Official Bad Acts By Fullerton Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald Should No Longer Be Ignored By The Fullerton Public. (Why are so many of the main issues and solutions ignored by all council members; Bruce Whitaker, Greg Sebourn, Doug Chaffee, Jan Flory and of course our Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald?) By Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson
September 20th, 2016, there was another eventful meeting of the Fullerton City Council. Once again Mayor Fitzgerald exhibited behavior that proves she is unfit to represent us. She lost her cool simply because another council member rightly asked that the questions and concerns about a grant application for funds to buy open land in West Coyote Hills be answered by city staff.
Jennifer Fitzgerald became Vice President of Curt Pringle & Associates only after her election to the council
Mayor Fitzgerald obviously would be much more comfortable in a non-democratic venue where she was never held to account at official government meetings. The public mentioned twice that the language on the Fullerton City Council Agenda states that it wants the public to participate in the decision making of city business and welcomes questions from that same public. Yet Mayor Fitzgerald when asked if any of those public questions would be responded to got upset and angry.
Let us review the behavior of Mayor Fitzgerald in the last few months as follows:
First she states that she along with unelected City Manager Joe Felz felt the need to fix the rules of behavior by the public at city council meeting with her new rules of civility to include giving the city the right to remove anyone from the council chambers for the “heinous crime” of “polite clapping”.
Then she states more than once that there was no truth that the city was in favor of putting up apartments in the shopping center currently inhabited by Polly’s Pies. Yet at a recent previous Planning Committee meeting the city proposed and recommended a Revised DCCSP plan that including expanding the zoning for 6 retail/commercial properties including the one where Polly’s Pies is located to allow for mixed-use development. Mixed-use development means putting small retail shops on a ground floor of a multi-story apartment or condo development. This would have given the current landowner the right without any future city zoning approval to add hundreds of apartments and remove most if not all of the current retail shops.
Beloved Polly’s Pies could still close to make way for massive highrise Section 8 housing project
Finally, she gets angry because she is asked to actually respond herself or have a city staff member respond to legitimate questions by the public.
It is clear from the statements above, that Mayor Fitzgerald has problems with the following:
The public’s right to know,
The public’s right to participate,
The public’s right to politely clap and
The public’s right to know when the city is trying to make it easier for large-scale high-rise development by way of a zoning change for six major retail/commercial properties.
In conclusion, Mayor Fitzgerald showed a lack of interest in participatory democracy.
P.S. It is so sad that once again the disagreements between Whitaker and Fitzgerald missed the most important points. Namely,that the 4 to 5 million dollars of on-gong net revenue loss over a 20 year period (starting in 2010) related to agreements covering the Fullerton Golf Course, which I disclosed in writing in detail to the entire council in the beginning of the year has been buried by them. It was buried without the Mayor or the person who appointed me, Council member Whitaker asking me one single solitary question on this extremely important issue. I am a trained auditor with over 25 years auditing experience with
It was buried without the Mayor or the person who appointed me, Council member Whitaker asking me one single solitary question on this extremely important issue. I am a trained auditor with over 25 years auditing experience with a MBA with Honors from Boston University. But Bruce is very good at bringing up relatively smaller points with the help of certain of his supporters and then losing 4 to 1.
Bruce playing ball with uncle Joe
He spoke out because the grant application was not part of the package of information. But the real problem, which would make a difference going forward, he ignored. That was the fact that both grant application items needed to be approved last night or so the city said, or the grant deadline would be missed. What needed to be said by Whitaker or anyone else is the following: Why do you bring us agenda items at the very last minute?
Happy days are here again… for some
They should always be brought to the city council at least three weeks before any deadlines. This would allow for the ability to get more information and then bring it back for a vote at the next council meeting.
But the city I believe does this purposely, to not allow for such additional scrutiny. Just another example that proves how very corrupt is the Fullerton City Government. I have to assume that all members of the city council are fine with these items being on the agenda at the 11th hour because they all knew the facts as disclosed at the council meeting but refused to address this very real problem.
#1 by Barry Levinson on September 23, 2016 - 2:01 am
The public and presumably the council learns that both grant application agenda items must be passed that night to meet the deadline for the grant and not one council member seems to have a problem with this.
They all let the city run by City Manager Joe Felz get away with these last minute presentations. What does this tell you about Joe Felz and about all our council members? How convenient when a council member and/or the public asks for more details and the answer they get is that it is not available and will not be made available before the grant application deadline. Sorry council and public, we can’t provide you this information because we intentionally agendized this item at the 11th hour and conveniently did not provide you with the necessary details to make an informed decision on this item.
Questions that need to be answered.
What is the city hiding from the public?
1) What does the city not want the public to know about this agenda item?
2) Why has this city council allowed the city manager to not require his staff to present all agenda items with the necessary documentation and in a timely fashion?
3) Why is the city not required to present all agenda items with a deadline at least 3 weeks prior to that deadline date? This would give the council time to ask for a continuance to the next meeting wherein the city staff would provide any and all additional information requested by any and all council members.
4) Why is no one on the Fullerton City Council really looking out for the public?
5) Why are all our council members either corrupt, incompetent or or cowardly or some combination of all three?
The last three question are for all Fullertonians.
6) How long are the citizens of Fullerton going to put up with this nonsense by our City of Fullerton government?
7) What would happen at your job if you provided a very important package to your boss at the very last minute that was incomplete and you could not provide him or her the necessary information prior to the drop dead date? Yes, you would face severe consequences.
8) What would happen if you did this regularly? You would no longer be employed by that company.
What happens at the Fullerton City Council? It is business as usual!