Yes, it’s that time of every year comes up when the Fullerton City Council chooses one of its own to be Mayor for the upcoming year. Another is chosen to be Mayor Pro Tem, which is Latin-ish for back up guy.
Nurse Jamie still looking good…
This will occur on Tuesday after newcomer Jamie Valencia is sworn in to replace Bruce Whitaker. The jobs are basically ceremonial, but the Mayor gets to run the meetings.
For the past several years the Council majority of Fred Jung, Nick Dunlap, and Bruce Whitaker have chosen one of their number to hold these offices and have deliberately excluded “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra. They have offered no explanation for this exclusion, which is too bad.
Time to come clean…..
Zahra and his claque have attributed this exclusion to discrimination against his (dubious) Muslim beliefs or alternatively, his gayness – the two attributes that he relies on to promote his unique “brand.” What the public doesn’t get, but that council watchers know to be true is that those three really don’t like Zahra. Why? Maybe because of his public pontifications against them, and his even more egregious behavior behind the scenes that sometimes becomes hysterical, and one time led him to file a false police report against Fred Jung. We are aware of Zahra attempting to smear his colleagues via OC political blogs.
The Council majority is well-aware of Zahra’s penchant for self-promotion and camera hogging, even going so far as to leave a council meeting for a photo op.
Of course there are other good reasons to exclude Zahra, reasons that people are too polite to express, Fullerton being Fullerton. Like Zahra worming his way into the USA via marriage fraud – to a woman. Or his shifting biography, or his blatant plagiarism while pretending to be a water expert. Then there’s his assault and battery case, safely sealed now, in which he claims, fraudulently, that he was exonerated. Lying seems to be Zahra’s modus vivendi.
It turns out that there is a policy suggesting that everybody gets a chance to put “Mayor” in front of their name. Policy No. 226 in the Policy and Procedures Manual spells it out. The problem is that a policy is not an obligation, especially for those who didn’t cook it up in the first place. But this is what Fullerton BooHoo rests its confidence on year after year, as they turn up in their numbers to promote their darling, Zahra.
What will happen Tuesday? Will Valencia go with Jung and Dunlap and keep Zahra and his acolyte Shana Charles from being Fullerton’s figureheads?
A few days a go a woman was hit by a car in the middle of Orangethorpe Avenue. She died at the scene. Here’s the dispassionate police department version of events.
Notice that there is mention of a bicycle, however, the now deceased woman wasn’t riding it, but walking it across the street for some reason, presumably to get to the other side.
Now here’s how the same press release appeared in the Kennedy Sister’s Fullerton Observer, purveyors of independent “journalism.”
Notice how the FPD is credited with verbiage that isn’t in their press release. It has obviously been re-written. But by whom?
The dead woman is identified in the Observer headline as a bicyclist even though she wasn’t riding it when killed. We can already see where this is going, since we know that her possession of a bike at the time of her death is irrelevant regarding the facts of the incident.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
This is the way of the Kennedy Sisters. Start off with your own narrative then create “facts” to fit it.
Take a jaywalker and turn her into a bicyclist-martyr. Then project the “tragedy” and the “grief” into a policy objective that fulfills your narrative. It’s twisted. And embarrassing when it becomes obvious you are oblivious to real facts.
And, being the Observer, the comments are part of the inevitable plot development.
Phil M.
That is usually the case and there were also bike lanes here too. The person in question was not going anywhere else but going to the other side of Orangethorpe. It is a foolish risky mistake lots of jaywalkers and “jaybikers” make without using an intersection with traffic lights.
EDITOR NOTE: According to police the bicyclist was walking her bike in the number one eastbound lane which is a designated bike lane when she was hit by the car.
Responding to a previous commenter, Phil M reminds us that there are bike lanes in Orangethorpe and addresses the jaywalking issue. the unnamed “Editor Note” says the victim was in the “designated bike lane” when hit.
So Phil M. responds with some facts and addresses some obviously erroneous conclusions made by “Editor.”
Phil M.
TO THE EDITOR: The number 1 lane is the lane closest to the center of the street. The lane for bicyclists is the ‘bike lane’ obviously, which the one closest to the sidewalk. Are you telling me that this person was riding their bicycle in the center of the street for travel?
EDITOR: Oh! You are absolutely right about that. The number one lane is the one closest to centerline. Thank you for that correction. So she was walking her bike across Orangethorpe when the car and truck hit her.
So “Editor” has finally clued in to the facts of the situation, (or is pretending to) but of course “Editor” will not observe that this is not a bike safety issue at all.
But in the meantime, Sharon Kennedy has chimed in by name, with the usual handwringing, still unaware, that as usual, she doesn’t know what the Hell she’s talking about.
The track record was poor…
Sharon K
Condolences to her family for this tragic loss. This is another good reason to make a dedicated bike lane all across Orangethorpe. Reduce cars to the other three lanes. Let’s name the new bike lane after her. Other cities are creating safe bike lanes – why can’t we?
Phil M.If you look on Google Maps in Street View, there are in fact bike lanes on both sides of Orangethorpe in that section. The person who crossed the street was NOT using the bike line to go east to west or west to east. They were crossing at a place without traffic lights get to the other side of Orangethorpe. Lots of people foolishly risk their lives to jaywalk and “jaybike” all the time in places like these quite often.
As we see, Phil M. is now well-aware of what he is dealing with – an emotional, fact-creating ideologue, and he feels constrained to point out real facts to Kennedy.
Yep. Already there…
There are dedicated bike lanes on both sides of Orangethorpe already. There is no need for a “new” one and even less reason to name it after somebody who wasn’t riding a bike or even obeying traffic lawswhen she died. It would make just as much sense to name it after the poor guy from Westminster who gets to carry this avoidable death with him for life.
And of course there is the perfect comment by one of the few people still permitted or interested in commenting on the Observer blog: “Amy.”
Amy
This is absolutely horrible and I am so saddened for this person and their family. No one deserves to die in such a senseless way. Please Fullerton, let’s build proper bike infrastructure so this never has to happen again.
Poor Amy had reflexively swallowed the bait the morning of the post, to pursue the obvious bike propaganda slant. Needless to say, she hasn’t yet returned to explain how this “senseless” accident could have been avoided by building “proper” bike infrastructure.
In a typical display of childish petulance, Fullerton City Councilman Ahmad Zahra displayed why he is unfit to be our Mayor last Tuesday.
At the December 10th Special Meeting, Zahra just couldn’t help himself at one point from interrupting Mayor Nick Dunlap who was trying to talk – before letting Zahra speak his piece.
Zahra demanded to be heard on some footling “point of order” or something and refused to shut up, so the Mayor did it for him.
What to do? Zahra got up yammering and sulked into the room behind the dais. Here’s the video:
From everything we’ve heard about Zahra this sort of behavior is typical when the cameras aren’t rolling. In one instance he went so far as to file an hysterical and fraudulent police report on one of his fellow councilmembers. Comically, his devoted claque continually fails to understand why his colleagues refuse to make him Mayor.
I don’t know much about someone called Connor Traut, but he’s running to represent Fullerton as our next County Supervisor for the 4th District. This lad, I am told, is on the City Council in Buena Park where he carpetbagged a while back to run for office. I am also informed he was once the political protégé of one-time wunderkind Jordan Brandman, the Anaheim councilman who went nuts and died of severe meth intoxication.
Catch and release?
This appears to be one of those Young (fill in the party name) types who hover around political circles and crave the attention that only elective office can bring. OC politics is full of these people who would rather have an unaccountable job in politics than honest work, even as a lawyer. He says he’s a “consumer protection trial attorney,” on his campaign website but on his business website we discover he’s really a personal injury lawyer, or so he says. Better to stick with consumer protection, which is probably a safe thing to say, in a space where you can sneak into the USA, have everyone call you doctor, and are actually dumb enough to believe you are sincere. But whatever it is Traut does, it’s obvious this youngster would rather be a full-time politician.
I don’t know about you, but it seems unseemly for somebody to start politicking for an office a year and a half before the primary in 2026. Could have at least waited a few weeks, ’til 2025.
Anyhow, it seems the young Trautlet has been super-busy getting endorsements from the usual suspects – the claque of local Democrat small fry. Check out the “partial” endorsement list.
That took real work!
If some of these names look familiar to you, you’d have good reason. Many of these establishment Democrats just endorsed the otiose campaign of Vivian Jaramillo. It appears that there is an effort to produce an inevitability around the callow Connor, the same strategy that failed so spectacularly for Team Jaramillo.
Nothing left but empty bloviation and Bulgarian clothing…
What’s interesting about this list is one name that is not on it – Dr. Ahmad Zahra. I wonder why this is. It’s pretty obvious that Zahra could try for something else in the 2026 Primary – like replacing Sharon Quirk in the State Assembly. So why not endorse The Traut? Is it just an embarrassing omission?
NUFFs enough…
As a fun side note, I see that Senator Josh Newman is euphemistically referred to as “retired,” although he is still in office. I guess this will avoid having to change the website in a few weeks. Some suggested Newman might run for Supervisor. Guess not. Ditto Quirk who is an endorser, or her husband, the limitlessly clownish Jesus Quirk-Silva.
Fred Jung. Rested and ready?
Who else might run for 4th District Supervisor? Well, Fullerton’s Fred Jung, for one. He has name ID and a huge pile o’ cash that will put the Traut Show to shame. He just got over 70% of the vote in his re-election bid without needing any institutional Democrat Party support at all. I wonder if Jung were to run we might not see a Zahra spoiler candidacy as a way to split the vote of Fullerton – the largest city completely within the 4th District. This could explain the non-endorsement by Zahra.
Fullerton’s Mayor, Nick Dunlap could give it a go. He’s just destroyed Jan Flory in his re-election by a huge margin and can raise cash. But he doesn’t seem the type who craves political office or the proverbial limelight. How about Bruce Whitaker? He could try, as the County has a long history of antiquated politicians looking for a nice Supervisorial pasture – incumbent Doug “Bud” Chaffee, for one. He could get Republican votes, but that doesn’t seem enough anymore; and he can’t raise money and will be out of office. Some Repuglican hack from Brea? Steve Vargas ran in 2022 and came in 4th.
I can see no other plausible candidates unless we see the return of Fire Hero, Coto Joe Kerr, who ran for this seat in 2022, or some other as yet unseen phony carpetbagger.
For 50 years California has enjoyed/suffered the benefits of CEQA – the California Environmental Quality Act. The intent of the law was to assess the environmental impacts of various projects proposed by private developers and even the government itself – be it dams, roads, civic projects, etc. Some projects, mostly the big ones, required EIRs – Environmental Impact Reports, that cited impacts and measures of mitigation.
If the paper fits, push it!
Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert on CEQA, but I’ve been told that all too often it is just a bungling paper chase that enriches “consultants,” and instead of addressing impacts, coughs up lots of gobbledygook and ginned up “studies” to talk around the problem. And this is just as true for governments’ reports as for those of developers.
Last night I listened to Fullerton’s beloved City Council vote for a new zoning law – the Housing Incentive Overlay Zone (HIOZ), including an explanation of why it was exempt from CEQA even though over 13,000 new units were being incentivized. The excuse was that no specific building was being proposed. You might think that is reasonable enough given that specific location has a lot to do with environmental impacts on thing like roads and street lights and traffic, etc.
And yet the new mandates from Sacramento dictate that because there is some sort of housing “crisis” new developments may be built “by-right” that is to say, without local controls over specific aspects of projects that would normally be comprehensively addressed in Conditions of Approval. Which means that those 13,000 units may not be attached to amelioration of the impacts they create.
And of course 20% of the new units must be reserved for low income tenants, another philanthropic mandate with unknown repercussions on the community.
Here’s the summation: the single-party legislature has serially made such a mess of California over the past 30 years that the fixes for the problems require that they jettison other mandates previously deemed critical, such as CEQA.
Locally, cities have been threatened with legal action by the State’s Governor and Attorney General if they don’t comply; and they are threatened by deprivation of State funding and grants by the Housing and Community Development Department, run by faceless bureaucrats. If cities try to fight back, like Huntington Beach has, the legal results are costly and a foregone conclusion.
And so Fullerton’s City Council went along with the inevitable, acquiescing to the demands of Sacramento in a sad 4-1 vote. Only Bruce Whitaker voted no in what is his last official vote.
I’ve heard it said that government spends half its time trying to fix problems it created during the other half. Sounds about right.
A special meeting of Fullerton’s City Council is taking place tonight. Why? To address the so-called 6th Cycle of the Housing Element of the General Plan and the concomitant Housing Incentive Overlay Zone, or HIOZ, for those who prefer government acronyms.
Where’s the Class 2 Bikeway?
The City Council has already postponed rubber stamping this twice which is odd, because they usually clean their plates like good little boys and girl.
People who need people…
Friends may recall that City staff proposed the opportunity overlay to construct as many as 30,000 new units with almost zero City control. This, even though the Sacramento houseacrats only demanded 13,000. I say “only” even though this lower number would still add twenty to thirty thousand new residents to Fullerton with new, massive apartment blocks on re-zoned commercial and industrial property.
I previously opined that the 30,000 number was just a dodge, to give the City Council the appearance of having fought a tough fight to “save” Fullerton, while quietly acquiescing on the destructive 13,000 mandate. This would be of particular benefit to the 2026 re-election chances of Shana Charles and Ahmad Zahra, both of whom are ardent lefties and both of whom would love to see those 13,000 units without regard for the damage dome to the City’s schools, roads, infrastructure and neighborhood cohesion.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a roll-out of the usual suspects singing hosannas to the Council for acceding to the 13,000 units.
Somebody’s gotta suck it up…
And that hypothesis seems right on. The Council has already directed staff to remove the Chapman and Commonwealth “corridors” from the HIOZ plan where the application would have been the most damaging and controversial. And paring back the scale of the disingenuous plan gives a victory to the Save Fullerton crowd who may have actually believed the 30,000 units was an authentic proposal. That group includes some our friends at the Fullerton Observer who will happily embrace the 13,000 as a wonderful compromise.
Pantomime…
Why all these meetings? Maybe it’s a necessary part of this Kabuki to give the façade of public review to something that was always a foregone conclusion – satisfying the knuckle headed legislators and the faceless bureaucrats in Sacramento; and their running buddies in the Southern California Association of Governments, and the California League of Cities.
And why a Special Meeting, other than to instill a sense of Heap Big Emergency about bowing to the diktats of an out-of-control legislature?
Friends may remember the tussle on the City Council in the weeks following City Councilmember Ahmad Zahra’s election in 2018. At first he opined that a replacement election to fill Jesus Quirk-Silva’s vacate at-large council seat was right and proper. There was applause.
But then something weird happened. A month later Zahra went back on his word and voted to appoint Council retread Jan Flory for another lap around the track. After Flory was safely installed on the council, she, Jennifer Fitzgerald, and Zahra voted to replace Bruce Whitaker on the OC Water District Board with…Zahra.
“Well, Joe, who cares” I can hear some of you saying. But apart from the role the OCWD plays in the OC water wars, and the huge pile of cash the agency sits on, the appointment pays. And pays damn well. For an unemployed “film producer” what could be better? Suddenly the Flory appointment didn’t look weird at all.
During his two years on the water board Zahra made some damn good money – tens of thousands of dollars in pay and benefits. And while on the board he pimped the awful Poseidon desal scam and got district PR people to write articles he published in the Fullerton Observer under his own name.
Whirlaway
In 2021 Fitzgerald and Flory were mercifully gone; Zahra was removed from the OCWD, replaced with Bruce Whitaker. Zahra’s Mother’s Milk was turned off at the spigot and he has only collected his council stipend since
But I checked all the right boxes!
Fullerton Folk are now speculating about whether the 2024-elected council will appoint Zahra as Mayor, an honorific job he desperately wants. A Vivian Jaramillo victory in District 4 would have got him that. But it also would have gotten the ability to vote himself back onto the OCWD board, and back on that gravy train.
Jamie Valencia, an unknown variable…
Alas ’twas not to be for Zahra. Jaramillo was beaten by newcomer Jamie Valencia who was denigrated by Jaramillo’s precinct walkers and by Jaramillo herself. She owes the Democrat nothing and may not have any inclination to do favors for the man who promoted her opponent, big time.
Sometimes you just have to ask yourself whether somebody is just plain stupid, a liar, or truly untethered to reality. No where is this better seen than in the case of failed City Council candidate Vivian Jaramillo and her followers. We have already seen Jaramillo’s pitiful valediction, full of spite, and of course bemoaning “dirty tricks” of an undisclosed nature as cause of her (heroic) downfall. It was a twilight struggle of good versus evil, see, in a Manichean battle for the soul of Fullerton. Light versus darkness.
One might find this whole thing ludicrous in a way, and write it off as sound and fury, signifying nothing.
But there seems to be more going on here than a self-entitled Karen of a candidate crying about how the kids got into the HOA swimming pool. The holier-than-thou delusion of self-righteousness still seems to run deep in Fullerton. And it matters when the waste of public money, and a lot of it is wasted on stupid, empty gestures, is defended by people like Jaramillo and her supporters.
FFFF has observed how the Observer Kennedy Sisters did their level best to ignore the Scott Markowitz candidacy, a perjurious fraud perpetrated on the voters of the 4th District by Jaramillo’s Team. Sharon Kennedy, the elder sister and self-styled journalist even went so far as to contact key persons in the scandal, Diane Vena, ostensibly to aid in disseminating a plausible backstory – one that made no sense. And no printed story about the true Markowitz tale was ever forthcoming. The story was dirty tricks against Jaramillo.
Apparently, Jaramillo’s friends on Facebook are now lamenting her loss, and many are blindly following the dirty tricks narrative even though none of them seem to be able to articulate just what those may have been.
We all know that social media provides no barrier for people who don’t know what they’re talking about to opine freely, but this is pretty ridiculous. Jaramillo’s friends either don’t know or don’t care about:
the self-sabotage the Jaramillo Team inflicted on itself
the fraudulent Markowitz scam, created by Jaramillo’s supporters to harm the candidacy of Linda Whitaker
that Jaramillo publicly supported the establishment and the later re-enactment of the MJ ordinance that could have allowed a dispensary 100ft from a house
the fact that out-of-town dope dispensary lobby pumped $60,000 to support Jaramillo
that the dope money was laundered through the national HQ of the grocery store workers union
that the marijuana loot was used pay people to hector and harass voters multiple times
that precinct walkers for Jaramillo slandered her opponents, Whitaker and Valencia
that Jaramillo used City personnel to have her opponents signs removed
that Jaramillo’s signs were illegally placed on public and private property
Et cetera, et cetera.
The election is over, but I get the sense that for the near future, at least, the boohooing and hand-wringing of Fullerton’s self-righteous left-leaners will continue – the self-pity, the blissful ignorance, and the high-horseyness competing for dominance.
A Friend forwarded this post election statement by Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo:
Poor Kitty. Done in by “dirty tricks” of some unmentioned sort – despite all the hard work put in by her team. Team Jaramillo. The crew that discovered, recruited, hand-held phony “Republican” Scott Markowitz, and who even wrote his MAGA ballot statement to draw votes away from Jaramillo’s opponent. Markowitz pleaded guilty to perjury and falsification of public documents. No mention of that in her farewell address.
There is a big shout out to the UFCW union that laundered $60,000 of out-of-town marijuana lobby money to buy mailers and pro-Jaramillo precinct walkers. Lots and lots of them who harassed each voter multiple times in order to elect Jaramillo.
Kitty says now the pressure is on to see if there will be improvements in D4, the district she created for herself to win. Some irony there, eh? There is already an improvement.
Thoughts and prayers…
She wishes the best for the City Manager and City employees (not counting the cops and firepeople who endorsed her opponent). No mention of the people of Fullerton who never seemed to be on her self-centered radar. But we we knew her priority was city workers, because that’s what she volunteered to the OC Register in another foot-shooting moment.
Employees present and past love Kitty. Yes, massive six-figure pensioners, keep on truckin.’
Despite claiming to be an agent of civility, Kitty can’t resist to take a swipe at the “other two knuckleheads,” presumably Jung and Dunlap.
Before she waddles off down the Trail to Nowhere to make tamales, Kitty reminds us again of the unfairness of it all. Apparently “good guys” couldn’t get past the finish line because somehow, the “red line” kept moving. I have no idea what this lament is about because she and Team Jaramillo did cross the finish line, whatever color it may have been. She just wasn’t in first place when she did cross it.
Well, now Vivian can go back to just being an annoying, self-important busybody who can’t do any damage; a boil on the butt of Fullerton: irritating but not dangerous.
Today the OC Registrar of Voters finally certified the November 2024 election results. In Fullerton’s 4th District race Jamie Valencia has defeated Vivian Jaramillo by 53 votes.
Jamie Valencia
With hard work, the support of the “public safety” unions, and relentless public service announcements by Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform about Jaramillo, Valencia prevailed in her electoral debut.
But I checked all the right boxes!
Jaramillo, the handpicked candidate of the OC Democrat Party was backed by a small fortune invested by the marijuana dispensary lobby and the government paper-pushers union. Unfortunately for Jaramillo, her supporters (with or without her knowledge) created a phony candidate, Scott Markowitz to draw male and Republican voters away from Linda Whitaker. The plan backfired spectacularly as Markowitz was busted for perjury and falsifying public documents – charges to which he pleaded guilty.
I’d screw over my own mother for 10 votes. And I’ll do it again.
The scandal was used by FTFF to hammer the Jaramillo campaign.
Meanwhile, Linda Whitaker, wife of outgoing D4 Councilman Bruce Whitaker ran a lackluster campaign effort even though she raised a lot of money. She seems to have been hoping for enough name recognition to win. A mid-campaign excursion to Italy was symbolic of her campaign’s entropic trajectory.
Yes, I was a phony from Day 1. And it was obvious…
And then there’s Markowitz, the completely fraudulent candidate and perjurer who may or may not have ratted on his accomplices in a remarkably quick plea bargain deal with the District Attorney. Despite publicly disavowing his scampaign, Marko still got 1020 votes, an electoral testament of some kind, probably better left unexamined.
Matt Truxaw. Probably not the best look for a candidate…
Mayor Nick Dunlap and Councilman Fred Jung both won re-election easily. Jung’s 40 point win over a hitherto unknown comedian/science fiction writer named Matt Truxaw was a forgone conclusion.
Say goodbye to the nice people…
Dunlap’s big win over former Councilperson Jan Flory may finally signal the demise of the self-righteous, morally bankrupt, and sclerotic Fullerton Gerontocracy.
Nothing left but empty bloviation…
The consequences of the Valencia victory may soon start to become apparent. The election winners will be sworn in on December 17th. The council will then choose the Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem for 2025. The liberals in Fullerton will be in high dudgeon indeed if their darling, serial liar and immigration fraud Ahmad Zahra is not chosen Mayor. If that does not occur, we can expect a similar disappointment for America’s first openly gay, Muslim elected in America, again in 2025.
Looking Heavenward for help…
Finally, in other local election news, we are rid of soon to be ex-State Senator, Gas Tax Josh Newman, whose new district appended him to a vast area of central Orange County where he was an unknown, and this after being a loyal water bearer for the Sacto Smash N’ Grab Club. Oopsy. Newman lost to a former Assemblyman and buffoonish librarian from Irvine, Steven Choi. Newman rose from political obscurity eight years ago. Will he return to it? Some are saying he should run for County Supervisor in 2026. If so, he’s not going to get any help from those who hopes for him in 2016 as an outsider were badly misplaced.
