How Awful and Corrupt is the Fullerton Downtown Core and Corridor Special Project?
Please let me count the ways as follows: by Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson
1- It is an undemocratic power grab by one unelected bureaucrat, City Manager Joe (I want to be king)Felz.
2- It turns the power to vote on individual development projects from the city council with the requirement to allow public comments prior to any vote, to one unelected man, City Manager Joe (I want to be emperor) Felz.
3- No honest elected city council majority would ever consider giving away their power to decide on numerous future development projects throughout much of the city to an unelected bureaucrat, City Manager Joe (I want to be a dictator) Felz.
4- If you think traffic is bad now wait until you add another 50,000 or more residents with no additional roads or lanes to existing roads. If you do not believe me than look at the million-dollar plan documents. The only traffic improvement called for in the plan is adding one or two roundabouts on Wilshire Avenue.
5- Who do you think might benefit from this project if passed?
May I suggest to you that Council member Jennifer Fitzgerald (who is also the Vice President of Curt Pringle and Associates)
and her boss along with a host of developers who will be knocking at our City Manager’s door?
Jennifer Fitzgerald became Vice President of Curt Pringle & Associates only after her election to the council
If Ms. Fitzgerald does not recuse herself from this vote, I think rather than recalling her we should just laugh her out of town. It is my understanding that we can thank Curt Pringle and Associates for promoting that $194 million neon light elephant known as the new Anaheim Regional Transportation Center.
The $194 million dollar people mover missing the people. Build it and they will come.
It has been built for high speed rail that will probably never come to Orange County in our life times and designed to handle 10,000 commuters a day while only up to 900 people a day currently use said station. Did someone say a big waste of taxpayer monies?
Maybe if these cats would lay off the restaurant food, they wouldn’t need so much of this.
6- I of course have not yet mentioned the concern as to where the needed water will come from for all those additional residents.
….under a chemtrailed sky, a crowd has gathered…….
It would seem that the City of Fullerton motto must be that no matter how bad the times are for you and me, there is never a bad time to get more money (tax money) for themselves.
Good times come to me now.
After all 80% of every dime in tax money that represents the General Fund, does not go for our streets or our decaying sewers and water system.
Fullerton’s ground water replenishment system -patent pending. The entire city with its hundreds of center mile streets will soon be part of a special assessment district. This revolutionary aquifer recharging rainwater collection program perfected by our public works department will be the model for the entire nation as a solution to the lingering pension crisis and ongoing drought .
It goes to our friends at city hall for their salaries and benefits. We get the crumbs that are remaining. Yet for Joe Felz and his merry men and women of Fullerton Forest they are eager to take even more from the poor citizens of Fullerton to make sure their stomachs are full and their retirements are merry.
I have reported and now you can add your own additional reasons this would be a very, very bad idea.
No Jennifer, you work for us. Tell uncle Joe he does too.
#1 by Barry Levinson on February 11, 2016 - 12:01 pm
Please note that the 80% of taxpayer monies going to salaries and benefits from our General Fund was before the very recent 6% raises for our police and fire and the addition of 5 new police officers. It seems that without a great increase in tax monies to the city that 80% figure will be going up. If it hits 90%, I suggest shutting down the city since its job is only to feed itself and at the very same time starve the community of all necessary infrastructure maintenance and improvements.
Way to go city council, Mayor Fitzgerald and City Manager Joe Felz. If you get what you want you will be well on your way to destroying a once great place to live and work, to support the greed of the special interests that you so ably represent.
#2 by Reality Is..... on February 11, 2016 - 9:53 pm
Clarify your figures Barry. I don’t see what you are saying. I’ve always seen that salaries and benefits are in the 60% range. Ending 2015 was 78 of 163. You must be right because you are always right, just want to know where my numbers were off last year.
#3 by Anon on February 12, 2016 - 6:11 am
You sound like the Fullerton Sheepleherder in search of his sheeple.
#4 by Fullerton Lover on February 12, 2016 - 8:33 am
Reality Is,
I double dog dare you to go the speed limit on ANY one of these pot hole infested streets in Fullerton, and see if your back and the front end of your car go out of alignment?
While your pondering which one of them hurts more, ask yourself how you would feel about our taxes that were supposed to repair these streets and maintain our parks are both being neglected to feed a trough of public employees who treat those of us who actually pay their salaries with contempt?
#5 by Reality Is..... on February 16, 2016 - 10:25 am
I drive them daily. They are almost perfect compared to many other cities and especially Los Angeles. You driven those lately? I hear what you are saying but I also see the same thing throughout the state. You want Fullerton to be the one city in the state to do things differently. You want them to cut the pensions of their cops, pay them a measly wage, give them no raises ever, and then you expect that police force to perform at a level higher than now. You wouldn’t have a police force to start with, and you would have the Sheriff’s department. Look at cities that have gone to the Sheriff’s, both LA and Orange Counties, and look at their bids coming into those cities and how much their services cost now. They end up more than they were paying for their own police forces. Cities are run almost identical statewide. They run them by the League of Cities playbook. If you want something completely off the line and new and different, that’s fine but you have to buy your way into the council like Tony Bushala did and then have your people survive and stick to your orders, which isn’t what happened with Tony B. His people like Bruce turned their backs on Tony, and Travis opened his mouth quickly with something off the wall and off the line, and he was run out of town quicker than he came in. So I see what you are saying, I just don’t think it’s possible and feasible.
#6 by Fullerton Lover on February 16, 2016 - 12:19 pm
Not one word of truth in any of what you said.
I honestly don’t think you’d recognize the truth if it bit you in the ass.
Whether you realize it or not, it’s going to be a lot harder to buy the city council, along with the appointments that go with it, once district elections are in place.
#7 by Reality Is.... on February 16, 2016 - 8:56 pm
LOL just like that? Standard Democratic response. You are just wrong. Just wrong. You are just wrong LOL
I speak truths and reality. Always.
We shall see. When will that be? Supreme court? That wont’ happen now anytime soon.
#8 by Fullerton Lover on February 17, 2016 - 6:16 am
Why would you be waiting for the Supreme Court knucklehead?
You needn’t look further than Anaheim to see how far away district elections are from occurring here in Fullerton.
#9 by Fullerton Lover on February 17, 2016 - 6:31 am
FYI…
How did you NOT see this one coming?
Should have been paying attention to the Pitcher as long as your in the batter’s box.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/02/10/57366/five-changes-for-anaheim-now-that-district-electio/
#10 by Fullerton Lover on February 17, 2016 - 8:40 am
I sure hope the apple falls REALLY far from the tree…
Papa Perry…
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2011/the-joyride-from-hell-another-victim-of-fullerton-police-violence-comes-forward/
Tori Thayer and Danielle Riedl are
Fullerton Police Department’s newest
officers. The two graduated from the
OC Sheriff ’s Regional Training
Academy on January 14 at the top of
their classs. Both worked at police agencies
beginning in their late teens. They
represent two of the 14 female officers in
the department of 145 officers.
Thayer, who grew up in Yorba Linda
and served as a cadet at the Fullerton PD
from 2011 to 2013, is the sixth police
officer in her family. She graduated from
CSUF in May 2015 with a bachelor’s
degree in public administration.
#11 by Reality Is..... on February 17, 2016 - 9:42 am
Maybe because I’m more in touch with reality that you are? Just a thought? That I pay attention to how things actually play out rather than how I dream they might play out?
This case is now stalled and will go back to the state decision with the recent death.
Play ball buddy.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-supreme-court-election-districts-20151208-story.html
#12 by Anonymous on February 16, 2016 - 7:54 pm
Just watched Imbriano and Levinson at it again at Council. Just curious what chance you think Imbriano has at unseating Council members Flory or Fitzgerald. He sure has a big head for a little guy.
#13 by Fullerton Resident on February 17, 2016 - 8:44 am
“Just watched Imbriano and Levinson at it again at Council.”
What Anonymous means is that Imbriano and Levinson told the truth, educated the public and stood up to our council that despicably represents special interests over the interests of the people of Fullerton.
If we had more Imbriano’s and Levinson’s Fullerton would be 100% better off.
Please tell us Anonymous why the good people of Fullerton should support College Town and the Downtown Core and Corridor Special Plan. We can’t wait to hear your lucid thoughts on those subjects.
#14 by Reality Is..... on February 17, 2016 - 9:42 am
Odds in Vegas are now being offered at 1000 to 1. So he has as much of a shot as Joe and Barry have at running Chief Danny out of town. Zero.
#15 by Fullerton Lover on February 17, 2016 - 10:13 am
Kind of like watching the debates, and seeing the public employee’s lapdog, Hillary Clinton, and an Independent soul like Bernie Sanders, mix it up.
Or even the Donald telling the established right what they REALLY need to hear, instead of what they’d like to hear.
Love every minute of watching the wheels come off of the highly orchestrated, and finely tuned political wagons of the Bushes and the Clinton’s candidacies by nothing more than the voices and the will of the people that seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, from their candidates.