POLITICAL MACHINATIONS STARTING EARLY IN THE CITY OF FULLERTON
BARRY LEVINSON
It is more than 15 months until the November 2016 elections, yet it is clear that the political establishment is already making its move to make sure that those that play ball get on the political team.
No one who has run for city council in Fullerton has been and will continue to be more outspoken on all the issues that will impact the citizens of Fullerton than myself. I do not need to talk with political advisors or worry whether a particular position will do me more political good than harm. I could care less, because to much is at stake and it starts at the grass roots level in local towns and cities like my city of Fullerton.
Lately I have seen signs that the Fullerton Republican heavyweights are already setting up their candidates. How do you do this? You start attacking messengers of truth like myself who they fear might spoil their backroom plans. But politics is a very dirty business and unfortunately almost all political leaders in both major parties find people like myself who speak the truth as dangerous to their own agendas.
Be wary of the one trick pony.
We had one so-called conservative win election on the water issue. Not the brutal beating of Kelly Thomas; not the runaway pension and retiree pension benefits. Well the water issue came and went and the average homeowner in Fullerton got a 30 to 50 dollar refund for being ripped off for many, many years for many hundred’s if not thousands of dollars. Now they will raise your water rates because you are saving water as they have requested under the threat of major fines.
Now they want to pass the Downtown Core and Corridor Special Project that will give one unelected official, our city manager the right to approve 8 story buildings throughout much of the city without any input from either citizens or the city council. Why you may ask would they do this? It will mean millions of dollars in additional tax and fee revenue for the city. Therefore, no need for the city to rein in pension, retiree health care and salary costs. This will let the city government party continue unabated. 80% of our General Fund Revenues goes to salaries and benefits (79% went for the same when Detroit filed for bankrupcy). It has been that high for many years and the city refuses to address this central problem. But rather they sit in their offices thinking of ways to continue the gravy train and they came up with one called the Downtown Core and Corridor Special Project. This is the major issue facing Fullerton not College Town. For the record I have stated in the past and continue to be against College Town as it is currently constructed. Shutting down parts of Nutwood Avenue and shutting down the entrance to the 57 freeway will be bad for the citizens of this city and those that commute to the city as well.
However, the real cash cow, that our city leaders are literally salivating over is the Downtown Core and Corridor Project. This is the Project that they believe they have to pass to keep the gravy train of city government rolling along without any major cutbacks in city expenses.
The Water refund issue has come and gone without hardly a whimper. Now defeating College Town without a reformed Police department, without a reduction in the 80 percent of costs for salaries and benefits and without defeating the Downtown Core and Corridor Special Project will still leave the city in the same bad financial state with the same level of corruption as it is in today in my opinion. Downtown Core and Corridor if it passes will allow these titans of political theatre to push down the road all the financial reforms that would be necessary without its passage. They plan to do this with a water shortage and with no real improvement in our roads. Where is the water going to come from and how much more traffic can the people of Fullerton tolerate? The answer to this question is the following: They do not care about your lack of water and the sky rocketing costs for that scarce resource. They do not care about the horrible traffic congestion that they will have created by all the new 8 story high rises throughout the city. As long as the gravy train continues unabated they will be very happy indeed. This is sad but very true. They can try to prove me wrong by dropping the Downtown Core and Corridor Special Project completely. But I would not count on that happening.
Finally do not be fooled if they try to pass the Downtown Core and Corridor Special Project in several pieces. There is nothing good about that proposal and it must be stopped no matter how they try to make this pig of a project look pretty to the public.
We need leaders to speak out on all the major issues facing Fullertonians, not cherry picking one very safe issue that they think will get them elected.
Beware of the One Trick Pony candidates. History proves that they cannot be trusted to represent the city effectively.
I report, you decide.
P.S.
Please take note that those individuals who attack me personally for having the audacity and courage to speak the truth, rarely if ever take exception to the facts I present. Instead they resort to character assassination. Notice how many times they call me angry. I am not angry but genuinely concerned with the state of our City. The city establishment obfuscates the real problems of the city with multiple feel good presentations (usually having nothing to do with conducting the city’s business) each council meeting. These presentations (no matter how deserving the recipients may be) really demonstrate the city’s attempt to put a happy face on the ugly state of city affairs. They are all to glad to waste the public’s time at council meetings on items that have nothing to do with governing the city or fixing the city’s many problems. How very sad for the citizens of Fullerton. However, the very first proclamation made by our new Mayor Sebourn was to affirm a 30-minute limit for public comments. At the same time the council continues to add non-business related presentations to the agenda, they clamp down on the amount of time we the people can speak to them about our concerns. A council who puts the interests of the people first would not take this approach.
What the Fullerton Police Department along with all city council (with the one major exception being Bruce Whitaker) of the city attempted to do to me last fall was twofold. First recommend to the OC DA to indict me on unfounded misdemeanor charges and if that does not succeed at least they smeared my good name and reputation. I want to again thank Bruce Whitaker for having the courage to stand up against the forces of pure evil. He went up against the other council members and the Fullerton Police Chief, Dan Hughes by actually asking to see any evidence, which could substantiate these baseless charges, and reserving judgment until such time as that supposed evidence was brought forward. What happened was that the FPD had no evidence corroborating the charges, not even from the supposed victim herself. It is for that reason that the OC District Attorney denied the recommendation by Dan Hughes and the Fullerton Police Department
Question: If all those so-called conservative Republican Fullerton council members both past and present were actually true conservatives, why is this city in such terrible financial position with million dollar deficits and a huge multimillion dollar unfunded pension and retiree health care liabilities?
Answer: If they all were true conservatives and not mostly RINO’s, the city of Fullerton would be in much better financial shape with much better roads, sewers and water mains.
If you looked at the makeup of our city council over the last 30 years you would find that so-called conservatives had a majority throughout most if not all of those years. Yet the big city government express continued to grow and grow with the crowning achievement of embellishing the safety pensions to a whopping 90% of final year pay with 30 years of service at the ripe young age of 50! We were told at that time that this actual massive taxpayer giveaway would not cost the taxpayers a thin dime. It is this mind numbing totally false claim that allowed our council to pass these budget buster increases to our pensions. I disclose the facts and the truth to all of the readers, which gets me into trouble with not only the liberals but with the establishment Republicans who like to talk the conservative talk but walk and more importantly vote more often than not with their free spending liberal colleagues.
Again, I have presented the facts on how our city has gotten deeper and deeper in debt with the support of many so-called Republican council members. Just recently self proclaimed conservative council members Jennifer Fitzgerald and Greg Sebourn (recently appointed Mayor) voted with liberals Flory and Chaffee for a two-year budget with a total of 2.8 million dollars worth of deficits. I thought conservatives stood for limited government and balanced budgets.
It is long past the time those real conservatives in elected office and their supporters’ band together to reject their phony RINO colleagues.
If it is not working, does it not make sense to try another approach? As a rather bright man named Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.” I for one want different and more importantly better results for my city of Fullerton.
#1 by Slide To Facism, Police State on August 9, 2015 - 8:43 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=207&v=kTLqRdJLQxA