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 Barry Levinson on June 8, 2017 - 11:02 am
Anup thank you for your kind words, thoughtful analysis and information on construction defects.
Mr. Ferguson is a major contributor to the FFFF website, writing many articles since their return after the last election. ((That fact is very telling that a political blog would resume immediately after the 2016 election (where 3 out of 5 council seats were to be decided) and not before)).
Tony Bushala has directly and indirectly given Bruce Whitaker tens of thousand of dollars in campaign contributions and/or campaign mailers for Bruce Whitaker. I think any logical and reasonable person has to consider Ferguson’s failure to hold Whitaker or Sebourn accountable (both supported by T.B.) more than just a coincidence.
Ferguson is one of only a few writers that actually will put his real name to those articles for FFFF. In fact, a majority of the articles are published with only the use of pseudonyms.
This is a huge tip off that the FFFF can’t be trusted to provide objective, honest reporting. The FFFF administration obviously has no problem with allowing writers of their articles to remain anonymous. You can’t hold someone accountable when you do not know their name.
We here at the Fullertoninformer.com require that 100% of the articles written proudly display who penned that article. My humble opinion is that if the person writing articles doesn’t believe it is worth it for him/her to identify themselves to the readers then the readers should not feel it is worth their time to read those anonymously written articles.
#2 by Anonymous on June 8, 2017 - 11:23 am
Then why to you post comments under a fake name, Barry?
Hypocrite, front and center.
#3 by Tony's tools on June 9, 2017 - 2:34 am
Larry Bennett was right all along. The recall was all about a downtown businessman developer wanting it his way while fooling all of the emotionally charged masses. The site he founded, Friends for Fullertons Future is a political shill mill for Bushala’s political operatives that carry his water. Of course his ulterior motive is to use the politics of the day to get HIS people into office to do his bidding.
The FFFF MO is to hand out 4 year passes to crooked politicians who will grease the skids for the 10 story developments all over Tony’s dumps. They like to twist facts, lie, defame, divert and make wild accusations about people who expose the things that shatter the false illusions of our so called fiscal heroes they glorify like Whitaker and Sebourn. Bushala’s FFFF uses feebly minded, financially challenged, sycophantic lackeys to run worship ceremonies and interference for the phony conservative corrupt city hall insiders. They are all about diversions instead of demanding accountability.
Ferguson’s latest pie in his face by Greg and Bruce ignoring the stair scandal is still caked on his beard. FFFF is the ultimate in low class, sleazy political Kabuki theater. That is a recurrent theme and it is all about keeping everyone’s eye off of the ball, which is Bushala’s big development payday he has invested at least a half a million dollars trying to hit. Alas to no avail thanks to Barry knocking the DCCSP off the table. Every single one of the FFFF Bushala lackey operatives that have ever had a major issue of contention with a city issue has eventually walked away from the dais with their tail between their legs never to discuss it again. In the meantime, Bushala enters influencing State level politics as he anxiously awaits model state legislation that will do an end run around local impediments to developing high density housing on his property.
The new “work force housing” bill will provide the opportunity in a longer time frame for Tony to build thousands of units on the parcels that comprise his 40 million dollar real estate portfolio in downtown Fullerton. He was the father of Fullerton’s transit oriented development namely the SOCO walk. His plan is to wharehouse tens of thousands of bar and pot clinic patron apartment dwellers in his high rises as they spend all their money and time ruining Fullerton making some really dirty people very wealthy.
#4 by Manure on June 9, 2017 - 12:59 pm
Wow.
This makes you look strong. Like bull.
#5 by Bushalas agenda with the Norby connection on June 9, 2017 - 1:22 pm
Don’t let these guys fool anyone. Its all about development-PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT-
THEY HATED REDEVELOPMENT BECAUSE THEY COULDN’T CONTROL IT. THAT IS WHY POT PUSHING NORBY HATED REDEVELOPMENT SO HE COULD SET UP HIS CRONIES FOR PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT.
REMEMBER THIS?
“I recently met the developer of the Socowalk project, Tony Bushala, in Fullerton. He had an interesting tale to tell about Socowalk. He said that he started to buy the properties involved in that project piecemeal and eventually he had 26 lots. That included an abandoned Union Pacific Right of Way and surplus property from the Harbor Blvd. and Lemon St. grade separation – these were leftover remnants.
The area was clearly blighted, but Bushala saw the potential. His vision for the area was a transit-oriented development. The original development concept for the area began in 1985. It took twenty years to see it through.
The Socowalk project did not use any redevelopment money. It was fully funded by private money. Bushala bought the properties and conducted an EIR. The zoning was already for multi-family use. Six homes were deemed by the developer to have historical value and he paid to move them to other properties in town.
The developer gave relocation assistance that was not required to each of the residents in the project area. They were rental tenants and each of them received $3,500, in 2002, to relocate. Many of them used that money as down payments to purchase homes elsewhere.
Once the properties were razed the development was sold to the Olson Company. They then hired architects and designed the eventual development.
The “soco” aspct of “Socowalk” was the brainchild of Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby who previously served as a Fullerton Councilman. Norby, according to Bushala, was a big inspiration to pursue this development without resorting to help from the City of Fullerton.
A recent article in the O.C. Register slammed the Socowalk development and quoted a resident who was unhappy with crime in the area and with the fact that the locals don’t appear to be mixing with the Socowalk residents. However, according to Bushala, there are plenty of residents that love the neighborhood and are very happy to be living in downtown Fullerton.
There are numerous restaurants, bars and other venues within walking distance of Socowalk. The downtown Fullerton area is quite vibrant and filled with a diverse crowd of all ages most weekends and evenings.
I personally visited one of the downtown Fullerton bars a few weeks ago. It was quite a scene. That area used to be quite dead – and now it is thriving. Clearly this type of redevelopment can work – particularly when the public sector gets out of the way.”
#6 by Manure on June 9, 2017 - 2:20 pm
. . . And? This doesn’t say or prove anything.
Anyone else in this city you want to insult gratuitously behind your keyboard?
Such a big strong man.
#7 by fudge packer on June 10, 2017 - 5:38 pm
whats with the obsession with the backdoor products?
#8 by Anonymous on June 9, 2017 - 5:02 pm
All the tools are epic fails.