Fullerton’s corrupt city government tried to pass COLLEGE TOWN last year-an ill conceived corrupt East Fullerton plan to pack Cal State Fullerton with ten thousand more students on financial aid and out of state tuition rates in new apartments that no one will be able to afford unless the government is paying for them. They need the high priced enrollees to pay for the massive deficit that Cal State Fullerton is facing in terms of its payroll and benefit obligations. The solution is simple. Build upwards of 4000 ten story apartment units and fill them with students who will fetch three times the tuition rate. Yes fill the classrooms and apartments to the brim and sell the seats to the highest bidders. Guess who will be picking up the tab? Yes import 10,o00 more students that the government will pay three times the tuition as residents, that will edge out your children’s ability to attend and build them free housing that the government will pay for. Nice example of how your taxes are being used to screw you over and ruin your neighborhood. Folks that is what corrupt government does. Fullerton is run by corrupt people. Look no further than our roads.
The College Town plan calls for the closure of a freeway off ramp, the closure of Nutwood east of State College all the while to put in ten story buildings adding 4000 apartments. They will bulldoze Big Lots, Smart and Final, the 99 cent store, all the fast food restaurants east of State College and leave East Fullerton with no grocery stores and they expect us to take this laying down? The planning commission tried to pass the DCCSP a few years ago that would have lined hundreds of acres with 10 story high rise housing adding upwards of 100,000 more people to Fullerton. We stopped that too. Look folks, you cant make this stuff up. You have no idea how close this town came to looking like gridlocked Glendale a few years back while most of you were asleep.
The DCCSP, College Town, and other schemes are alive and well ladies and gentlemen. They are just on ice for now and in some cases, one vote away from adding 100,000 people to this town. Fullerton is an Agenda 21 city with a Curt Pringle lobbyist named Jennifer Fitzgerald developer operative running around masquerading as our Mayor ladies and gentlemen. Wake the heck up people. Fitzgerald needs to go along with all the establishment hacks like Royce, Nelson, Bennett, Seaborn and Whitaker that put her there and give her pass after pass because they all have their hands in on all of this Kabuki theater on the council that is destroying Fullerton. College Town is coming back folks and they are going to ram this down your throats if you don’t get mad as hell and wake up. The City is ONCE AGAIN SEEKING INPUT ON THIS MONSTROSITY SO THIS MEANS IT IS TIME TO GET BUSY.
Well I warned you folks that this plan was going to be on ice and be resurrected at some point in the future. That old Planning Commission may have put it down temporarily but it is now going to be brought back. I fought hard against this nightmare last year and we were granted a reprieve but only for a short time.
The new council has stacked the deck on the planning commission with pro-development rubber stamps.
We have a new planning commission and the ones installed to rubber stamp these line items will do just that. I warned them last month not to bring these items back. Well, they are going to push the envelope once again. I told them to not even think about it back in February. They don’t care. They were handpicked for a reason folks and that reason is to get projects through.
This massively destructive development for our beloved East Fullerton neighborhoods is headed back to the table. Well it is time to wake up folks. The city council will pass this nightmare when it is brought before them.
Curt Pringle is Jennifer Fitzgerald’s boss. Fitzgerald, Chafee, Seaborn, Silva and Whitaker all installed big development hacks to the planning commission back in January and Fitzgerald and Whitaker both took developer money during the last election.
The Upcoming College Town Proposal for Fullerton and Why It Deserves to be Voted Down
Quite frankly I was hoping to hear some positives for the citizens of Fullerton as it relates to the College Town proposal. Charles Kovacs provided the presentation of the project at a Park and Recreation Committee meeting. It was a Receive and File item, i.e. no recommendation of the project was sought from the committee by the city.
You see I had heard a number of negative issues relating to project such as additional traffic and a loss of a major thru street, Nutwood, and the associated on ramp from that street to the 57 Freeway.
Anyone who has lived in Fullerton for the last few decades knows that traffic has gotten progressively worse. As the city’s population and multi-story buildings have increased, the city has failed to keep up with its road system and its road maintenance as well. The results are that it now takes twice as long to drive across town as it did a mere decade ago.
Therefore, when another major building project gets announced, which includes reducing street access rather than improving our streets, one has to look at this with a jaundiced eye.
However, to be fair I hoped Mr. Kovacs would provide additional information about the project that would highlight some real positives for the city and also some major street improvement plans to handle the additional cars that would be added to our existing roads.
Well the positives that Mr. Kovacs provided our committee frankly were less than impressive. In fact in my opinion, they were almost nonexistent. Namely, a few new restaurants, (which based on past restaurants in the area I expect would be dominated by more fast food joints and a relatively small new grassy space where part of Nutwood Avenue used to be.
What Is The City Manager Thinking?
So if there are real negatives about the project such as greatly increased traffic and very few if any real positives for the people of Fullerton, why is the city pushing for this project so heavily? The one word answer is this…MONEY! All the city has to do is to keep approving high-rise buildings and the money desperately needed to bail out the city for past and current overspending and mismanagement comes rolling in.
You see that for every dwelling unit, no matter how small, each developer must pay an upfront Park dwelling unit fee of…$11,700. The College Town Plan calls for 3,400 residential units plus commercial and retail space as well. The 3,400 units alone, represents $39,780,000 (3,400 residential units x $11,700/per unit) in additional fees/taxes to the city. When our existing road system is already overburdened, you do not have to be a traffic engineer to know that adding thousands of additional cars will only make our traffic problems much worse. In addition to the increased number of cars, the closing of an important access to the 57 Freeway will only add to the traffic and congestion problem.
What out of control spending you may ask?
A $200 million unfunded pension liability/deficit (conservative estimate) and additional millions in retiree health care deficits. On top of all this, the city council with the votes of Fitzgerald, Flory and Chaffee last June 16, 2015approved a $2.8 million 2-year city budget deficit. They then later that year approved to spend additional millions in the form of a 6% raise to begin at the start of the new contracts for our safety workers. This does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars needed over the next decade to deal with our dilapidated roads, sewers and water pipes.
But not to worry because Council member Fitzgerald stated at the June 16, 2015 meeting the following: “And if it were not for the state increasing our PERS Rate we would have a balanced budget today.” How incredibly misleading of our current Mayor to make that statement? I say that because she strongly infers that the PERS rate increase was not at all caused by the city council but by the state. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The large PERS rate increase for the city, i.e. the taxpayers, was primarily caused by a previous vote in 2002 by a past Fullerton city council (including Ms. Flory), to retroactively greatly increase the Safety pension benefits to the current 3% a year at 50 years of age with a minimum of 30 years of service or a whopping 90% pension benefit for life. Ms. Fitzgerald is either greatly misinformed as to the cause of the PERS Rate increase or is not being honest with the people of Fullerton.
Council member Fitzgerald at the same June 16, 2016 meeting thought that the Park dwelling fee increase from $10,600 to $11,700 per dwelling unit was reasonable because the rate had been the same since 2008. This was the same thing we, the Parks and Recreation Committee were told by Director Curiel. Had I known the whole story, I would have been against this $1,100 dollar increase. What Ms. Fitzgerald and Director Curiel failed to mention to the Council and P and R Committee, respectively was that in 2008 that same fee was raised from $3,827 dollars to the aforementioned $10,600 dollars for an incredible 206% rate increase year over year.
It would seem that the goal of the majority of our city leaders is to collect vast sums of additional revenue in the form of additional fees and taxes so that the city does not have to reform the pensions as promised us and make other tough decisions going forward.
The Fullerton special interests win big and the citizens of Fullerton loose big. But you thought the city council and the city manager worked for the citizens. Well unfortunately, apparently not this city council and not this city manager.
#1 by Anonymous on March 29, 2017 - 8:30 am
This is a disaster for Raymond Hills. The traffic is already horrendous over there.
#2 by Wendy on March 30, 2017 - 8:12 am
I think this is a great idea for our community. This will bring more students who can contribute to our community and local economy. They will not need cars as they can live on campus. What is there not to like about projects such as this? Nutwood ave is not even a very busy street.
#3 by roger on March 30, 2017 - 11:32 am
There is reasonably good bus service, but that is a poor substitute for light rail on a dedicated right of way connecting CSUF with Fullerton and its Transportation Center, with ARCTiC, with other urban centers.