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May 15, 2009January 4, 2010Fullerton City Council

The “Paseo Park” Chronicles – The Park That Never Was. Or is. Part 2

Friends, when we left off our dismal tale of “Paseo Park,” the City Of Fullerton had just decided to build itself a park; a park that nobody outside of City Hall asked for or wanted. Susan Hunt, the Director of Community Services, long known for her jealous exclusion of citizens from deciding issues that affected “her” parks, was just shifting into high gear.

In December, 2002 City staff presented the City Council with a name for the new jewel in the city parks crown: Paseo Park – a name, so staff claimed, that was chosen by the assent of some sort of “Advisory Committee.” The only problem was Susan Hunt made the whole thing up. The name was her idea – she just decided that the cliche fit the bill; after all, one of the phony reasons for buying the old right-of-way was to extend Fullerton’s trail system. And you can’t walk on a trail (no matter how truncated) without passing from point A to point B, and it was in the barrio, after all; hey presto: Paseo Park!

Here's a paseo. Maybe if we add a Mariachi... — Here's what a real paseo looks like: Merida, Mexico

Well that foolish Spanishification got shot down almost immediately as Tony Bushala, the next door neighbor, took umbrage at the ignorant oversight of the UP’s role in Fullerton history and the exclusion of the public in the naming process. Later, the City Council fittingly named the new facility the “Union Pacific Park.”

Staff embarrassment should have been acute when it later became apparent that there was no park “Advisory Committee” at all; except that embarrassment presupposes guilt and shame, two emotions not known to exist in abundance in the west 300 block of Commonwealth Avenue.

If you can't see it, it can't hurt you... — Hindsight is 20/20...

In the meantime, the plans and specs were put out to bid, a contract was awarded and construction got underway.

And here the story would have ended, except for the Law of Unintended Consequences that seems to bedevil almost everything our Redevelopment agency puts its hand to.

Read the rest of the Paseo Park Chronicles – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

May 14, 2009January 4, 2010Don Bankhead

Steve Sheldon Gets Around

by The Fullerton Shadow19 Comments

Round round get around
I get around
Yeah
Get around round round I get around
I get around
Get around round round I get around
From town to town
Get around round round I get around
I’m a real cool head
Get around round round I get around
I’m makin’ real good bread

(with apologies to Brian Wilson)

On a previous post we regaled our Friends with the story of lobbyist and cash-conduit Steve Sheldon and his nautical fund raising effort on behalf of Sharon Quirk who later voted to approve his god-awful Jefferson Commons monstrosity.

What we didn’t share is that Sheldon is also a politician – President of The OC Water District and he’s having a “debt retirement” party!

We suppose he didn’t make enough money foisting the loathsome Jefferson Commons on us to pay off his debt himself. Instead he’s asking other lobbyists to do it! What’s really interesting is the names on the “Honorary Host Committee.” These are the politicians who get into the party for free, and thus are actually being lobbied by the irrepressible Sheldon as he high-steps for other lobbyists! See if you recognize any names on the list.

We note that our own Don Bankhead is on the list – another aye vote for JC (no, not Jesus Christ). At least Sharon Quirk had the good sense to stay off that list. With majorities of their city council members on it, we’d be really worried if we were residents of Garden Grove or Santa Ana.

May 2, 2009January 4, 2010Chris Norby

THE STRANGE & TRAGIC TALE OF HILLCREST PARK

by Fred L. Olmsted34 Comments

UPDATE: We are republishing this wonderful post by Fred Olmstead originally posted on February 21, 2009. We do so in order to highlight the fact that the park – suffering from real blight – is in the Redevelopment project area, and stands as yet another testament to the failure of Redevelopment. Sharon Quirk, are you reading this?

– The Fullerton Shadow

Loyal Friends of Fullerton’s Future, gather ‘round the cool glow of your computer terminals and follow a sad saga of miserable municipal negligence.

Located in the center of Fullerton is a resource of inestimable value, overlooked by almost everybody in and outside of City Hall: Hillcrest Park. Included in an early vision of the city it followed upon the City Beautiful, and natural urban park elements of the Progressive movement; and coincided nicely with the new auto culture of the 1920s, positioned as it was, along the original Highway 1.

Developed fully during the Depression in a rustic mode, the park soon after began a long decline into municipal irrelevance, and if anything, seemed to be perceived by many as a liability rather than a great asset. This tragic trajectory is a shameful blot on Fullerton’s history and is akin to placing your eighty-five year old mother in a criminally negligent nursing home.

After Don Bankhead and Fullerton’s Finest chased out the acid-dropping hippies in the 1960s, the park became a haven for perverts; trees began to die and were not replaced; erosion claimed many of the north and west facing slopes and was not arrested; as the infrastructure crumbled it was replaced by City Engineer Hugh Berry with incongruous cinder block walls and concrete light poles.

In the mid-1990s Redevelopment Director Gary Chalupsky, in a philanthropic mood, decided that Redevelopment funds could be used to address Hillcrest Park issues – the first official over-the-shoulder glance toward the park in years.

And here, dear Friends, the story turns from a chronicle of benign neglect to one of outright incompetence and, one might plausibly argue, a form of bureaucratic malevolence.

In 1996 the usual scoping/charette pantomime was performed with an historic park landscape architect, specially imported from Riverside. An odd thing happened: every time the consultant prepared a list of priorities for the park, the Community Services Department’s wishes kept getting pushed to the top. The Director of Community Services was Susan Hunt, a woman long known for her mindless turf battles with her constituents – (including the Isaak Walton Cabin in Hillcrest). Hunt was determined to hijack the process and divert resources from where they were needed to facilities that she and her department could control and perhaps even profit from.

Hunt was successful. The consultant, knowing whom it was important to please, seemed only too happy to abet the fraud that was perpetrated. The city council (including current Jurassic members Bankhead and Jones) went along. Chris Norby was there, too. Now he’s in charge of the County’s parks.

A new playground replaced the old one in the Lemon parking area even though no one had complained about the existing one that parents seemed to like. More egregious still, a new facility (known as Hillcrest Terrace) was built behind the Veteran’s building that could be rented out for social functions. But the real needs of the park – slope stabilization, plant cataloguing and replacement, the removal of inappropriate elements – went unaddressed – and the problems have continued unabated to this day, ten years later, as interest in the park waned again.

Last fall the City once again roused itself from its somnolence and created an ad hoc committee to consider issues related to Hillcrest Park. The time is, perhaps, propitious. Susan Hunt has disappeared into an overdue and well-compensated retirement, current Director Joe Felz is much more amenable to citizen input. It’s time to reclaim this park.

Hillcrest is still in the Redevelopment Area and remains affected by indisputable blight. This should become a priority for Redevelopment Director Rob Zur Schmied.

While we wonder if the Hillcrest Park committee will actually display the necessary independence from staff manipulation, and that they possess the necessary technical abilities, we wish them well. And we encourage citizens to make sure that this time any assessment of Hillcrest will objectively address the needs of the park and report directly to the City Council. Recommendations should be included in the City’s Capital Budget.

Hillcrest Park can and must return to being the crown jewel of Fullerton’s parks.

April 26, 2009January 4, 2010Dick Jones

A Little F-Town History – James L. Armstrong – A Case Study in Arrogance

by The Fullerton Shadow14 Comments

In the year 1992 Fullerton’s City Manager Bill Winter was just about out of gas. He had been running on fumes for quite a while and figured it was time to rest on his threadbare laurels. He could also see the handwriting on the wall. A practical cipher, he had let Hugh Berry run the city and the Redevelopment Agency. A culture of permissiveness obtained at City hall during his tenure. Things were about to change – but not for the better.

The Council hired James L. Armstrong to replace Winter. He had been in Anaheim as an Assistant City Mananger and had also done a term at Hanford located somewhere out in the miasma of the San Joaquin Valley.

James L. Armstrong. Nobody Could have Guessed What Was in Store

Armstrong arrived just as the 90s recession was beginning to sink its teeth into the local government wallet. Revenue was falling and something had to be done to protect city workers. Lack of revenue threatened automatic “step increases,” raises, and City PERS contributions. Perhaps Armstrong felt he had the solid backing of the City Council, but the Fullerton novice certainly had no reading of the mood of the electorate.

Within six months of assuming his new job, Armstrong had persuaded Molly Mc Clanahan, Buck Catlin, and Don Bankhead to go along with the imposition of a new Utility Tax. They deliberately denied a plebescite – knowing as they did that it would be rejected. And so they held the usual dog-and-pony budget hearings, passed a budget based on the Utility Tax, and approved the tax, too. Bankhead and Catlin were allegedly conservative Republicans, but that soon became an apparent farce; even worse, Bankhead had run for re-election in the fall of 1992 promising no new taxes!

The citizenry rose up in fury! Raising taxes during a recession just to protect city employees? The tocsin was sounded and an strange new locution echoed through the corridors of City Hall – Recall! The word had never been uttered in staid, conservative Fullerton before. The statists and the public employee unions, and Fullerton’s good-government liberals were aghast. The newly energized pro-recall crew were seen as outsiders – who are these people, they’ve never served on one our precious committees! Barbarians at the gates! God, almighty! Civilization itself was at stake.

We're From The Steppes, and We're here to Help!

Within a year the Recalls Committee, gained their signatures, placed a recall on the June 1994 ballot, and successfully recalled Catlin, Bankhead and McClanahan. He had only been on the job eighteen months, but our hero Armstrong had instigated a municipal civil war, and had managed to mismanage three of his supporters into ignominious political humiliation.

The way things ultimately worked out, the new Councilmembers were no better than the old. But the Utility Tax was repealed during the interregnum; without it the City got along just fine. But because the Old Guard had managed to hang on to elected office the managers in City Hall never had to confront the consequences of their point-blank refusal to reconsider the way they ran their departments. This was Fullerton after all.

Meantime Jim Armstrong was a busy fellow. He presided over just about every Redevelopment fumble, boondoggle, and cover-up of the 1990s; he made it very clear that when bureaucrats blundered the wagons were to be circled and nobody (in City Hall) would be any the worse for it. The jewels in his tarnished crown were the attempt in 1993 to forestall the Depot corrective work caused by incompetent design (full story coming soon), the complete mismanagement of the new Corporate Yard project, the deployment of attack dog Susan Hunt – whose job was to kick all citizen groups out of city facilities and keep them out, and his mania to turn public facilities into cost centers administered by city employees (see related post on Hillcrest Park).

lean and mean. Well, lean anyway. — Lean and mean. Well, mean anyway.

An aura of arrogance clung to City Hall like the ripe aroma surrounding the local Materials Recycling Facility; the City Council was just there to ratify Armstrong’s policy. If they liked that, so much the better. And they sure seemed to.

Whee! We don't actually have to do anything!

Armstrong’s miserable misrule came to an end in 2001 when he took the top job in Santa Barbara – you see in Jim’s line of work nothing succeeds like failure. And he set the bar high for his successor, Chris Myers, who learned from the best: when you find a cushy spot like Fullerton where nobody demands accountability, stick to it like a barnacle – until something better comes along. In the meantime – close ranks, clam-up, and cover up.

April 23, 2009December 15, 2010Big Brother

Departing Police Chief Brings Home The Bacon

by Travis Kiger10 Comments

2009pigbook — Porktacular reading material

Just in time for his retirement, our beloved police chief Pat McKinley brought home a $100,000 federal earmark for his new body armor which he designed in a partnership with seasoned police contractor Safariland, a subsidiary of Europe’s largest military contractor. Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez congratulated herself for rooting up the money for the high-priced vests as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act.

What could be wrong with this earmark? It’s nothing but free money for the City of Fullerton – an unconditional gift from the federal government, right?

But the earmark qualifies as official government pork according to government watchdogs.

Citizens Against Government Waste have identified 10,160 projects at a cost of $19.6 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2009 that symbolize the most egregious and blatant examples of pork. All of the items in the Congressional Pig Book Summary meet at least one of these criteria, but most satisfy at least two:

Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
Not specifically authorized;
Not competitively awarded;
Not requested by the President;
Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
Serves only a local or special interest.

Officer Rubio shows off his new vest while demonstrating a choke hold for our unsuspecting photographer.

There are two sides to every slab of government pork: on one hand, earmarks return a portion of Fullerton citizens’ federal tax dollars back to the city itself. If Fullerton doesn’t grab it’s share of the pie, the money will merely be assigned to some other bloated project in some other needy town far, far away.

On the flip side, earmarks represent the very worst in fiscal responsibility and big government. Appropriations Committee members arbitrarily pick winners and losers by earmarking funds for specific recipients. Lobbyists and their congressmen bypass authorizing committees directly for pet projects, creating a giant fiscal free-for-all that undermines the Constitution and makes states and localities increasingly beholden to the federal government. Finally, the federal deficit grows unchecked and our taxes increase via the debasement of our currency.

Pork projects have haunted this nation since our early years, but they have always been reviled by fiscally responsible citizens. Thomas Jefferson considered earmarks “a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money”. If Jefferson knew about the exponential increase in federal earmarks over the last decade, he would likely rise from his grave to scribe a brand new Declaration of Independence.

In the end, the chiefs’ friends at Safariland are $100,000 richer, our police have new vests that cost twice as much as the old, and most importantly, the fruits of our labor have been lost in a sea of unaccountability.

March 14, 2009December 28, 2009Chris Norby

LOYALTY LACKING AMONG LADY LIBERALS?

by The Fullerton Harpoon11 Comments

3 birds

We have in our possession a copy of the invitation to Clerk/Recorder (say, what does that guy actually do?) Tom Daly’s March 17th fundraiserthat insiders say will be used to announce his 2010 run for 4th District Supervisor. Chris Norby the Somnolent Supervisor is finally termed out and will be able to snooze on his own time.

Rip Van Norby

Daly, it is said, wants to replace Norby in our hearts and minds.

Prominent on the “host committee” list are the names of uber-liberal Fullerton councilpersons Sharon Quirk and Pam Keller. We make note of this fact only because the name of Anaheim council member Lorri Galloway keeps surfacing as a likely candidate for the same job, and we wonder, why, at this extremely early juncture, our own lovely ladies would tie themselves down to an old-time, one of the boys Democrat like Daly. After all, it was Galloway who stood up for the poor, downtrodden proletariat in the Magic Kingdom.

evil mouse

Anyway, if Galloway goes for it, Quirk and Keller may come to regret their early association with Daly. If this comes to pass we will certainly keep our loyal Friends posted on events.

January 31, 2009April 18, 2009Dick Jones

FULLERTON CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO EMASCULATE SELF

by The Fullerton Harpoon16 Comments

On January 6^th, a 4-1 majority of the Fullerton City Council perpetrated a strange act of self-mutilation, with Shawn Nelson dissenting. It decided to revoke its policy of selecting people to serve on commissions and committees. Instead of individual councilpersons being able to choose direct appointments, they returned to the old system whereby a couple of councilpersons and a commission member conduct interviews and make recommendations for approval by the entire City Council.

So effectively a majority of the City Council chose to disempower itself by abdicating the ability to choose their own direct representatives on commissions.

Now why would politicians give up direct appointment for the diluted old groupthink process? A good question, and one only partially explained by the typical Fullerton city councilperson’s fear of actually exercising the power the electorate has bestowed upon them.

Historically, the old system of interviews meant that certain candidates could be effectively weeded out or ignored altogether. And what was the profile of these undesirables? Independence and a willingness to question the bureaucrats in City Hall were likely character traits; or, to put it another way, the process effectively ensured the type of person who was selected. The latter was inevitably chosen for his or her willingness to be a team player, to go along with the recommendations of “staff” and who could be counted on not to ask embarrassing questions and expect coherent answers.

Furthermore, since the commissioners were not directly accountable to anyone they were even more likely to identify with the staff department that oversees its respective commission, than with any elected official’s policy. This fact may comfort those who find politics distasteful, but it results in a diffusion of authority – a vacuum into which bureaucratic inertia will inevitably insinuate itself.

Appointing people who are safe who through personality type, or can be relied upon to run with the herd in order to protect their business interests would certainly appeal to Dick Jones and Don Bankhead – retired Air Force doc and cop, respectively. It was the retired bureaucrats themselves who always had a disproportionate influence in this system since they had ample time to the interviewing.

We associate this sort of corporate thinking from men once in uniform. But what of the two avowed liberal members of the Council, Sharon Quirk and Pam Keller? Liberal women might not be expected to adhere to the lockstep logic of military teamwork. To them we may attribute a liberal, process-oriented view of things in which the more convoluted an operation is in masticating its material, the more digestible the product must be.

And finally, we must note that the practical consequence of this council’s castration will be to deprive current Council pariah Shawn Nelson with the opportunity to make his own direct appointments to commissions; and since he might actually appoint people likely be independent-minded and represent the taxpayers instead of the bureaucracy his colleagues will certainly be gratified by denying Nelson this prerogative – even if it means depriving themselves of the same privilege.

January 2, 2009January 4, 2010Dick Jones

OC REGISTER SPIKES BALL TOO SOON ON PENSION ISSUE

by admin13 Comments

On Sunday the OC Register recognized Fullerton Councilman Shawn Nelson’s lone stand to protect the Fullerton taxpayer against a proposed employee pension spike plan that was being discussed behind closed doors last summer. Register Editorialist Steve Greenhut commended Nelson for saving Fullerton from an underfunded pension disaster of the sort that is bankrupting California cities like Vallejo. Click here to read article.

Poor Steve! He spoke too soon! This Tuesday the very council that chose behind closed doors to accede to union demands last summer will now conduct a hearing to approve the proposed pension increase.

The vote should be fairly predictable. Union water bearers Dcmocrats Sharon Quirk and Pam Keller plus quasi-Republican Don Bankhead are safe votes for the increase, which is all that is needed for passage. More entertaining will be the action of Mr. Dick Jones, another iffy Republican who previously supported the proposal, at least until the GOP Central Committee got wind of it. Then he changed his tune. Now that he has been re-elected it will be interesting to see if he will keep the promise made in order to keep the Republican endorsement, or if he will once again flip back to his natural inclination of giveaways to public employees at the taxpayers expense.

The issue is Item #14 & 15 on the meeting agenda. The Council will meet at 6:30 Tuesday night at City Hall. Public participation is strongly encouraged by Friends For Fullerton’s Future.