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August 12, 2023August 12, 2023Ahmad Zahra

Say, Who’s In Charge Over There?

I know, lets get some running exercise. Before they catch us!

The other day I learned that Fullerton’s nonsensical trail to nowhere has been magically resurrected, again, it seems, the beneficiary of some wasteful State grant meant to make people feel good about themselves. How do I know it’s wasteful and all about virtue signaling? Easy. Just consider the “Trail To Nowhere.”

City staff is no longer even pretending that the the proposed “trail” goes to the Transportation Center, or that it could ever make its way to the Hunt Branch and points northwest. At least those lies have been dispensed with. Now it’s all about connecting a refurbished UP Park and Independence Park, a connection that means nothing to anybody outside the hallowed halls of City Hall. The proponents of this absurdity still can’t identify a single likely user, nor can they spit out the cost of maintaining this trail. They don’t know and don’t care. Build something and someone’s bound to use it, despite the fact that it runs through a dangerous, dilapidated, and dismal industrial zone of junkyards, used tire shops, asphalt plants and metal plating operations. The gesture is what counts, not the aftermath!

But I have already digressed.

The real point of this post is to ask how this miserable idea sprang back to life after the City Council expressed their displeasure with the bureaucratic piecemeal planning of this area, questioned the wisdom of the proposal and said they wanted to see alternatives that might actually help innovative development in the area. They got none of that.

Don’t let the amorphous shape fool you. Oh, wait…

It’s true that Fullerton has had four City Managers in the past three years or so; it’s pretty easy to spot the vacuum here. Plus the new guy, Eric Levitt, seems to have the backbone of a jelly donut when it comes to saying no to his staff. He appears to be cruising for a pension spike and an imminent decampment.

The idea may have been bad, but it sure was old.

Who was it that organized the happy field trip to explore the potential wonders of the trail? How come nobody knew about it except select invitees? How did the Parks Commission come to be presented with a choice that was no choice and how on Earth did this get on the City Council agenda? Obviously there has been a conspiracy to revive this idea and Mr. Levitt is all on board. Why? And why has the City Council permitted the same proposal it rejected last time, to reappear in the same form? These are rhetorical questions only.

The fact that D5 Councilmember Ahmad Zahra and his minions wanted this so badly last time – a gesture, (no matter how expensive and hollow) to the communidad – leads me to suspect this thing has been orchestrated by him and Parks staff to embarrass his colleagues into going along with the scheme this time.

December 16, 2009July 9, 2010About Us

The Fringies on A Roll: Worst Bureaucratic SNAFU

by Jan Florys Dog3 Comments

trophy

What’s that you say? The pickings are just too plentiful to settle on a mere handful of nominees? True. But let’s not let that hinder our purpose. And remember. We are not just scoping out the most expensive screw-up by highly paid public servants. No. We are also going after the comical and the perplexing, too. So here goes, in the category of Worst Bureaucratic SNAFU. And by SNAFU we really mean embarrassing bungle. And by embarrassing bungle we mean FUBAR.

1. The hilarious Magical Football Stadium that materialized out of nowhere at FJC when NOCCCD bond revenue squanderers revealed their complete contempt of, or ignorance of, (or both) the California Environmental Quality Act; a law that you or I would violate only at the risk of incarceration.

2. The Poisoned Park. True most of the horrific damage was done years ago in the whole Union Pacific Park fiasco, but City Manager Chris Meyer has put his own special stamp of futility on the mess by unilaterally closing the non-toxic part and ordering – you guessed it – more Redevelopment! The perfect bureaucratic antidote for what ails you! Waste millions? Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from!

3.The Great Hillcrest Park Massacre. So what do you do when you own an historic resource? That’s easy. First you neglect it terribly for years and years; then you let pervs hang out there; then you waste money building unnecessary and unwanted facilities that you can run and charge the public for; finally you just start ripping it up so you can rebuild it. Bravo! Well done!

4. The incredibly stupid affair of the Red Light Cameras documented here, here, and here. Policy disaster; financial embarrassment; dismal legal entanglements. You want ’em? We got ’em. The sad tale of Fullerton’s relationship with Nestor Traffic Systems and the eventual legal bills for lost law suits paints an ugly picture of bureaucratic bungling.

5. The Trail of Tears. Rather than abandoning the idea of continuing the foolish “Trail to Nowhere” along the contaminated Union Pacific ROW (see nominee #2), the City is forging ahead, trying to get other people’s money to extend the horse trail without horses; the bike trail without bikes; the paseo without paseo-promenaders. As in most of these cases the City Council is complicit in the thing, but as we all know…

Good God who’s in charge over there?

May 14, 2009January 4, 2010Fullerton City Council

The “Paseo Park” Chronicles – The Park That Never Was. Or is. Part 1

by The Fullerton Shadow9 Comments

This is a story that relates a chain of events that goes back many years, Gentle Readers, so please be patient. For those who don’t think Redevelopment spends half its time fixing mistakes it created with the other half, we promise that you will learn a lot about the way your city has been run – in three bite-size installments.

Way, way back in the 1980s Terry Galvin of the Redevelopment Agency cooked up a deal with the Union Pacific Railroad to acquire their Mission Revival depot on Truslow and Harbor. It was properly seen as a valuable historic resource, but damn the luck! It was on the wrong side of the tracks! Galvin’s plan was to relocate it to its current location on Harbor and Santa Fe, attach a weird-looking wood box addition to it, and present it to his pals at The Spaghetti Factory for $1 a year. The first of Fullerton’s subsidized restaurants offered cheap carbs to the masses, and why not? They weren’t paying any rent!

But how does this narration tie into something called “Paseo Park” you ask? Patience, Friends, patience.

As usual the Redevelopment “experts” created more problems than they solved, for the empty lot created by the relocation was soon to become a permanent dumping ground for trash and junk – right next to Harbor Boulevard in the veritable gateway to Downtown Fullerton! And the painful irony: blight as a by-product of Redevelopment! But it was in the barrio so nobody cared.

Blight in the foreground, blight in the background, Redevelopment style... — The UP site with the Allen Hotel in the distance: blight in the foreground, blight in the background, courtesy of Redevelopment.

But cleaning up junk on railroad property is not nearly so fun as playing Monopoly with other people’s money, and the problem festered for years and years – almost twenty to be exact; until the Union Pacific decided to unburden itself of this section of track and the adjacent depot site. Despite the fact that that the railroad was in negotiations with private citizens to buy the old depot site, the Redevelopment Agency led by Gary Chalupsky intervened, and acquired the property itself – with the ludicrous intention of building a trail and an adjacent park. The “trail” itself was utterly useless since it effectively ended at the Highland Avenue grade separation on one end, and the SoCo Walk project at the other. The park occupied the former depot space between Truslow and the trail. Check out the aerial.

And all the property was removed from the property-tax rolls forever.

How about a Utility Tax Fix? — How about Another Utility Tax Fix?

Apart from the trail to nowhere, the park project itself was a dubious venture from the start. The location was not auspicious, and nobody from the community really wanted it. Sparsely attended “community” meetings showed that people on Truslow were concerned about on-street parking and getting rid of blight – not creating more. And they weren’t interested in a hang-out for the local gangs and borrachos by creating a “pocket park.” Well the City never let that sort of thing stand in the way of progress.

Skeptical observers noted that vast Richman Park was only a few blocks away, but this did not dampen enthusiasm in City Hall for a land grab: Susan Hunt, the Director of Community Services, was in a facility building mood – and that’s all that counted. Redevelopment money was there to grease the skids.

cashspigot

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

September 7, 2017September 7, 2017Chronic Failure

(D)s Prioritize Higher Taxes Over Veterans

by Joshua19 Comments

SQS-Brown Cemtery

Let us talk about priorities. Why has Sharon Quirk-Silva not re-introduced a bill for the Veteran’s Cemetery in Irvine?

Sharon Quirk-Silva introduced a bill into the Assembly for the Veteran’s Cemetery in Irvine (AB409) which never even got a vote in committee.

The (D) Super-Majority outright ignored it. Her bill was later rolled into SB96. SB96 was a budget “trailer bill” which is basically an empty bill that is passed by the Senate with one line to be “Gutted” and a new bill full of legislation to be “Amended” into it by the Assembly before coming back for a vote before both houses. It’s a procedural trick which violates the spirit of the law and the very premise of good and open government.

To complicate matters because the Cemetery was rolled into SB96 with 95 other provisions, one of which is also an appropriations item, it is unconstitutional not once but twice and once specifically owing to the provision for the Veteran’s Cemetery itself. (more…)