more that $1.4 million for “temporary help” and “extra-help.” This is easily verifiable by looking at the County’s Proposed Budget Book for 2009-2010.

We have previously reported that Tom Daly likes to give non-competitive “extra-help” jobs to his friends and the relatives of campaign donors. But in a time in which the County is laying off employees and forcing furloughs on other agencies, Tom Daly is getting away with budgetary murder. His budget is at the same levels they were when recording and revenues were at an all time high. Property recordings have declined to almost half of the all time mark in 2005, yet Daly seems to believe he is still entitled to hire his friends and relatives of campaign donors at a whopping cost of $1.4 million. This essentially means the County General Fund is being deprived $1.4 million over the past 3 years.

How come? From what we have heard, most of his cronies are in non-essential jobs so if these useless bodies were to go home tomorrow, the department and the County would be just fine with more money in the General Fund. Tom loves to claim that he has reduced his budget by 26% but really that isn’t true – all he does is cook-up the numbers or overspends and draws from his piggy-bank account known as 12D.  He is not supposed to use this fund for plugging his over-spending, but he does, and the County does nothing. He loves to claim that he has only 102 staff but if you count all the extra-help and temp help he is closer to 110 employees. Maybe someone needs to go to the state agency responsible for investigating this fleecing of the county.

Daly’s needs to give back more to the county General Fund; and he can start by letting go of his friends and crony’s relatives like Bruce Mathias, Jennifer Lowe, Steven Oftelie, Dulce Cuevas and a more; and not the extra-help that are not his buddies.

We will be watching who he lets go and hope that the Board of Supervisors deny his request for these extra-help and temporary help expenses. Hopefully with Shawn Nelson now elected to the Board, Tom Daly will be under more scrutiny. Let’s hope for the right thing to happen soon.

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Posted onBoohooism

Doc Jones Brings Ashes to the Christmas Tree?

by 5 Comments on Doc Jones Brings Ashes to the Christmas Tree?

Always a memorable quotation in every box. That’s the Doc Hee Haw product line. And ya never know what’s going to pop out.

Here is his ‘poneness wringing hands (or finger wiggling?!) about the heart-breaking budget cuts. You wouldn’t think you were dealing with  a conservative, here, would you? Actually he sounds a Hell of a lot like a big gummint Dem; which is basically what he is.

A real conservative would relish taking the opportunity to cut back inflated salaries, bloated pensions, and silly services that are always “popular” with somebody or other. But no. I really believe him when he says how terrible it is to cut the budget.

And here is one of the basic conflicts we at FFFF have with our local Republican leaders who keep backing RINO nitwits like Jones simply because they are registered as Republicans.

Anyway go ahead and enjoy.

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