Fullerton Collaborative Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

November 5, 2009December 28, 2009Behind Closed Doors

More Phony Hand Wringing From the Skipper of the Yellowing Submarine

Ahoy there, reality - unable to surface...

A new month, the same old weeping by the Fullerton Observer about how the good ol’ boys are keeping poor Pam Keller from her entitlement to be mayor when the next term starts. It’s not fair! Not fair!

(Ed. – Never a word about Keller’s dismal votes on massive projects or her unique working relationship with FSD/Fullerton Collaborative, but that’s another story.)

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the person who is entitled to be mayor is the council person who can get two other people on the council to vote for him. Pretty simple. Nothing else really matters.

The author of this indignant drivel lays out a conspiracy tale of events behind the scenes to keep a Democrat out of the presiding chair; and as usual the plot centers around Shawn Nelson, without whom the Observer would have a lot less to natter on about. Ironically the tangled web includes Observer favorite Don Bankhead and by necessity another Observer endorsement recipient – Dick Jones! Observer chickens coming home to roost? God, let’s hope so!

Politics might be going on. The horror! Of course despite the Observer trying to emphasize the ceremonial (i.e. non-political) aspects of the mayorship, the fact is it is a very coveted title when re-election time rolls around – as it does for Pam Keller, next year. Aha! Politics!

So is a scheme being worked out to elect somebody else mayor for 2010? Possibly. Quite likely, although since none of the supposed principles would be likely to talk to Sharon Kennedy about it, it seems much more likely to be a pure guess on her part. Our congressman Ed Royce loves to meddle in these affairs; to him it seems easier than simply turning on the light and opening the closet door to discover that there really is no monster in there. Just some mops and brooms.

And speaking of politics, maybe The Observer should quit endorsing Ed Royce puppets like the chowderhead Jones and focus on somebody who could actually be counted on to support Keller for mayor. Oh no! More politics.

November 3, 2009January 5, 2010Fullerton School Board

What Does Pam Keller Do All Day?

by Travis Kiger28 Comments

For most people the idea of being one’s own boss is an alluring if somewhat daunting proposition. With the freedom and self-responsibility come the risks – of freedom and self-responsibility.

So imagine the pleasant prospect of being your own boss, answering to nobody, and at the same time enjoying the safety of a government job with a regular paycheck and pretty good benefits. This is what Fullerton City Council woman Pam Keller gets by being the Executive Director of the Fullerton Collaborative and remaining an employee of the Fullerton School District. The people who print out her paychecks have no idea how she’s spending her time. She doesn’t answer to them. And the Collaborative Board seems to have shown very little interest in her doings, possibly because she’s actually in charge. Pretty sweet gig if you can get it.

Pam-Keller — Pam Keller - Teacher on Special Assignment

The memorandum of understanding between the Collaborative and the school district lists a series of vague directives to be accomplished by the Executive Director through the school year. The two most specific of Pam’s duties are “assist schools to link with community partners for support services” and “increase awareness of schools regarding community services”.

So essentially her job is to communicate with schools. What does that entail? Fire off a couple of emails, make a phone call every once in a while? No, that would only consume a few minutes per day. There must be more to this $51,000-per-year job.

If we give her the benefit of the doubt, it’s likely that the achievement of these goals requires Pam to spend most of her workday meeting with teachers and parents, visiting schools and attending parent/teacher meetings.

Is that what she does? How much time does she spend with teachers and parents? What are her work hours? Since she really is only accountable to herself, does anyone else know?

Regular teachers must answer to parents, principals and ultimately the Superintendent. Who does a “teacher on special assignment”, funded by an outside organization, answer to? Does Superintendent Mitch Hovey appraise her performance? Could he take appropriate action if he didn’t think she was performing well? He certainly has no incentive to question her since the Collaborative pays her salary regardless.

Ultimately, we expect that the Fullerton School District will have to answer this question: Does the perverse nature of FSD’s employee arrangement with the Fullerton Collaborative cause harm to the public by diluting accountability and hiding conflicts of interest?

September 30, 2009December 30, 2009Fullerton BooHoo

Fullerton Collaborative Received Contributions from Developers

by The Fullerton Shadow21 Comments

Our own Travis Kiger met with the Chairman and Treasurer of the Fullerton Collaborative yesterday to review donations to that group from people who might have had business before the City of Fullerton where the Collaborative’s Executive Director, Pam Keller, sits on the city council. He also looked into whether or not the Collaborative had received contributions from developers – people from whom Pam Keller had specifically refused to take campaign contributions.

From the records made available to him, Travis discovered two prominent names: Pelican-Ontario, an affiliate of the Amerige Court project developers, and the egregious Steve Sheldon, pitchman for the massive Jefferson Commons project. Pelican and Sheldon gave $300 and $1000 to the Collaborative, respectively. Bushala Brothers, Inc., local property owners and developers in Fullerton gave $1000 as well.

The issue of the St. Jude Medical Center participation in the Collaborative, and Keller’s December 2007 votes in favor of their large project on the west side of Harbor Boulevard was also discussed at length.

The officers of the Collaborative have claimed that the Executive Director is paid from funds separate from those gathered from donations that support Collaborative activities. That may or may not be accurate, but it is true that the typical budget for “Faces of Fullerton,” for instance, includes $5000 for staff salary, and the Collaborative only has one employee – Keller. The larger issue is that contributions made to the Collaborative could, and may have gone to pay for the contract with FSD for Keller’s services. Is it really necessary to parse out different accounts?

The Collaborative leaders also related that in the future they will scrutinize and pre-approve all donations; but that is not any of our business. Our business throughout this affair has been to find out if Pam Keller has been voting on projects applied for by members and contributors to the Collaborative (she has), and whether she has solicited donations from the very developers who she refused to take money from for her campaign (she has).

In conclusion, we make no accusations of illegal behavior on anyone’s part; but is it ethical of Pam Keller to refuse developer campaign contributions only to turn around and solicit them for the Collaborative – an entity she is paid to run? We don’t think so. When she ran for council in 2006 Keller made a big deal about letting the development process be driven by public participation – rather than by outside developers. Her votes to approve the gigantic Jefferson Commons and Amerige Court projects were baffling to many who no doubt took her campaign promises at face value.

There you have it, Friends. You decide.

September 23, 2009December 30, 2009Pam Keller

Fullerton Collaborative Collaborates on Stall

by The Fullerton Shadow3 Comments

Yesterday our own tenacious Travis followed up, as promised, with Pam Keller, to find out what the Fullerton Collaborative board had decided about our request to divulge their donors.

Here’s what Travis got back:

Dear Travis,

The Board of the Fullerton Collaborative met today. Your request was included on the agenda. The Board suggested if you are interested in knowing about our financial state you are welcome to look for our 990 forms on http://www2.guidestar.org/. If you would like to know more details about how we are funded, where the funding comes from or how our Collaborative functions Zoot Velasco, Chair of the Board; Barry Ross, Treasurer and I would be glad to sit down with you to go over the information.

Thank you for your interest in the Fullerton Collaborative,

Pam Keller

Executive Director

Well, you didn't think it I was going to make it easy, did you?

Hmm. We didn’t get what we wanted, but rather we got a brush off – sort of. While we have nothing against sitting down with these good people, it hardly seems necessary. We don’t need face time with them. They are either going to cooperate or not.

The invitation that we view the Form 990 is really pretty disingenuous: Ms. Keller knows very well that we have already looked at their 2007 version of this document on line – which caused us to start asking our questions in the first place. We posted about it here .

This whole thing is really starting to smell like a stall to us – we’ve been put off for over a month already. Oh well! The truth will out, as they say.

September 22, 2009December 28, 2009Fullerton BooHoo

A Call For Transparency – A Reminder

by The Fullerton Shadow8 Comments

Collab Board — Don't worry...nobody reads the blog

UPDATE: Today’s the big day. Will the Fullerton Collaborative let us know who their donors are? We’ve been patiently waiting to find out for a month. Today we’ll find out if the information is forthcoming.

Last month we asked City Council member Pam Keller for the records of donors to the Fullerton Collaborative since she came onto the City Council. You may recall that the reason we asked was because we were curious whether or not any of the contributors had business before the City, especially business where Keller herself may have participated in the decision-making process. We cited the example of St. Jude’s Medical Center, a listed member of the Collaborative who happened to have a major project before the City a couple of years ago, a project that Keller voted on, and for.

At the time Keller informed us that she would raise the subject at the September Board meeting. After an inquiry the other day, we have learned that there is a board meeting on September 22. Whether the announced meeting of September 8 was held or not we do not know.

We’ll let you know what we find out next week. Promise.

September 17, 2009December 28, 2009Dick Jones

Who Should Be Fullerton’s Next Mayor? Pam Keller?

by The Fullerton Shadow16 Comments

it's really just a little wood hammer...

The recent edition of the Fullerton Observer did some boohooing and hand wringing about whether or not Pam Keller will get to be Fullerton’s next mayor here . The little article points out some of the nefarious goings on in Fullerton Past and the current council’s refusal to adopt some sort of mechanism to ensure that everybody gets a chance to be mayor.

We believe the person who should be Mayor of Fullerton is the person who can get two other colleagues to vote for him/her. That’s pretty simple. If they can count to three it’s their turn.

Fullerton’s lefties know that come reorganization time (1st meeting in December) local Repuglican bigwigs like Ed Royce make it a point to lean on fellow Repugs (In Name Only) like Bankhead and Jones to keep the gavel away from the Dems. But that’s the way it goes. It’s called politics. Fullerton’s “progressives” like to play politics too, but they just won’t admit it. We wonder if they would be so energetic in the defense of Shawn Nelson’s turn to be mayor.

Is Pam Keller qualified to be mayor? Well, let’s face it – if Jones and Bankhead can do it, so could an orangutan.

But we’re still waiting to get some straight answers from Pam and her Collaborative about who foots their bills, and why the money is drip-dried through the FSD; and we were chagrined, although not surprised, to hear her inane defense of the indefensible blight scam behind the recent Redevelopment expansion vote. So maybe she isn’t the best person to be the face of Fullerton.

September 10, 2009December 28, 2009Downtown Fullerton

O! The Bitter Irony! Will FIES Create Homeless People?

by The Fullerton Harpoon30 Comments

The Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Services (FIES) is a non-profit collaboration of local folks whose mission is to help people of marginal means subsist, learn job skills, and for some, transitional housing is provided in the FIES compound in the west 500 block of Amerige Avenue.

Imagine the surprise of the tenants at 504 W. Amerige when they recently received eviction notices from their landlord. It seems FIES wants to buy the multi-family property located next to their current assemblage of properties, and the residents have to go. Apparently there are several families living on this property including several kids and even an infant. Some have been living there for over fifteen years and must like it.

It seems nobody at FIES has made it their business to inquire about the fate of the current tenants who now have to find a new home with a comparable rent, and will somehow have to scratch up a new first/last payment on a new place; or if they did, perhaps they dismissed it as not their problem.

We don’t think it’s real nice of FIES to cause the eviction of employed, rent-paying citizens simply because their mission is to minister to people farther down the housing stock food chain. It’s particularly egregious since FIES routinely receives government subsidies to pursue its mission. It must be galling for a taxpayer to find himself on the receiving end of an eviction notice due to the efforts of a taxpayer subsidized organization.

We hope that the good folks at FIES can reach an accommodation with the current tenants to let them stay on until they can relocate, and/or provide monetary relocation assistance. That’s only fair. It would be a painful irony indeed if any of these people ended up as FIES clients in the future.

Finally, the issue of the FIES compound itself needs to be addressed. Is it appropriate for this facility to continue to expand at this location? Is it wise to aggregate this sort of transitional use in a single neighborhood? Continued expansion seems likely to hasten even more growth in the future. What are the permit requirements, if any, for this proposed use, and what does the City have to say about the dislocation of the existing tenants.

With all of the collaborative activities going on in Fullerton, maybe somebody can collaborate on some help for the residents at 504 W. Amerige Ave.

September 4, 2009January 5, 2010Fullerton BooHoo

What Color Is Pam Keller’s Parachute?

by The Fullerton Shadow12 Comments

Won't take money from developers... — You will never see me taking money from developers...

Green?

We’ve been sharing information (when we find it) with our Friends about the unusual – well, unique, really – relationship between the Fullerton Collaborative and the Fullerton School District. Fullerton City Council woman Pam Keller is the Executive Director of the former, but remains an employee of the latter. We’ve coined a term for the process – “contracting-in.” It’s such a rare strategy that we’ve never actually seen it in use before.

Many of our Loyal Readers’ eyebrows have been caused to arch by the possibility that Pam Keller might have been soliciting donations for The Collaborative that actually went to pay FSD for her own services. And those eyebrows got even closer to hairlines when speculation began that Pam may have been soliciting donations from interests that had business before the City of Fullerton.

Today we share the 2009-2010 agreement between the Collaborative and the FSD – agreed upon by the Board of Trustees unanimously and without discussion as a “consent calendar” item.

Notice the asterisk in item #1 of the Collaborative’s responsibilities. It leaves open the possibility that the District may give the Executive Director a raise – and stick the Collaborative with the bill! Now we ask you – what kind of an organization would agree to an open-ended codicil like that in a contract? We’ll help out: one in which the Executive Director (who is also a board member), is the direct beneficiary, that’s who!

We also note in the 2009-10 FSD budget documents a throw away line stating that the Collaborative kicked in extra money to the FSD. It’s noted in that little box at the bottom of the document (below). Now why would the Collaborative do that? What kind of “charity” gives additional money back to a contractor? Possibly a charity whose fund-raiser’s efforts are so successful that a surplus exists which could be kicked back to the District to pay for that raise described in item #1 of the agreement. Of course we’re just speculating here.

But, none of these speculations would be so thought provoking if the Collaborative’s mission weren’t so fuzzy, and if it had major expenses other than the cost of hiring a government employee to be its Executive Director/fund-raiser. But the mission is so loose as to be practically meaningless, and the cost of the Executive Director consumed most of its budget in 2007.

All of this really ties back to the fundraising issue and who actually gives money to the Collborative. But it’s perfectly clear now that the funds – donations, fees, whatever – that go into the Collaborative, go to pay Keller – via the FSD; the question of additional “revenue” given to the FSD by the Collaborative opens up a new issue for people who contribute to this endeavor and who might start wondering why the Collaborative can’t be run by its own employee, or better yet, by volunteer labor.

September 2, 2009December 28, 2009Fullerton BooHoo

A Conflicted Individual

by The Fullerton Shadow14 Comments

We’ve been tracking the doings of Fullerton City Council member Pam Keller lately, with particular interest in her job as Executive Director of something called the Fullerton Collaborative, an outfit with fairly fuzzy goals whose biggest expense in 2007 was Pam Keller herself.

We’ve gotten a little bit of blow back from some Keller supporters who just don’t seem to understand the problem we’re having with a City Council member who might just be voting on projects whose applicants are also contributors to her Collaborative, and hence, pay for her services.

To help illustrate our point we helpfully provide an example. On their website, the Collaborative lists St. Jude’s Medical Center as a member here . Well, members pay dues, and those dues go to the revenue that pays for an Executive Director. Now let’s say (for the sake of argument) that St. Jude’s had some important business before the City of Fullerton. Oh. Wait. No need to suppose.

In December of 2007 the Fullerton City Council voted to approve a general plan amendment, a zone change, permits, and associated CEQA documents that permitted St. Jude’s to expand on the west side of Harbor Blvd – adding a massive new medical building and a gargantuan parking structure here . The vote was 5-0 (check out pages 5 & 6) – meaning that Keller voted to approve a huge project in an already heavily congested area proposed by a key member of her Collaborative, a member whose contributions that year went into the kitty that paid Keller’s salary. We see that as a huge conflict of interest – even if her relationship might somehow be legalized by the fact that she was really an FSD employee in disguise. The fact that the approval didn’t hang upon Keller’s vote offers us little comfort. What if it had – as in the case of the recent Redevelopment expansion?

If this same type of behavior had taken place with private developers, well, you can see the problems that would arise. Oh. Wait. St. Jude’s is a private developer.

August 31, 2009January 5, 2010Fullerton BooHoo

Who’s Who In The Zoo

by The Fullerton Harpoon20 Comments

There's a lot more to me than meets the eye...and a lot less, too.

It’s always nice to know who is who. And when somebody gets up in public to opine on a subject, it’s particularly useful to know what relationship exists between the speaker and somebody – like a staff member, or a city council member- who is promoting a specific item on a public agency agenda.

While we are always promoting the importance of what is said rather than who said it, there’s no denying the fact that having people get up and speak, no matter how stupid or uniformed they are, helps sway councilmanic opinion; and when the council persons aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree to begin with, it’s just that much more effective.

Here’s a story: somebody named Lee Chalker showed up at the hearing for the Redevelopment expansion hearing and spoke in favor of the expansion. She even got her name in a Barbara Giasone article on the subject here . Now, none of us had ever heard of Lee Chalker before despite her having lived in Fullerton for 35 years. We wonder if she really knew what she was talking about since her stated concerns about bad roads and drainage suggest current deficiencies in the Engineering Department rather than Redevelopment issues.

A little research on Lee Chalker reveals a member of a church called “University Praise” that is affiliated with an organization called OCCCO. What is that? The “Orange County Congregational Community Organization” – a group with a fairly nebulous remit, but that seems to organize its efforts around helping poor folks organize to get things from the government.

What’s really interesting about OCCCO is that in 2007 it was a major beneficiary of Pam Keller’s “Fullerton Collaborative.” In fact, the Collaborative forked over $25,600 to OCCCO for something called “community organizing.” Well, that makes sense, we suppose, since a “Community Organization” should have something to do with community organizing. What they did for the $26K is less important than the connection with Pam Keller herself, who was able to vote on the Redevelopment expansion only after City staff redrew the boundaries around a piece of property that Keller has some sort of interest in. And of course she voted in the affirmative.

We also note that in the Collaborative’s facebook page here we find that Chalker was being installed as a new board member in the Collaborative at just about the same time.

So did Collaborative Executive Director Pam Keller mobilize a gaggle of her pals in the Collaborative and/or the OCCCO to attend the meeting and shill for the illegal Redevelopment expansion? Who knows? Sure looks like it.

The larger point here is to understand the interrelated nature of all sorts of groups in Fullerton who actually have a very small number of aggregate members, but who can be relied upon to show up periodically at hearings to promote some cause or other near and dear to the heart of some bureaucrat or councilmember. Their numbers give moral support to councilmembers who either lack conviction or are afraid of standing alone.

Is there anything wrong with this sort of mobilization of support? No. But when some of the members of these claques have financial interests at stake (which happens all the time, too) it gets a little dicey. People who want to understand what’s going on are well advised to figure out who these people are and why they are there. In the end it is the content of what they say that counts. But it’s fun to know who the players are. And if you happen to see a procession of people march to the podium to sing the praises of this or that project, you can bet that they were asked to be there. And you have to wonder: if applauders are dragooned into service to help promote some scheme or other, just how good or necessary is it really?

Need a program to tell the players? We’re working on it.