Friends For Fullerton's Future

Here’s the text of a recent City of Fullerton press release about upcoming activity at the dismal Union Pacific Park on Truslow Avenue. See if you can read it without gagging.

The City of Fullerton Parks & Recreation Department, Smile Generation®, and KABOOM! are teaming up to bring a new kid-designed, community-built playground to Union Pacific Park—revitalizing a beloved neighborhood space and ensuring local children have a safe, inspiring place to play.

On Saturday, September 13, volunteers come together to construct the playground in a single day, with a ribbon-cutting and photo opportunities at 2:30 pm. The build begins at 8:30 am at Union Pacific Park, 121 W. Truslow Ave., Fullerton, CA 92832. Media and community members are invited to attend and experience the transformation in real time.

“Union Pacific Park’s reopening represents a new chapter for this neighborhood,” says Edgar Rosales, Fullerton Parks & Recreation. “The new playground will be at the heart of the park—where children can play, and families can connect and grow.”

Union Pacific Park, which had been closed due to past soil contamination, has since been fully remediated and declared safe for public use—clearing the way for its exciting rebirth as a vibrant community hub.

This project also advances KABOOM!’s 25 in 5 Initiative to End Playspace Inequity, a nationwide effort to ensure every child—especially those in under-resourced communities—benefits from the physical, social, and mental health advantages of play. Smile Generation joins as a proud partner committed to community wellness.

Let’s just ignore the tsunami of silly bureaucrat-speak about under-resourced neighborhoods, new chapters, vibrant community hubs, families connecting and growing, inspiring places to play, and the like. That’s just the sort of hyped-up rhetorical nonsense you’d expect from any semi-literate municipal scribe. It’s actually pretty funny in an unintended way.

But what’s this nonsense about the park being closed for “remediation” of contaminated soil, but now having been declared safe? That’s just a damned lie. The remediation happened at least 15 long years ago. The fact is that City Hall kept the park closed due its attractive quality to borrachos, drug addicts, Fullerton Toker Towners, and homeless vagrants. It’s been sitting there, a ugly monument to the incompetence of Fullerton’s six-figure pensioners, and two generations of city councils that never bothered ask any questions.

This multi-million dollar disgrace is not a “beloved neighborhood space.” Nobody asked for it. Nobody wanted it outside City Hall employees with other people’s money to waste.

And now the current city council is poised to dump more millions into the beloved space even though there is nothing changed from the societal pathologies that kept it closed in the first place. And nothing has changed about the City’s inability to properly maintain the parks it already has.

Oh well, I guess this makes sense in a certain perverse way. The council just agreed to blow 2.5 million bucks on the Trail to Nowhere without a single backward glance to note the complete failure of the UP Park and the embarrassing “Phase I” of the so-called trail that doesn’t even connect to Phase II. The current council seems no more curious about past failures than their predecessors. In fact, they’re doubling down on the previous Union Park fiasco. The only difference is they seem to want to fail in smaller increments.

A few weeks ago, the Fullerton Observer’s eager young cub reporter, Elijah Manassero, wrote an article about some misuse of the official Fullerton city seal by a “private company” with ties to Mayor Fred Jung.

The company in question is a Korean-American showroom of some kind on Harbor Boulevard that promotes the Fullerton-Seongnam City Sister City relationship. The offending sign had been changed by the time young Elijah wrote his “story.”

That seemed like a real stretch to create news as the Observer is always doing because performing real journalism is too darn challenging for the Kennedy Sisters.

But wait for it.

On the internet chat site reddit, there is a “subreddit” called r/Fullerton. And guess what? r/Fullerton features our City seal right there on its banner, and done so, apparently, for years.

And that’s not all of course.

Guess who religiously cross posts his own anti-Jung, anti-Bushala, anti-Dunlap propaganda on reddit, not to mention the self-righteous crapola he writes for the Fullerton Observer? That’s right. Sweet young Elijah Manassero who is so alarmed by “unauthorized” use of Fullerton’s city seal.

It’s really not very hard to submit the necessary campaign finance and statement of economic interest forms required of candidates and elected representatives. But apparently it is for Shana Charles, who has evidently been busy with other stuff over her summer break, social justice warrioring, for one. Even with a kindly nudge from the Fullerton City Clerk.

Form 460s (campaign financial activity) for the first half of 2025 were due by July 31, 2025.

It’s now five weeks later and per the City Clerk’s webpage, Shana Charles still hasn’t submitted the required form, her last submittal being for the second half of last year.

Even more interesting is the fact that the CC’s site shows no annual Form 700 (Statement of Economic Interest) from Charles since February, 2024. She’s over six months late.

To be fair, Dunlap and Jung show being one and two months behind in their annual 700, but Zahra is a whopping seven months late, so there’s something not right in the City Clerk’s office, either in the enforcement or the recording of this stuff.

The irony here is that Charles’s (and Zahra’s) followers are always nattering about transparency this, and transparency that. But the application of the concept is selective, as shown by the Fullerton Observer Sisters and their new Jimmy Olsen, the impressionable, young Elijah Mannasero.

Sometimes stuff pops up that you couldn’t possibly make up. The latest Fullerton Observer includes a piece co-authored by Curtis Gamble and Sankia Kennedy and features the headline I used, above.

To start off with I have to say I can’t think of two people less likely to come up with a potential solution for anything.

Poor Curtis Gamble is just a perpetually discombobulated fellow who takes an opportunity a couple times a month to polish his sense of self-importance at city council meetings, generally offering comments on things he knows nothing about. He presumes to advocate for the homeless, bus drivers, seniors, students, etc., etc.; people who would probably just as soon forgo his representation. Co-author Saska Kennedy is thoroughly annoying too, although she, like her older sister, Sharon, is propelled by the ideological dogma of the self-righteous and sanctimonious left.

Their “article” presumes there is a homeless crisis in Fullerton. And it offers that homeless seniors represent 20% of this crisis. Their potential solution? Use the Rancho La Paz senior mobile home park as some sort of permanent housing for the homeless, moving them into trailers as they are vacated.

I can’t conceive of a worse idea: a village of homeless people assigned property, not their own, to live in and presumably maintain. Somehow the pathologies of homelessness – schizophrenia, drug abuse, living in filth would be rectified by mobile home park living. Cooking, cleaning, job hunting, health maintenance all self-performed by the newly housed, one concludes. Of course professional do gooders from Illumination Foundation (as a for instance) will be on hand to dispense “behavioral” admonitions and the necessary modalities.

The biggest unstated obstacle, and one that Curtis and Skansia work really hard to ignore is the fact that the mobile home park has an owner. When last I heard, that fellow is a real estate and numismatist named John Saunders who has been villainized by Fullerton Boohoo for raising rents on his ground leases and who, I believe, is highly unlikely to go along with Homeless Village. Well, maybe he would if the City were to reimburse him for rents and maintenance costs and policing of the village. That would cost a fortune.

The article fails to mention that typically land, not the mobile homes are owned by a guy like Saunders. A trailer wouldn’t be available unless purchased by somebody for the homeless purpose, or just abandoned by the owner.

Then there’s the issue of joint sovereignty. The south half of Rancho La Paz is in Anaheim, not Fullerton, so there’s that.

When I was done reading this nonsense I was left wondering its purpose. Is it just gratuitous virtue signaling? A Big Idea hatched by the disoriented Curtis Gamble and advertised by the Kennedy Sisters? Hard to say. But one thing is certain. The piece projects the typical lack of pragmatism that is the hallmark of the Homeless Industrial Complex, so maybe it has a chance – if politicians can be seen to be throwing money at a problem absent results.

A week or so ago, FFFF posted about the strange case of the missing PRA request, here, requesting communications between Councilperson Shana Charles and the City Manager, Mayor Fred Jung, et al. For some reason this request was omitted from the official log kept on the City website by the City Clerk.

Well, not any longer. The missing request has magically appeared in the log.

On July 30th, Charles let fly with this vulgar and toxic email:

Ms. Charles sure got her dander up. The reason for the outrage that caused the good professor to lose it? Here it is: the August 5th City Council meeting was cancelled.

So the City Manager and Mayor have cancelled the August 5th meeting and the ICE issue can be put off a couple weeks. If you’re an armchair social justice warrior like Charles is, this is outrageous! Shameful!

Shana is transformed into veritable jungle queen! She will explore any and all options! This will not be a quiet cancellation! Aux armes, Fullerton Boohoo!!

Of course no “blatant effort” was being made to silence anything. The council meeting on August 19th addressed the ICE lawsuit to Fullerton Boohoo satisfaction and life in Fullerton went on, somehow, despite the two-week delay.

The personal attack on Fred Jung was pretty objectionable since his health, whatever it may be, had nothing to do with National Night Out, a cop sponsored neighborhood building program which was being promoted by the Fullerton Police Department. And this isn’t the first time Charles has attacked Jung.

I have to wonder how this uncivil outburst might affect Charles’s promotion to Mayor in December, especially given her unlikely appointment as Mayor Pro Tem last year.

Just when you might have felt safe from the re-emergence of the bumbling, incoherent former Fullerton City Councilman, Jesus Quirk-Silva, you might be horrified to learn his political thirst for office hasn’t been quenched. It appears that Quirk-Silva wants to be on the North Orange County Community College Board of Trustees. Observe:

So about a month ago JQS filed the form 501 – the statement filed when you intend to be a candidate.

The OC Dems will no doubt get behind the guy who knows nothing about college except that he somehow graduated from one despite the obvious intellectual deficit. This will be the same agglomeration of Dems who tried mightily to create a council district for the sole purpose of keeping Mr. Quirk-Silva in a council seat.

If somebody wanted to they could make reference to Quirk-Silva’s votes on the Fullerton City Council – like his embarrassing, comical, and sadly disastrous flip-flop on the boutique hotel disaster, although that isn’t likely.

These community college trustee elections rarely cause much of a dust up because no one really cares who the nodding birds are. The most recent addition to this crew is a guy named Mark Lopez, an unethical bozo who tried to be on the Anaheim School Board at the same time and who got kicked off the latter.

Meantime, I should note there is an incumbent for the job, Jeffrey Brown who has been on the Board for well over twenty years and may be one of those people who love their little sinecure and will fight to keep it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a rumor circulating that the seat is now coveted by none other than Paulette Marshal. Yes, the same person whose lawsuit against Tim Shaw caused the Dems to lose their only seat on the OC Board of Education; who tried and failed as a candidate for that job twice, pretending to be a teacher; and who was previously busted for stealing campaign signs from private property during a phony carpetbagging scheme to get on the Fullerton City Council in 2018.

She may look like death warmed over, but her political ambition may not be dead.

It would be safe to say that nobody wants Pilferin’ Paulette around anymore, hovering in the background like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. But this miscreant has shown she’s willing to sink a big chunk of her kid’s inheritance into getting a political office – any political office. Well, nobody except Paulette, and her senile, corrupt husband, County Supervisor Doug “Bud” Chaffee.

Well, it’s really a fundraiser for Shaw’s 4th District County Supervisor campaign.

I’m not sure why Mr. Shaw is running for this seat. `Shaw ran for this job in 2018 against the senile and corrupt Doug “Bud” Chaffee and couldn’t beat him. He didn’t run in the 2022 election which saw two Democrats in the general election.

Shaw is a Republican in a district that is now solidly Democrat. Even if he were to make a run-off in the primary, he won’t win in the general election. He has no evident path to victory.

Shaw may have a name recognition problem. He gave up his job on the La Habra City Council a few years ago thanks to a lawsuit against him by Chaffee’s wife, Pilferin’ Paulette Marshall, the petty thief who wanted to force him off his other job on the OC Board of Education for holding incompatible offices. Shaw crossed her up by keeping his gig at the under-the-radar OCBOE, instead of the La Habra City Council. And therein lies a problem for him.

The OCBOE has been hijacked by a group of ultra-loony Trumpies and Shaw has been part of their team. If he were to get past a primary he would be mercilessly attacked as a fascist loon despite his generally moderate reputation.

Well, all that back story aside, Shaw is inviting folks to his reception out on Carbon Canyon Rd in October. It’s a horsey theme, I guess, so wear your Stetson and bring your credit card.

Way back on July 31, a member of the public made a PRA request. This individual got a receipt for the effort, too, with a reference number and everything. I got ahold of this receipt through a third party but I don’t know anything about the whys or the wherefores.

The trouble is, this request was never included in the City Clerk’s PRA request log. I’ve searched by date and reference number. Nada. So what happened? Is this omission an error, or is it deliberate? Who knows?

The request deals with communications between Shana Charles and the the city manager, the mayor, the police chief and staff. Staff likes to protect councilmembers so maybe that has something to do with the absence of the request on the log. Were there controversial or incriminatory communications?

All we know is that somebody wants to find out what Charles was writing to the people listed in the request. The reason for the request is a mystery as it would be if it were included in the log; but there is something going on here the public not only doesn’t know about: we don’t know what the response is, we wouldn’t even know a request was made without the receipt – defeating the purpose of a log altogether.

When this sort of thing happens people start getting curious.

Last Tuesday the Fullerton City Council voted 4-0 in closed session to file an amicus brief in support of the Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem lawsuit filed by the ACLU, et al. against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for their violations of basic civil rights.

Turns out the aye vote was cast by Zahra, Charles, Jung, and Valencia. Dunlap apparently found it impossible to vote one way or the other.

A good chunk of Fullerton’s liberal brigade was on hand to exhort the Council to support the lawsuit and they took the opportunity to do so for an hour and half. When the Council finally “reported out” of closed session the announcement of the decision produced applause.

This was the right decision.

Whatever one thinks about illegal immigrants and their place in American society and our economy, there’s no escaping two basic facts. Everyone has the rights of due process in the United States per the 5th Amendment. We are all protected against unfounded search and seizure by the 4th Amendment. Case closed.

What we have been seeing in California is the wanton disregard for the Constitution by a lawless administration that has zero respect for it, and is more interested in exercising a race-based reign of terror by a collection of masked and heavily armed goons. The State of California and the municipalities therein have a moral obligation to say something and do something, at least.

I guess your position on this issue depends on what you really believe about yourself. If you’re willing to support the war being waged on our streets by anonymous, unaccountable, and violent agents of the federal government – a veritable Geheime Staatspolizei; if you are willing to see the federal government send its troops to patrol the streets of America in peacetime, you are living in the wrong country.

Yesterday U.S. District Judge Fernando Aelle-Rocha hit cannabis lobbyist Melahat Rafiei with a six month jail sentence and a $10,000 fine for fraud. In reality she had already pleaded guilty to trying to bribe two Irvine councilmembers to help her client – somebody in the local marijuana cartel. This seems like a light penalty for what she admitted.

Her adherents (she has some thanks to her years of disingenuous self-promotion in Democrat politics) claim that her ratting out some of Anaheim’s crooks should have meant no jail time at all.

What will this mean for the dope lobby in Fullerton? Hard to say. We know that the business has insinuated itself into Fullerton. Ahmad Zahra appointed one of its political spokesholes, Derek Smith to the Fiscal Sustainability Ad Hoc Committee. And the Dutiful Doctor from Damascus has been an active and open drum-beater for the marijuana dispensary cause for years. He actually recommended Rafiei as a lobbyist to at least one commercial property owner that I know. How many others have there been?

We also know that Zahra and the dope lobby worked real hard to elect Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo (above) last fall. Had Jaramillo won we would have MJ stores in Fullerton, possibly 100 feet from your house.

People have been speculating about Zahra’s ties to the local Marijuana Trust. How beholden is he? Ditto Sheena Charles, whose husband, Andre, got a tidy $4,000 from the marijuana worker union’s PAC, “Working Families for Jaramillo.”

The Fullerton Observer and their followers have been vocal about the political influence of Tony Bushala, but have been completely silent about the long reach of the MJ cartel into Fullerton politics. I don’t wonder why.