NUFF asks the questions
Jan Flory grows impatient
The Earth is still flat
City Hall is closed today and that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because the deadline has passed for City Council Vacancy applications and we don’t know what really happens next and by we I mean both applicants and the public. According to the city website there will be an applicant forum co-sponsored by the City of Fullerton and the Neighbors United for Fullerton on Monday, 29 January followed by a special meeting on Tuesday, 29 January. That’s all we know:
If you look at the NUFF Facebook page it tells us that this applicant forum will run from 6:45pm to 8:30pm.
That’s it.
What does that mean? Will there be a debate? A meet and greet? Will people be able to pose questions of specific applicants or the group? Who will be moderating this event? What should the applicants plan to do, say or bring? As of today, NUFF’s website has not been updated to reflect the change to an applicant forum from the previous “Priorities for Fullerton” agenda and thus leaves us wondering.
The most we know is that the event is scheduled for 105 minutes to vet 25 applicants which basic math tells us is about 4 minutes per applicant if each one was just allowed to speak freely without time taken out for questions, moderation or standard event management.
So really plan to hear each person speak for 2 minutes if they’re lucky.
How will the NUFF forum play into Tuesday’s Council Special Meeting? Is City Staff or Council asking the questions on Monday and using that data Tuesday? Or is Monday just gloss for the citizens while the city council plans to run their own public hearing on Tuesday?
Will the council be announcing an appointee on Tuesday? Will they be interviewing people at this Special Meeting? Will applicants be asked questions or given a chance to speak outside of public comments?
Again, no idea.
Why no idea? Because the city has provided almost zero information on this process and the council has left things so open that anything could happen on Tuesday. This “Open and Transparent” process that we were promised by the council has been anything but. We know applicants are meeting with council members but not who with whom or where and when. My goal in being an applicant was to give you fine residents the inside scoop on how this would play out and as I suspected it is the antithesis of the openness that we were promised.
I have not received a single phone call or email about what happens next. Irrespective of my position on wanting a special election I should still be afforded the same information as any other applicant so this tells me nobody is being told anything.
And to circle back to why this is so ridiculous, City Hall is closed today so we won’t get any information until Monday, the day of the Nuff event and the day before the Special Meeting if we’re given information at that point. The corruption and/or incompetence was baked into the cake before this process was even started, hence the lobbying for and by prospective applicants *cough* Jan Flory *cough* before it even started.
I’ll keep you posted if anything changes but I’m guessing we’ll have a long weekend of behind the scenes wheeling and dealing with nothing given out for public consumption. So open. So Honest. So Transparent.
For full disclosure I have not spoken to or met with a single council member which should be pretty obvious as not a one would entertain me for council even were I serious. They aren’t even pretending very well at this point.
Neighbors United for Fullerton is bringing together some of OC’s most popular bloggers to talk about how blogs influence our city. Join FFFF, the Orange Juice Blog and a few others at the Fullerton Public Library on Monday at 6:45 pm for an event that promises to be at least interesting, and quite possibly explosive.
RSVP on Facebook if you can.
If avoiding specifics, dodging straight answers, and putting ignorance on public display were virtues, then the crop of 4th District supervisorial candidates at the NUFF forum were virtuous in the extreme.
An hour and half of questioning produced almost nothing in the way of inspired leadership and mostly cliched responses to pretty specific questions directed by the Register’s Jennifer Muir. They all agreed that north County was getting screwed on park funds (or lack of same), that yacht owners should pay something toward patrolling Newport Harbor, and that there was going to have to be a multi-tiered pension system in the future. Well, that’s just stating the obvious.
Here’s a brief and summation of the candidates and how they comported themselves.
1. Richard Faher. Incapable of constructing a concise, intelligent answer. If someone really wanted an excuse to get drunk they could do a Richard Faher Drinking Game and take a shot every time he starts a sentence with the word “okay.” Faher did provide the amusing highlight of the evening when he thanked “Friends for Fullerton” for putting on the event. Gee, you’re welcome, Richard!
2. Rose Espinosa. Despite the attempts by the Local Left to paint her as some sort of credible politician, she came across as, well, just plain dumb. And by dumb I mean a sack of door knobs kind of dumb. And ignorant. She appeared perfectly clueless about County issues and kept deferring to what others had said. She spoke in the lamest sort of generalities about every single question put to her. She repeatedly referred to getting her information from her city manager, and that’s bad. She talked about “collaboration” several times. Ouch.
3. Shawn Nelson. Came across as pretty articulate and knowledgeable about the ongoing harbor patrol budget scandal. His statements about getting County government smaller and less intrusive was cliched stuff right out of the GOP playbook, but his comments about why the Clerk/Recorder performs marriage ceremonies was right on. He also may have surprised some by his observation that the County’s current lawsuit against the Deputy Sheriff’s retroactive pension spike was a sure loser, and that he would share information on-line about all meetings with lobbyists. But he dodged answering the specific question about supporting regulating those lobbyists.
Nelson also took credit for courage in supporting Sharon Quirk to be mayor of Fullerton. That elicited snickers from many of the NUFFsters and maybe even from Pam Keller who was sitting toward the back of the room.
4. Tom Daly. He appeared to have popped too many quaaludes before the program, but maybe that’s just his style. He talked a lot about all that he got done as mayor of Anaheim, perhaps hoping that the NUFFsters were unaware that the Anaheim mayor is simply one of five votes. He appeared to be the the most knowledgeable about the way the County government is actually constituted, but that sort of familiarity comes with a price tag: career politician; and it did not produce any inspired ideas of reform, restructuring or right-sizing.
Daly took some oblique shots at Chris Norby for failing to deliver park funds which was fun because Norby was hovering in the back of the room like the amiable chorus in an Aristophanes comedy. Whether Norby was even paying attention is unknown, though unlikely.
At the end Daly rolled out his big guns. 1) He was opening his satellite office in Fullerton on Sunday, Feb. 14 to perform bureaucrat weddings (no mention about paying employees overtime to do it); 2) he had worked out a deal with the Lincoln Library to host a road show of Old Abe memorabilia. This produced some chuckles later in the FFFF editorial room as we recalled our post on Daly and another dead Republican.
5 & 6. Harry Sidhu and Lorri Galloway both took a powder. They were not missed. Their presence would no doubt have simply added another half an hour to an already pretty depressing evening. Still, credit to the NUFFsters for putting the event together, and shame on Sidhu and Galloway for blowing it off. Were they afraid of having to deal with the carpetbagging issue, or just their inability to talk cogently about bedeviling County problems? They needn’t have worried.
The other day we mentioned the 4th District Supervisor candidate forum sponsored by Neighbors United for Fullerton (NUFF) held tonight at the Fullerton Main Library.
The Register’s Jennifer Muir is the moderator and has posted a piece about the event, here. Apparently two of the would-be Supes aren’t going to be there; and coincidentally both – Harry Sidhu and Lorri Galloway are carpetbaggers. Harry is pretending that he lives in a crummy pink stucco tenement behind the Linbrook Bowl; Lorri that she lives in an old relocated house converted to professional use on the busy corner of Lincoln Avenue and East Street.
Harry’s a no show.
Sidhu’s excuse for skipping the event is pretty standard: out of town on business. Galloway, on the other hand refuses to attend because the filing deadline hasn’t arrived and and she says one of the candidates may not be running! She asks for a re-schedule after the deadline!
Galloway is used to having people bend over backwards to accommodate her, but she can’t be serious. Does she really want to reschedule? Or could it really be that she’s not quite sure how to handle the carpetbagging and residency issues that her political ambitions have created; and that she has such a feeble grasp of County issues that she wants to avoid humiliating herself. Come to think of it, Harry won’t be able to bring his ghost writer with him and he could be in for a rough time improvisation-wise.
Either way, north Orange Countians are going to miss an opportunity that Anaheim council watchers enjoy twice a month: to actually see Sidhu and Galloway in action. Apparently the show is entertaining.
The other day I got wind that something called NUFF was holding a forum involving 4th District Supervisor candidates. What’s that you say? You have never ever heard of NUFF? I googled NUFF and got the National Uterine Fibroids Foundation. Then I added the word “Fullerton;” success! Neighbors United For Fullerton.
Turns out the group is a left-leaning tribe of Fullerton Observer adherents, and they are sponsoring a Supervisorial forum next Monday night at 6:45 at the Fullerton Main Library. Shawn Nelson, Tom Daly, Rose Espinosa, Lorri Galloway and Harry Sidhu have been invited by the NUFFsters. The latter two may need directions from their brand-new abodes in flat-lands Anaheim if in fact they have actually relocated their bodies, and not just their voter registration, to run for 4th Distrct County Supervisor.
The Register’s Jennifer Muir is slated to be the moderator, and a drearier job I can’t imagine. I wonder if she’ll bring up the carpetbagging issue. Let’s hope so.
Anyway, the forum could be great fun as voters plumb the depths of these candidates’ ignorance of County matters. Hell, Galloway can’t even figure out how to check with her own Planning Department to resolve an Anaheim zoning question!