The Scandal, Which Is The Hillcrest Stairs, Was Never Mentioned By Anyone On The Fullerton City Council Dais. The City Council has failed to take any action to get monetary damages from the contractor and designer of those stairs and has also failed to start an internal investigation as to who within the City of Fullerton approved that very shoddy and structurally substandard stairway. Therefore we can thank Mayor Bruce Whitaker, Council members Greg Sebourn, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Doug Chaffee and Jesus Silva for another fine example of their total dereliction of duty as our duly elected city representatives. For truly with elected representative like them, we don’t need any more enemies. By Barry Levinson
Fullerton Community activist Barry Levinson
Why won’t the council protect us? Why won’t the council act in our best interest? Could it be that to expose the guilty would expose our council members as well? Joshua Ferguson gave a very good pictorial presentation of the numerous problems but has not asked that our City council take action against those responsible for the many problems with those very expensive stairs.
Joshua cozying up with Bruce Whitaker
Why? He actually spoke again at the June 6th meeting and did not once even refer to those stairs? What he did do was give the city council members another way to extend their ability to continue to not provide the citizens of Fullerton with its basic services from the General Fund.
Seaborn
Instead I would surmise working in tandem with Greg Sebourn and Bruce Whitaker,
Ferguson
Ferguson proposed diverting or siphoning off much need park dwelling fee monies away from the desperately needed expansion of greening up Fullerton with more parks. How is that a good idea?
Sebourn thinks its a good idea
The fact is the neglect of these parks has been covered up for years and now, right on cue Greg Sebourn made a motion to put just that on the agenda.
No explanation as to why for decades are city has not provided adequate funds from our general fund to do routine maintenance for our parks but willing to rob from Paul to give to Peter instead thereby not having to answer to the malfeasance of our city council for decades of neglect of our city parks. This is not acceptable considering Greg promised to do a top down audit of all city departments when he was elected in 2012.
Then there is the scandalous issue of those Hillcrest Park stairs to be received and filed in the dustbin of our city council.
CODE VIOLATIONS GALORE that should have resulted in a lawsuit and pink slips for the inspectors that signed off on them
Fitzgerald loves the shoddy workmanship
Well I heard directly from the mouth of our Appointed Mayor in a recent interview, Bruce Whitaker, who is no stranger to ignoring alleged malfeasance, who without hesitating to the interviewer’s question stated that he would seriously consider running for Josh Newman’s seat if the recall makes the ballot.
TAX AND SPEND DEMOCRAT NEWMAN
I have a loud and strong message for Bruce Whitaker. How about taking care of at least one of our many problems here in Fullerton before you seek higher office?
Whitaker
Because I find it ludicrous and very arrogant on your part to think that you deserve to be elected to higher office when you have accomplished literally nothing after 6.5 years as one of our council members. You have repeatedly cried to the public that you are only one man and therefore do not have the support to get things accomplished. Well here are some hard facts for Whitaker to swallow. The whole time you have been on the city council you have had a REPUBLICAN MAJORITY SIR!
6 YEARS OF FAILURE TO LEAD
In the State Senate the Democrats would outnumber you 2 to 1. If you can’t persuade your fellow Republicans to get anything done having the majority on your side, how in the heck will you possibly get anything done in the State Senate? I have given Fullertonians written detailed supportable example after example after example of how Whitaker has failed his conservative limited government base of support. The latest example is of Whitaker’s failure to take any concrete steps; pun intended to solve the obvious problem of Hillcrest Park steps! As I have pointed out before our Mayor is all talk and no action. In other words a typical slick phony politician out for only number one. I guess that means leaving no room for the good people of Fullerton.
#1 by Anup on June 8, 2017 - 10:02 am
My hat goes off to both of you fine gentlemen for stating the obvious repeatedly on this site. Barry your analysis is spot on. It is patently obvious that the entire council has no intention of protecting anyone but themselves.
There is plenty of time for the citizens to seek recourse, perhaps after a recall or even the next election. California law is rather generous in terms of construction defects. The Hillcrest stairs are rich indeed.
The behavior of the council in the face of this scandal is deeply disturbing. Their actions in continuing to ignore this could easily be construed as negligence; seriously putting the municipality in legal hot water. It is merely a matter of time before someone is seriously injured at that facility. In terms of the council’s breach of fiduciary responsibility, it began at or on the May 16, 2017 meeting when Mr. Ferguson put them on notice.
The mayor’s refusal to address or act on this matter is in clear violation of his code of ethics. I would push the issue. I believe Fitzgerald would be hog tied in ethics violations as well considering her donor list. In addition, a good case for an F.P.P.C. violation could be made given the circumstances.
At any rate, your quest for legal action against the contractor and disciplinary actions against city inspectors is well founded. No professional, licensed city inspector should ever be allowed to sign off on such a defective project.
For California Construction: The statute of limitations is 4 years from substantial completion of construction or construction of improvement to real property arising out of a patent defect, 10 years from substantial completion for a latent defect. This doesn’t apply to actions based on willful misconduct or fraudulent concealment.
Ca. Civ. Proc. Code § 337.1, 337.15.
The political games people play can result in innocent people sustaining serious injury. Mr. Ferguson stopped short of demanding some sort of action which makes no logical sense. Equally perplexing is Mr. Whitaker’s silence as mayor. Forget the allegations that they are, in some capacity, working together. The time to act is now. The courts are really bogged down and with all the cuts to the system, it could take years to resolve this matter. We cannot afford to wait until then.