A Friend of ours tells the story of a special kind of person, necessary to almost any organization. He’s the guy who always sits next to the boss. And when his boss lets fly with some flatulence, he is there to tell him what a great fart it was. That’s the Fart Boy.
We have discovered the Fart Boy of our Orange County life and times – Matthew Cunningham, aka “Jerbal” a low-grade lackey who hides all of his motives and prejudices behind high-sounding rhetoric, but who is, in reality, the biggest suck-up we have come across. Every time he has come to our blog it has been to shill and pimp and obscure some indefensible behavior on the part of one of his bosses.
Whether it’s his mentor John Lewis, Mike Carona, Tod Brown, Jim Silva, etc., etc., no one in authority, no matter how self-interested, crooked, or stupid, is too contemptible to receive praise from the Fart Boy. That’s why he’s here. And so we salute you, Fart Boy. You’re the best at what you do.
Former Mayor Clesceri does a walk & talk at a Chamber of Commerce/State of City Luncheon, of course sponsored by the City of Fullerton
What associations and organizations does the City of Fullerton support financially that should be cut before cutting a librarian, a police officer or a life guard? How much money does the city spend every year on contracts with lobbyists?
It’s probably not too often that a flag pole becomes a topic of a blog. But today it is. We have already posted previous stories about the complete failure of the Elks/CSUF housing fiasco up on Elk Hill, and now it’s time to take a look at the Elks Lodge “flag pole.” We’re pretty sure there is something else going on here, and we wonder how this odd-looking object got here in the first place. This thing must be over three feet in diameter, and has no taper, making it officially the widest and most ungainly flag pole we’ve ever seen.
This giant tube sure looks funny, whatever it is really for, although we really can’t say that it offends any of the rest of the, um, ecclectic architectural assemblage up there on the Fullerton Acropolis.
We would like to hear from you Loyal Readers about your thoughts regarding this huge erection at the new Elks Lodge.
Friends, we receive thought-provoking e-mails from time to time, and like the good Friends that we are, we like to share them with you.
We recently received an e-mail from Jeff Oderman, an attorney with the firm of Rutan & Tucker. Mr. Oderman happens to be the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency’s lawyer, and we’ve been pretty diligent about ripping the bandage off this suppurating wound; and one of our more assertive Harpoons even took a poke at him here. We’re not sure if Oderman is complaining about that particular post, or about our whole effort here at FFFF. Clarity of expression doesn’t appear to be a prerequisite for employment at R & T. In either case, Jeff seems none too happy.
Your Honor, I'd like to make one of those legal thingies..
Anyway, from Mr. Oderman:
—– Forwarded Message —- From:“Oderman, Jeff” <joderman@rutan.com> To:Fullertons Future <info@friendsforfullertonsfuture.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5:41:27 AM Subject:RE: [Friends For Fullerton’s Future] Jeff Oderman: The High Price of Bad Advice
You should check your facts before you publish. You’re entitled to your own opinions, of course, but there is almost not a single truthful factual statement in the entire blog.
Jeffrey M. Oderman
Rutan & Tucker, LLP
611 Anton Boulevard, 14th Floor
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
714-641-3441 Direct
714-546-9035 Fax joderman@rutan.com www.rutan.com
We’re entitled to our own opinions? Well, Hell, Jeff, that’s mighty big of you. And we thank the boys at the Constitutional Convention, too.
But: “Almost not a single truthful factual statement in the entire blog.” Really? Almost everything is either a lie or wrong? Or both? Hoo Boy! Them’s fightin’ words.
As a firmly attached barnacle on the bottom of the SS Fullerton Redevelopment Agency, Oderman has a pretty sweet gig going, with zero accountability, and we’re pretty sure he wants to keep it that way. Good revenue for the firm and not much real work. But c’mon Jeff, you’re not going to protect your little sinecure by riling up the Friends.
Anyway, in the spirit of self-improvement and public information we have invited Mr. Oderman to favor us with “truthful and factual” corrections to any of our posts to which he objects. We promise to publish anything he sends our way. See, unlike the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency and its minions, we want open and unfettered dialogue – a discussion where the truth will out, and the political flacks and self-interested bureaucrats don’t always have the last, incompetent, and irresponsible word.
We also figure that the more they say the more holes they punch into the bottom of their leaky tub.
After being given the ceremonial run-around by the Fullerton PD, our Friend at HighwayRobbery.net was finally able to dig up a copy of Jones and Mayer’s legal bills from the city’s infamous red light case. For those of you who are just catching up, the city lost an appeal last year after an alleged red light violator fought her camera ticket — based on the illegality of Fullerton’s contract with the now-bankrupt Nestor Traffic Systems.
Here’s some free advice to our favorite City Attorney: Give up! You lost the case because you allowed the city to break the law. We don’t need red light cameras:
Some people are determined to talk. They just can’t help it. They believe that the more stuff they say the more informed they appear. Even if it’s just babble to the rest of us.
Well, I've got a heap 'o talkin' to do...
Take our own Councilman Dick Jones. If we didn’t mine so much pure gold out of this bonehead’s blathering we really would beg him just to shut up – if only to soothe our agitated synapses.
Oh boy, this is gonna hurt in the morning!
One of his favorite reasons for promoting Redevelopment expansion is that the money can be used to satisfy low-income housing mandates, imposed by the evil bastards in Sacramento, or Karakhastan, or Tanganyisha, or whatever mythical countries exist in his febrile imagination.
Hail, hail, Freedonia
The fact is that housing objectives come from SCAG – the Southern California Association of Governments – a bureaucratic local government consortium made up of people like Jones and guided by public employees. The housing targets, by income classification, are contained in the RHNA (pronounced “reena”) – the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, and are divvied up among local jurisdictions. These numbers are merely “goals,” not mandates. The whole thing is a bureaucratic paper chase and hardly anybody takes it seriously except far lefties.
We didn't get much done, but we built a huge stack of paper.
Which brings us to the point of this post. We wonder what Jones’ Republican backers like Ed Royce and Dick Ackerman think about Jones actively promoting the quasi-socialist RHNA objectives in Fullerton. He is sounding more and more like Sharon Kennedy with each passing meeting. So we have to wonder who’s coaching him on housing issues (well, no we really don’t).
Finally, Jones doesn’t talk about thereal mandate;it comes from Redevelopment law itself: the 20% property tax increment set-aside for “affordable” housing, a requirement created to help compensate when city planners and pols rip up lower income neighborhoods to gentrify them. The new expansion area includes little if any residential housing, so no housing stock is going to be displaced. But sooner or later that 20% set aside will start to accrue, and it will have to be used somewhere in Fullerton.
Somewhere in Fullerton. But not in Dick’s zero sub-prime neighborhood in the hills, you can bet the family farm on that. The buck will certainly stop there.
Our Friend Joe Sipowicz has added a great insight to a recent post on Dick Jones and Redevelopment about the way staff placates city councilpersons who ask questions. We’ll just let Joe say it in his own words:
“Staff also has another trick that may have been part of this little play, especially if it wasn’t rehearsed after all. That is answering the question that nobody has asked. In this tactic the question that was asked is dodged through answering some other question. The answer given is true, but non-responsive. It’s amazing how many people fall for this.
“BTW, this is also a tactic that our old friend Matthew Cunningham keeps using although it doesn’t appear to fool anyone in the blogosphere. It’s amazing how much more capable of critical thought bloggers are than city councilpersons!”
Joe, we know just what you mean. Former Planning staffer Joel Rosen is a master of this technique. You appear to be responsive and ever-so forthcoming, but in reality you give away nothing, and most of the time the councilperson is to too afraid of looking stupid to persist in getting a real answer. It’s like asking someone what time it is and having them tell you they live in a green house with red shutters in the 300 block of East Wilshire Avenue. It may be true, but it’s completely irrelevant!
Watch Dick Jones question Redevelopment Director Rob Zur Schmiede about the availability of tax increment monies in the proposed extension area. Zur Schmiede responds that because of the merger with an existing area money would be available “immediately.” And Jones is off to the Camp Town races, perhaps not realizing that his Redevelopment director was only talking about existing funds – not new property tax increment. All he heard was “immediately.” So he sits up, pleased as punch, like he had just discovered radium. Uh–mmediately! Well, Land ‘o Goshen! You cain’t hardly beat uh-mmediate! Instant gratification – a predictable desire in a child; embarrassing in a septuagenarian.
The reality is that even if the Redevelopment extension survives a legal challenge, the depressed real estate market and property tax re-assessments will likely create a flat or even a negative increment for the near to mid-term future within the amendment area. This means that any Redevelopment funded projects here would have to dip into the also diminishing increment in the pre-existing project area. So why doesn’t Jones grasp this? Because the Redevelopment Agency has arrived upon the scene to cure all that ails us. HOT DAMN! IMMEDIATELY!
Is this really the guy we want making this decisions for us?
Below is an illuminating video clip of our old nemesis City Councilman Dick Jones defending redevelopment expansion in Fullerton.
Dick’s suggestion that blight exists because foreclosed houses are close to “those blighted areas”, makes absolutely no sense, and, in fact directly contradicts the specific legal findings he had to make to support Redevelopment expansion; but then again look who’s talking.
The other important question Dick’s little speech raises is whether or not he discussed this issue with Pam Keller prior to the meeting. Listen to when Dick he says “when this thing passes, I’m going to make a motion to have our attorney and our staff work with the County to….”, it was obvious he already knew it was going to pass. But how could he have known unless of course Dick had already gone over this with Keller, the ultimate third vote? This is not a Brown Act violation, but it sure would be if he had previously discussed this issue with either Don Bankhead or Sharon Quirk, and it’s pretty hard to believe otherwise. These guys habitually play fast and loose with the Brown Act prohibition against “serial meetings” so it’s not inconceivable.
