An observant Friend just shared a link with FFFF about an item that caught his eye. Apparently Joe Florentine, the subject of many posts on FFFF is seeking a new gig. Here’s his entry on LinkedIn:
Now, FFFF is not a jobs center and neither are we job recruiters. But damn! I know talent when I see it, and this guy has it in spades.
Now, I’m not going to show this upstanding citizen’s whole resume, because, humble and self-effacing as Joe is, he omitted to share some real ability. I’ll help out.
Joe’s Unique Skillset & References
Enterprising. Built restaurant addition on a public sidewalk and got away with it.
Creative. Operated an illegal night club in contravention to City of Fullerton regulations for many years.
Recreational Opportunities Deployment. Exercised the greatest latitude in permitting patrons to enjoy interpersonal contact on dance club floor (i.e. see “Drunken Others”).
Plumbing and Wastewater Systems Expertise. Avoided adding additional sewage to the wastewater system by utilizing the same toilets for multiple businesses. Urination and defecation were performed by patrons without overloading existing wastewater systems.
Mixological Ingenuity and Marketing Acumen. Brought the Fish Bowl concept to downtown Fullerton to acclaim and adulation, specifically, in which a patron could buy a 128 fluid ounce cocktail.
Daring. Refused requirement to install fire sprinklers as mandated by City permit approval.
Creative Writing and Teamwork. Forged an official City planning application with the consent and foreknowledge of the City Manager and Planning Director and City Attorney.
References
Former Fullerton City Planning Director F. Paul Dudley
Former Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz (customer #1!)
Former Fullerton City Manager Ken Domer
Former Fullerton Police Chief Pat “Patdown Pat” McKinley
Former Fullerton Police Chief Danny “Galahad” Hughes
Former Fullerton City Councilmembers Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory
Fullerton City Attorney Dick “The Other Dick” Jones
Yesterday, in a special meeting, the City of Fullerton officially bowed to the inevitable and settled its retaliatory lawsuit against Joshua Ferguson, David Curlee, and this blog. The vote was 3-2 with Bruce Whitaker, Nick Dunlap and Fred Jung voting to end the bloodletting. Jesus Quirk Silva and Ahmad Zahra, who started the lawsuit and have stubbornly kept it alive, voted no. Whether they were laboring under the sunk cost fallacy or if it was simply a childish aversion to admitting their own culpability in the mess, will never be known.
Why is this man smiling?
It doesn’t happen very often that honest citizens can prevail against their government. In fact it almost never happens – a tribute to the tenacity of the courageous FFFF bloggers and their attorney, Kelly Aviles.
After a year and a half of lies, defamation, obstruction, incompetence, buffoonery, temporizing, more lying and running up huge legal bills the City has given up. Here are the main points:
$60,000 in compensatory damages to Ferguson and Curlee;
A public statement absolving Ferguson and Curlee of any culpability;
Legal fees for Kelly Aviles amounting to $230,000.
The winners here are justice (deliberately stalled, to be sure) and journalistic freedom against prior restraint; and, of course, any people who want to be able to get information that their own government is legally obligated to provide.
The losers, once again, are the taxpayers of Fullerton who are on the hook for $350,000 plus how ever much the legal team of Jones and Mayer have racked up – a sum estimated to be approaching $500,000.
Well, Friends, you can add as well as I can. At least three quarters of a million bucks to pursue this hare-brained retaliation against bloggers whose only desire was to get information from their own city government.
The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…
And so it is particularly amusing to consider the stammering, babbling statement from Jesus Quirk Silva that he was voting against the settlement because of his “fiduciary responsibility” to the people of Fullerton.
Axis of Casual Corruption.
Too bad the other two vindictive and profligate architects of this disaster have conveniently exited from our political stage: Jan Flory has resubmerged herself into whatever nasty swamp will have her; and our former influence peddling Mayor-for-hire, Jennifer Fitzgerald, is fleeing the state entirely, having feasted on the Fullerton carcass until there was no more meat on the bones.
My human Friends have learned that your former Mayor-for-hire, and the best bestie of my former mistress, Jennifer Fitzgerald, is jumping ship from the Fullerton boat of which she spent years drilling holes in the bottom. But before she skips town she has planned at least one last scam to separate the gullible bipeds from their dough. This borders on some sort of abuse, and believe you me, I know a lot about abuse!
Can you please repeat that? Hard to believe any of you humans would pay a hydrant pee to listen to Fitzgerald opine on any subject, but this topic is so funny that it’s even funny up here in doggie heaven.
What qualities make a good city manager? Well, let’s ask.
How about refusing to reform a criminal enterprise known as the FPD?
How about letting millions of gallons of expensive MWD water leak out of Laguna Lake with zero accountability?
How about years of unbalanced budgets leading to the brink of fiscal disaster?
How about serial neglect of the city fragile infrastructure?
How about getting drunk and running over a tree, and then trying to drive off?
How about covering up a Parks N’ Rec vehicle crash?
How about turning a blind eye to serial code violations?
How about continuing to foster the myth that downtown Fullerton is some sort of financial asset?
How about turning a blind eye to forgery of official city documents?
How about stonewalling on required release of public documents?
How about wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on crony “consultants”?
How about mismanaging construction projects as simple as wooden stairs and elevator additions?
How about enabling vanity projects like unused ceremonial bridges and dry duck ponds?
How about wasting a million dollars in state money on an idiotic and unpopular Specific Plan?
How about acceding to the demands of regional agencies for housing demands?
How about developing an entire Specific Plan behind everybody’s back – except the housing bureaucrats and do-gooders?
Arf! That’s only some of the stuff I can remember happening under the watch of Fitzgerald’s two city managers – the drunken stumblebum, Joe Felz, and the equally incompetent, likely sober, Ken Domer, neither of whom could run a dog kennel, as well I know.
For Jennifer Fitzgerald the only skill that mattered from a city manager was to accommodate her desires, desires that often as not ended up costing the citizens and taxpayers of Fullerton one way or another. She was a “master” all right. A master of manipulating a feeble system of political hacks and corruptible bureaucrats.
Hopefully some female human attending this gathering will be smart enough to ask some of the specifics of Fullerton’s city management disasters, but I doubt it.
Last Tuesday the Fullerton City Council majority finally got sick and tired enough with their hapless City Manager to tell him to take a hike. The votes to oust Ken Domer came from Bruce Whitaker, Nick Dunlap and Fred Jung.
Cop coverup artist, drug warrior, IT wizard, this talented cat can do it all…
Insiders are suggesting that his temporary replacement will be none other than Police Chief Robert Dunn.
The Council is meeting Tuesday to discuss a replacement appointment.
The handwriting is on the wall…
And when you think about it, the only real question is why it took so long.
Domer. There’s a lot less there than meets the eye.
By any measurable standards, Ken Domer was not very good at his job. He took too long to address the City’s structural budget deficits, and when he did, his solution was to raise sales taxes – taxes not even aimed at our horrible infrastructure.
Under Domer we saw the deliberate ignoring of noise code violation enforcement and the effort to dilute the relevant codes. We saw the the aiding and abetting of a permit applicant who forged official planning documents. We saw idiotic and unsupervised vanity construction projects. We saw stupid things like the recently killed “aquaponics farm” and the connivance required to begin a Specific Plan without any input from the community or even the City Council.
We saw a string of “consultants” hired out of the blue to perform tasks that Domer and his highly paid staff should have been able to do in their sleep.
Why the underqualified Domer was ever hired in the first place will probably always remain a mystery, except that it makes perfect sense that Jennifer Fitzgerald, our former Mayor-for-hire, wanted someone who would reliably do what she wanted without asking any embarrassing questions.
Along with walking legal catastrophe, Dick Jones, Domer was certainly complicit in the vindictive lawsuit waged by the City against FFFF bloggers, a disastrous strategy that will cost the tax-payers plenty.
But it was the ill-fated and duplicitous Measure S sales tax scam that really iced the cake. It was designed as a rescue for the pay and pensions of Fullerton’s full-time public employees, who, during the pandemic, have continued to enjoy pay and benefits while many of Fullerton’s residents and business were suffering the cruelty of a real world unprotected by the largesse dispensed by government union-friendly politicians.
Well, Domer is gone, but it would be a waste of time and tears to mourn his departure. He is getting a month’s pay and benefits up front worth $25,000. And then he will begetting 9 months’ pay and benefits courtesy of a contract extension granted just two month before last November’s election by Fitzgerald and her council cronies Ahmad Zahra, Jan Flory, and Jesus Silva. That’s another $25,000. Per month. And the bonanza of Domer’s pension spike in Fullerton will be a cost borne by all of us for a long, long time.
The people of Fullerton have been awful good to the Domer family.
Late yesterday afternoon the City of Fullerton announced that City Manager Ken Domer is quitting. Observers have noted a growing dissatisfaction by a majority of the council with Domer’s lack of management ability.
The City press release quotes Domer, thus: “I really can’t stay any longer. It used to be so easy to do the things I do, in the way I do them. Now I have to try to answer embarrassing questions all the time. It’s not supposed to work like that.”
Most recently Domer tried to get the council to go along with privatizing the business registration function – a move that would actually cost the City money, and, by relocating an existing employee, maintain the current employee headcount. This item was rejected by the City Council in a 3-2 vote, now a familiar trend.
In the press release, Domer continues: “I will always value my four years in Fullerton. Working with Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory was so rewarding for me. And I mean that literally. And of course Jesus Quirk Silva and Ahmad Zahra always had my back, and I had theirs.”
In his brief tenure as City Manager Domer will be remembered for unbalanced budgets, a failed sales tax scam, crumbling infrastructure, lack of code enforcement, bending over backward for downtown bar scofflaws, ridiculous vanity construction projects and many other accomplishments. But he may be best remembered for the City’s reckless lawsuit against this very blog, and the incredibly corrupt decision to approve Joe Florentine’s forgery of an official city planning document.
When reached for comment, former councilperson Jennifer Fixgerald noted, “Ken Domer is a real treasure; a pleasure to work with; worth his weight in gold.”
When people talk about “government circles” you can believe they mean it: some things just keep circling around and around yet, like when you have a clogged sewer liner, the circling flotsam never goes down the drain.
New in town, but he caught on quickly…
And so it is with the City of Fullerton’s hapless Community Development Department that can’t seem to adopt a plan and stick to it; that can’t be honest and straight forward; that refuses to enforce its own code; and as we shall see in this final installment, steadfastly refuses to notify the public of what it’s up to.
When I left off, I noted the odd three-month hiatus of the latest noise go-round that was once again being disguised within broader land use code update In February 2019, the Planning Department was again convened to review the matter, after two opponents of amplified outdoor music had been conveniently removed from the Commission. By this time the new and soon to be former Planning Director, Ted White, was directing the charge to push for the noise free-for-all, likening the impending racket to the noise blast known as Broadway Avenue in Nashville – but in a good way.
In Nashnille hearing yourself think is highly overrated, I guess…
But this time there was another problem. The hearing hadn’t been properly noticed to the public as should have been the case, particularly since the noise issue has such an impact on the citizenry. George and Tony Bushala lawyered up and informed the City that it had failed to notify the public about what it was doing. Mr. White declared that the downtown noise issue would be removed from the discussion that night. But it wasn’t – not entirely – as other code sections that pertained to noise slipped through.
A compliant and complaisant Council adopted the zone code changes in April, 2019.
Matt Foulkes. The downward spiral is complete.
But the story was not over, because, well, Fullerton. The bar owners still needed to be pacified and the bar still needed to be lowered. By November 2020 Ted White was gone only to be replaced by an in-house lackey named Matt Foulkes who had been part of the ongoing mess since 2015, and knew exactly which side of his toast had the butter on it.
Accountability? It was never on the agenda.
So the downtown noise mess was brought back to the council again, where lame-duck members Jennifer Fitzgerald and her puppet, Jan Flory were guaranteed yes votes. But alas, once again the City failed to properly notice the public, and this time there was no way to hide the incompetence in a broader mish-mash of code changes.So the hearing was continued until…well, who knows when? Apparently Jeremy Popoff has fled the scene to Nashville to enjoy whatever douchebaggery he can find there, and Covid has silenced DTF – for now.
Stop the noise, consarn it!
But one thing is certain. The City’s downtown creation, AKA Dick Jones “monster” will continue to suck millions in resources out of the General Fund even as the bureaucrats continue to admire the mess they did nothing to stop and continue to characterize a liability as an asset. And because of that complete disconnect with reality, they will continue to push for a noise-a-palooza – no matter how long it takes.
FFFF has published lots of posts about the way in which our highly paid “experts” in City Hall have made it their business to run interference for the numerous scofflaw bar and “club” owners downtown when it comes to ignoring annoyances like Conditions of Approval and the municipal code’s Noise Ordinance.
In City Hall, doing the right thing just wasn’t gonna happen…
Both topics have been addressed in the same way: if they can, they simply ignore the situation. The blind eye approach has worked most of time. When it hasn’t, Step 2 is invoked. Step 2 is to diligently pursue making the laws laxer, so lax in fact, that the lawbreaking is no longer lawbreaking. This bureaucratic gambit is really nice because the Planning Department Staff can always claim that something is in the works that will address the situation. Of course that’s a lie. What’s really happening is that the department is trying really hard to come up with a legal absolution so low even the lowest douchebag can slither over it.
You can take the douche out of the bag…
At every step of the way, the scofflaws – Jeremy Popoff of Slidebar fame and the Florentine Mob spring most readily to mind – lubricate the gears of Fullerton’s small town political machine who have seemed ever-ready to support the law breaking.
While we here at FFFF have extensively covered the abuse of CUPs and other land use issues, the history of the ongoing issue of nuisance noise traces a perfect trajectory of incompetence or casual corruption, or most likely, of both.
The story spans three city managers, four planning directors and a whole slew of elected ciphers who would rather defend purveyors of nuisance over the right of their constituents to quiet enjoyment of their property.
Last night the City Council voted to appoint Bruce Whitaker To the OC Water District Board of Directors. The term of the previous incumbent, Ahmad Zahra had expired at the end of 2020.
The vote was 3-1-1, with Whitaker, Jung and Dunlap voting for Whitaker; Zahra nominated and voted for himself; Jesus Silva decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and abstained.
Why is this man smiling?
It was not for lack of trying to keep this paying gig that Zahra relinquished his job. No, Indeed, for a line of scripted commenters tried valiantly to praise Zahra to the Heavens, why, Good God! The man practically invented water!
Too much scotch, not enough water…
The funniest commenter was none other than Fullerton’s Mistress of Disaster, Jan Flory, who joined in to share in the hosannas for Zahra. She read her script okay, but it included her statement that Zahra had actually authored articles about water,,,for the Fullerton Observer.
Whitaker was clearly the better choice. The water board has jurisdiction over the aquafer on which we sit. The district has massive financial reserves paid by us in ad valorem taxes. And in the past decade the OCWD has been at the center of a massive rip-off called Poseidon, a desalinization scam meant to provide more water to OC county for the purposes of south county development.
Unlike Zahra, Whitaker will not posture on the board for publicity and to be able to pretend some imagined expertise. He won’t use the agency to promote his own agenda and his own political prospects. And Whitaker is not currently charged with crimes by his own police department; nor is he under threat of recall by his district constituents.
It’s high time the Fullerton City Council fired City Manager Ken Domer and the City’s resident law firm Jones & Mayer. They have opened the city up to too much litigation (including a public records lawsuit I have against the City) and frankly are incapable of doing their jobs in an honest and professional way.
Allow me to explain by way of legal weed in Fullerton. (more…)
Last night Ahmad Zahra didn’t get what he wanted and today he’s crying on Facebook about it and I couldn’t be laughing harder at that petulant crybully.
First – this is Ahmad Zahra, council member from District 5, on Facebook bemoaning that policy wasn’t followed in snubbing him from the Mayor Pro-Tem seat last night:
The rules only matter when they benefit him…
Ceremonial selection of Mayor and Pro-Tem you say?
Ok. Let’s do this then. That ceremonial selection is actually outlined in the Fullerton Policy and Procedures Manual as Policy #226. In 2019 is was known as Administrative Policy #37.
It states that Pro-Tem becomes the next Mayor and the Pro-Tem is selected based on who has been on council the longest without having been Mayor.
In 2019 that means that Bruce Whitaker should have been chosen as this year’s Mayor Pro-Tem. Why didn’t that happen? Why was Jan Flory our Mayor Pro-Tem in 2020?
Oh. That’s right. Because Ahmad Zahra decided to vote for a “departure from city policy on the ceremonial selection of Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem”. Here’s the minutes from the meeting in question:
interestingly Silva voted against this game last year
And just because it needs to be hammered home lest Zahra try to weasel out of the official record, here’s the video of Zahra departing from policy to vote for Jan Flory over Whitaker just last year.
Looks like Zahra wants to eat his cake and have it too.
There needs to be a little more context here. We all knew Bruce was going to be Mayor this coming year if he won reelection. Fitzgerald was just Mayor, Silva right before her. Jan Flory promised she wasn’t running for another term on council. The ONLY reason why Bruce wasn’t Pro-Tem this year is because last year’s council majority hates Bruce for having the one thing they cannot stand – principles.
See above principle of consistency being lacking from Zahra.
Instead of following the gentleman’s agreement last year, they shanked Bruce for the sole reason of denying him the ability to put “Re-Elect Mayor Pro-Tem” on his campaign signs in the hopes of knocking him off of council. Thankfully it didn’t matter and he still won reelection.
This is a tactical game that plays out every few years because the Mayor and Pro-Tem tags can swing a few votes here and there.
For Zahra to pretend that he was slighted is laughable because he himself plays in these reindeer games. He just doesn’t like chickens coming home to roost and things not going his way.
This is a perfect example of everybody loving Majority Rule until the majority doesn’t give them what they want.
Let me remind you that in 2019 the council ALSO booted Whitaker off of the Water Board and gave it to newly minted council member Zahra – illegally and also out of spite. There was no reason to boot Whitaker mid-term but politics is petty and water board is a financially lucrative gig.
This time around Zahra wanted to be Mayor Pro-Tem because it positions him for Mayor in 2022 when he’s up for re-election. Provided the ladies from his district shouting to recall him don’t pull off their gambit first of course. There would have been a no-brainer case to vote for him IF he had upheld the agreement last year. He refused. Welcome to turnabout being fair play.
When it came time for the vote last night, Silva nominated Zahra and then Jung nominated Dunlap.
What happened next is both hilarious and sad and yet another example of why Zahra does’t deserve to be Mayor. The second Jung voted for Dunlap, Zahra knew he didn’t have the majority vote on council as there was no way Whitaker would vote for him after the way Zahra has treated him and Dunlap had already voted for himself as he wasn’t going to vote against himself to support Zahra. You can watch the video as Zahra just stares at Jung in disbelief and then abstains from the vote. Sadly right after the vote the video cuts to Whitaker talking so I can’t show you Zahra slamming his stuff down and storming out of the room but you can see him gone when the camera cuts back to the full dais with a missing Zahra.
Ignore Zahra’s preening as he is simply playing the victim hoping that nobody remembers that he once wielded & eagerly used the exact same knife to “skip” somebody in the vote for the ceremonial position of Mayor Pro-Tem.
Things are not going to be easy, financially or otherwise, for our little Hamlet of Malcontents in the coming years. Last night and today’s antics from Zahra and his fellow travelers should prepare us for what lies ahead as they blame everybody but themselves for what plays out.
