Some creatures in Nature’s realm need to mass produce their potential offspring. It’s a numbers game. Sea turtles lay thousands upon thousands of eggs in desperate hope that at least a few will return to the sea and grow up to be happy sea turtles.
In politics, the act of desperation is reflected in blind mailings to all voters in the vain hope that a few voters will respond. Yes, it sure is desperate. In the reptilian campaign to save the scaly hides of the Three Dithering Dinosaurs desperation has set in, all right. You might call it a last gasp.
Here’s a very expensive mailer they just sent out to everybody, anybody, trying to get folks to rescind their signature on the pro-recall petition. But they have zero idea who has signed the petitions. Talk about desperation! Just to show how inept the Three Sluggish Sloths’ handlers are, they even sent one to – Tony Bushala!
If you happen to get one of these in the mail you can do the Recall a favor. Write in: Go Screw Yourself, Ackerman, and mail it in. See, Pat McPension, the kook who hired all those crooked Fullerton cops, and who makes almost $20,000 a month in retirement, has to pay for the postage!
Recall Reply Mail Contest!
Show the anti-recall committee your creative writing skills by scratching something fun onto their reply cards. Take a picture, upload it to www.tinypic.com and post it in the comments before you mail it away!
The following is an open letter from Chris Thompson of the Fullerton Recall to Larry Bennett, the Chairman of Protect Fullerton – Recall No (the anti-recall campaign). It was emailed directly to Larry a few moments ago.
Dear Larry Bennett,
As one of the supporters of the Fullerton Recall, I would like to publicly invite the leaders of the anti-recall committee known as Protect Fullerton – Recall No to debate the issues of this campaign. We believe that the public would benefit tremendously from your organization answering our questions publicly and openly and by the leaders of the Fullerton Recall answering yours. We are utterly open to any venue, format, time or circumstance as long as a public vetting of ideas, issues and values is the goal. Our preference would be to include the three council members involved, but we are willing to debate only the anti-recall supporters and leaders. In the hope of encouraging your participation, we are willing to call for recall supporters to stand down and even disallow protests and signage if the law allows. In fact, if it is your preference, a forum could be held in a closed environment so long as both sides are allowed to video the event in its entirety. We are willing to discuss format, rules and participants and are likely to defer to your wishes as long as the forum allows for bringing our assertions and yours into the light of day.
We have made many assertions about Pat McKinley, Don Bankhead and Dick Jones’ failure to lead. You have answered with many claims of self-interest and political axe-grinding by recall supporters. I think one thing that you and I can and will agree on is that the truth of these claims are very important to the Fullerton community.
Simply stated, if Tony Bushala is pursuing this recall for the sake of his own business interests at the expense of the taxpayers, it absolutely serves the voters of Fullerton to be educated on this reality. In fact, if I become convinced of this, I will cease to be a political ally of Tony’s. In turn, if McKinley, Bankhead and Jones have placed the protection of… and interests of public employee unions and their supporters ahead of the interests of the voters, this should be brought to light.
If right and truth are on your side, I can see little downside to this proposal for your campaign. I know that you have my number and email Larry. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Chris Thompson, Representative The Fullerton Recall
The history of Redevelopment failures should weigh heavily in the upcoming recall campaign. The disasters and boondoggles are many, but none so painful, perhaps, than the Poisoned Park. This is a saga of utter incompetence with zero accountability; in other words, business as usual for our illustrious City Councilmen Bankhead and Jones. McPension gets off this hook because he wasn’t part of this calamity, although you could bet your bottom dollar he would have gone along with it, too.
This post was originally published 27 months ago. The public is still fenced off from the contamination.
– Joe Sipowicz
It was supposed to be a park. That’s how they pitched it over at City Hall. The only problem was that nobody asked for a park. And nobody outside City Hall wanted a park. Commonsense could have predicted the future of a park.
We are referring, of course, to the Union Pacific Park on West Truslow Avenue, the sad history of which has been well documented on these pages; and one of many in a conga line of Redevelopment disasters perpetrated by Terry Galvin and Gary Chalupsky of the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency- in this case aided and abetted by Susan Hunt the lady dragon of the Community Services Department, and former City Manager Jim Armstrong, mastermind of a million Fullerton failures. We have also stressed the fact that so far nobody has been held accountable for this miserable failure and waste of millions of tax dollars. No one.
Last Tuesday, during the public comments portion of the City Council Show, a longtime resident who lives on Truslow Avenue, across from The Great Disaster spoke about the problems the City had created when they decided to bestow a park upon unwilling residents. Below we share the video of the residents statement, as well as the response by City Manager Chris Myers. The video is a bit long, but well worth the watch. Borrachos, meth-heads, gang members. Who else did the City think was going to frequent this park?
In the end Myers admits that the park is being shut down – toilets closed, tables removed, fences going up, etc. You can decide for yourselves if can detect any contrition in his voice for the complete and unarguable waste of the millions spent on acquiring, designing, and building this park THAT IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD.
Now the city wants to create a “reuse committee,” ostensibly to figure out how to clean up the mess they created.
Here’s a free bit of advice from FFFF: SELL THE PROPERTY ASAP! And let’s not forget a complete investigation into this entire disaster with accountability for the people who created this mess. Perhaps the three councilperson who don’t have their fingerprints all over this debacle, Quirk, Keller, and Nelson, will be willing to demand accountability.
Yesterday I talked to the Fair Political Practices Commission regarding the complaint filed against Tony Bushala by Tony Florentine. This complaint is actually posted as “Breaking News” on the anti-recall crowd’s ugly website.
So what’s the status of this Breaking News? Tony Florentine’s “complaint” was flatly rejected by the FPPC.
Truth was a concept that eluded him...
In effect, the complaint never made it past the receptionist. It seems that Tony Bushala’s actual transgression was over-reporting! The assertion was that an individual, major donor must file a brief Form 461. Bushala actually legally reported all of his activities using the more comprehensive Form 460 in forming General Purpose committees. In other words, Bushala worked harder than he needed to fully disclose all of his political activities.
The FPPC was not amused by Dick Ackerman's latest clownery.
The FPPC representative actually seemed amused that such a complaint would be filed and made it clear that she personally had fully explained all of these circumstances to somebody calling themselves a treasurer for the anti-recall.
In fact, the only reason to even look at the complaint would be to enjoy some of Florentine’s “evidence,” including humorous mailers leveled against his RINO pals in years past.
I can hardly blame these guys for throwing this worthless claim against the wall and then lying about the results. I would have no idea how to defend three RINO council members who have spent us into the enormous financial hole that we find ourselves in while pumping up the staffing, salaries and pensions of their primary supporters.
We are informed by the anti-recall campaign website that a character named Bill Gillespie has filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission against the campaign to recall the Three Deaf Dinosaurs: Jones, Bankhead and McKinley.
Allegedly this complaint is 25 pages in length the gist of which is no registration is on record for a political organization called The Fullerton Recall Committee. The only trouble is these idiots don’t know the actual name of the recall committee!
The name of the recall committee is: Committee Supporting the Recall of Bankhead Jones and McKinley, it has been registered, and of course has an FPPC number. I have been informed by recall organizers that nobody has made any attempt to make expenditures under any other name and that materials requiring it include the name and number.
Are these people really as stupid as they seem, or is this just a lame attempt to throw up some sort of smoke screen? Hard to tell since they really are pretty dumb.
And as for Bill Gillespie, seen here partying with Miss Fullerton 1992, somebody needs to let him know that being a stooge for Dick Ackerman won’t be paying big dividends, and that there’s no fool like a an old fool.
Here’s Bill’s contact info, courtesy of the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce just in case you want to take him to task for his abject flunkydom:
When I was a kid, liberals were all about civil rights, social justice, anti-police corruption, women’s rights, etc., etc., etc.
Maybe professorial tenure, home mortgage interest deductions, and appointment to a City Community Service Commission or Bicycle Committee tends to make one complaisant. I don’t know.
In the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of the FPD, and the revelation of a potential serial sex offender in FPD uniform, Fullerton’s liberals have been silent as a graveyard. A great letter to the Fullerton Observer by a guy named Steve Baxter sums up the situation to perfection.
Maybe this silence marks the difference between a statist liberal and what is now being called a “progressive.” I don’t know.
But one thing I do know: the first category includes our esteemed Congressional She-Bear, Loretta Sanchez, whose district includes south-central Fullerton, as well as some of the locations where women allege they were sexually assaulted in the backseat of an FPD patrol car!
Here’s an e-mail from one of the recall petition signature gatherers who re-enforces the ugly truth that Ed Royce isn’t our only congressional problem.
I was at the Stater Brothers today with my recall petition and I had an interesting conversation with a 50-ish red-headed woman who happens to work for Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. I asked her if she was interested in signing my petition to recall our City Councilman and Mayor and was sort of shocked when she declined. As she was putting away her groceries I asked her what Ms. Sanchez position was on the recent events that had occurred in Fullerton, and she told me that Ms. Sanchez was staying out of the matter because it didn’t involve her constituents. I said that that was odd because I had voted for her in the last election and that I live in West Fullerton. She said that Loretta’s district only encompassed a sliver of Fullerton and that where Kelly Thomas was beaten to death was out of her district!
I sort of left it at that, however when I got home and checked the district map for Loretta Sanchez I saw that not only is my home in her district, but the site where Kelly Thomas was beaten to death is maybe 200 feet from the boundary.
Is there any way that you guys can inspire this champion of women’s rights to engage in what’s going on here in Fullerton? I got the distinct impression that Loretta Sanchez was looking to stay out of the fray and distance herself from what’s going on in her district, and I think that it’s important that she get involved or make a statement on what her position is pertaining to violations of Kelly Thomas’s civil rights, as well as the violation of the these recent allegations of sexual assault under color of authority by members of the the Fullerton Police department.
Best Regards,
p.s. I’ve changed my political affiliation to “decline to state” on my voter registration so there is no love lost on Loretta.
It’s pretty obvious that Ms. Sanchez has seen her main chance in trying to ignore things in Fullerton and hope like hell that no one will ever associate her with what was done, or in her case what hasn’t been done. Comically Ms. Loretta found time from her busy schedule to attend the Fullerton Library re-opening – a building also not in her district – while 500 feet away people of good will were protesting the murder of a helpless homeless man at the hands of the FPD.
Disgustingly, Sanchez seems a lot more interested in the civil rights of Vietnamese women (who live eight thousand miles outsider her district) than with her own constituents.
Sanchez could get the Department of Justice fired up with a phone call. But even that smallest of gestures would require a modicum of courage.
As FFFF’s Grover Cleveland has pointed out, the City of Fullerton has no fewer than 7 pending or likely law suits pending – and that’s just what’s on the Agenda!
After the shock wears off, let’s look at the rest of tonight’s Agenda.
There are the usual meeting minutes and funding transfers. There’s an agreement between the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency and the City of Fullerton so that the City/RDA can pay the State so that the City can keep the RDA.
The price tag is staggering: $54,701,015!!! And this is in addition to paying off tens of millions in bond debt incurred thanks to Bankhead, Jones, and even McKinley. And this is “under the radar” in the Consent Calendar where we usually see minor routine action items. More often then not, however, this is where staff places big ticket items (like the City Manager’s FAT raise or this RDA agreement to pay blood money to the State.)
Oh but wait! It gets better. In the same agreement there is a schedule of payments to the tune of $58,383,657 to cover RDA administrative costs!
And almost as an after thought, the agreement schedules “housing administration annual costs” which will total $16,234,607!
The most frustrating thing about the awful story of the death of Kelly Thomas and its aftermath is not knowing what goes on behind the closed doors of the Fullerton Police Department. Certainly a position of leadership comes with the obligation to take responsibility for what goes on within a department, but even if a Police Chief falls on his sword and resigns or is forced out of his job we really don’t know what is happening with the individual officers who comprise the police force. One of the most repeated statements heard from the many irate speakers at Tuesday night’s council meeting was that the police work for us, not the other way around.
Fullerton has commissions for parks and planning, and committees for transportation, infrastructure, the library, energy, community grants, investments, technology and even bicycles and the arboretum. One way or another, they oversee or at least review the activities of various city departments, namely Parks and Recreation, Engineering, the Library and Community Development. Why is there no commission to oversee the Police Department?
Other cities have them. A Fullerton Police Commission won’t prevent every mistake or outright crime committed by individual officers, but it could create appropriate policies and procedures, review individual cases, have access to all documents and recordings (like the notoriously unreleased tape of the beating of Mr. Thomas), advise the city council on matters of employment before the city council, and generally audit the effectiveness of the department.
If we are truly in charge of the Fullerton Police Department we should assert our authority and acknowledge our collective responsibility to oversee its policies and actions. It’s our department, let’s treat it that way.
A few months back we told you about a new group called Open Coyote Hills here. Their friendly looking green and white signs have appeared all over Fullerton to show support for Chevron’s West Coyote Hills plan. The development was voted down by the city council last year, but thanks to the ongoing threat of a lawsuit by Chevron, will be brought back before the council tonight, July 12. No doubt some of Open Coyote Hills’ illustrious members will be on hand to state their support for the 760 home development.
An April 1 email from Scott Starkey of West Coyote Hills forwards a message introducing Open Coyote Hills. Additionally, the West Coyote Hills website features a direct link to Open Coyote Hills, where they are described as “an independent group of Fullerton residents who joined together to support West Coyote Hills.”
Friends –
I wanted to call your attention to the email below from Open Coyote Hills, a recently formed group that wants West Coyote Hills to be approved so the land can be enjoyed. Their website is extensive and worth checking out.
Thank you for your interest in West Coyote Hills. We will keep you posted on our efforts to bring back a low-density plan for West Coyote Hills that preserves 55 percent of the property as open space and generates about $38 million to local agencies to improve schools and services.
—–Original Message—–
From: OPEN COYOTE HILLS [info@opencoyotehills.com]
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2011 11:58 AM
To: Scott Starkey
Subject: Open Coyote Hills website now online
Scott –
Our new website www.OpenCoyoteHills.com is now live and we’re reaching out to Fullerton residents to help spread the word.
The site contains a brief history section and an extensive FAQ — both of which should be of interest to all residents. It also offers those
who are excited about the plan a way to show their support by adding their names to our Supporters page.
Can you please pass this information along to those on your West Coyote Hills interest list?
Thank you,
The Open Coyote Hills Steering Committee
Molly McClanahan
Bob Hayden
Jack Dean
Debra Pember
Chris Heusser
Rick Crane
Tom Dalton
Katie Dalton
However, if you hover over any of the links to Open Coyote Hills you’ll see a short hidden text referencing emcdesignca, a design firm found online here:
Funny thing is, one of EMC Design’s clients is none other than West Coyote Hills. Click on the “Client Work” link, then on “West Coyote Hills” to see images of the website and familiar color brochure promoting the development.
Did the same design group that produced the website for West Coyote Hills, the development plan, also create the website for Open Coyote Hills, an ostensibly independent group of familiar Fullertonions supporting that plan?
Thursday evening the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee voted and made some recommendations.
First, the Committee rescinded our May 23rd recommendation to the City Council to use Alternative A which would have raised ALL rates 7.8% or more. All would feel the pain evenly.
Second, the committee voted to recommend “Alternative B”. The Committee briefing describes Alternative B as an “Alternative rate structure using 1983 Rate Study meter equivalents for all fixed charges, increasing fixed charge revenue from 12% to 18% and adjustments to commodity charges to better reflect cost of service.”
I voted NO and Mr. Jack Dean abstained from recommending Alternative B. Regardless, Alternative B was passed.
Third, I moved to recommend that the City Council exempt from the water franchise tax all new revenue generated from this new rate structure to ensure that ALL new revenue goes strictly back into the water system. The motion was seconded and passed unanimously. There appeared to be too much opposition for recommending that the council abolish the hidden tax.
Speaking to the THREE members of the public who came to the meeting, I explained that 10%-11% (depends on who you talk to and which document they look at) of the money we pay for our water bill does not go into the water system and that the money, $2.5 million FY2010, goes into the General Fund. The General Fund does not contribute any money to the Capital Improvement Program (infrastructure) but does pay for things like parks, fire, police, special club memberships for the city, and other oddities. Similarly, the Paramedic Fee does not go exclusively to paramedics- it goes into the General Fund.
The end results of the Water Rate Ad Hoc Committee work are recommendations to the City Council. Whether or not they agree with our recommendations, we will see on July 19th at the Public Hearing.
