Barry Levinson
There are at least a half dozen major scandals in full view now playing out in Fullerton City Government. Yet our esteemed five-member city council (Mayor Bruce Whitaker and Jennifer Fitzgerald, Greg Sebourn, Doug Chaffee, and Jesus Silva) have all remained silent on each and every one of them. What a City Council?
Silva
Sebourn
Chaffee
Whitaker
Fitzpringle
Why are the City Attorney, Dick Jones,Interim Police Chief David Hinig* and our Interim City Manager Allan Roeder also being totally silent as well? Here is a partial list of the scandals going on right now as follows:
- City Attorney provided blatantly false information about a Fullerton city ordinance 3149, (the Fullerton Child Sex Offender Residency Restriction Act) and then used that to support and argue for its repeal. I disclosed to the city council and to the city attorney their “error” and what does the city attorney and all five council members do, they ignore the facts and me and vote to repeal a very good and sound law. It seems to me that California attorneys’ have been sanctioned or even disbarred for less.
- Then the city via the FPD and the Interim City Manager provides this false information to the Fullerton School District and they in turn send out via recorded phone message and emails to every parent in the district, a false assurance that the kids are still protected as if nothing has changed. Others and I then put them on direct notice of their “error” and yet they too have not corrected their blatantly false statement to the parents. Why not Superintendent Robert Pletka? The Fullerton School District Mission Statement states that safety of our students is a major goal of the FSD.
- Dan Hughes after being contacted by Joe Felz at approximately 2 AM gets a ride home by the FPD instead of following normal police procedure to arrest him for DUI and leaving the scene of an accident with damages. All five council members, new police chief, new city manager, long time City Attorney all have been completely silent on what I believe clearly demonstrates the corruption as well as a criminal conspiracy lead by Dan Hughes.
- The next scandal is the City Council voting to approve a Grant Application that was not yet produced by the City. But that did not stop our former now disgraced City Manager from putting this on the Agenda for approval and then to my astonishment being passed by the City Council. This is the equivalent of Approving a “blank check”. This is a total and complete abandonment of the City Council’s and the former City Manager’s collective fiduciary responsibilities. I came up with a simple and no cost solution going forward and every council member refused to take those steps to make this problem go away permanently. What a City Council.
- Ignoring documented evidence/proof of city council voluntary actions that over 20 years starting in 2010 will waste 4 to 5 million dollars of taxpayer monies relating to the management of the Fullerton Golf Course. I was Bruce Whitaker’ appointee to the Park and Recreation Committee, yet he and all the other council members refused repeatedly to have any discussion about this very important and very costly issue to the Fullerton taxpayers. As of today a portion of that money is gone for good but I have made it abundantly clear that current remedial action by the city council could save upwards of 2 million dollars going forward. Unfortunately they are apparently not interested in discussing taking action to save up to 2 million dollars. However our current Appointed Mayor Bruce Whitaker has chosen to talk instead about one or two $300/$400 dollar employee hotel bills. Which do you believe has the greater financial impact on our city? Question: Why won’t Bruce Whitaker and the rest of the council discuss this issue?
- At the last council meeting we learned that the just completed 1.7 million-dollar Hillcrest Park to Lions Field Stairs has many very serious construction and design issues. Way too many of the concrete foundations are cracking already and in at least one case has a large portion already broken off. In addition, the wooden posts are all too often way to close to the edge of the foundations, a structural defect. Also the poor design had the wood posts sunk into the concrete foundations making it incredibly more expensive to replace and repair any of the wooden posts. Wood as any laymen knows has a much shorter lifespan than concrete so this makes absolutely no sense from a structural design point of view. How much did we pay some design company for this fiasco? We should be asking for our money back and then some for this as well. This is not a complete list of the design, construction and safety issues. But one member of the city council, Greg Sebourn indicated after Joshua Ferguson displayed these major problems via pictures that the council should get a refund from the contractor.
So after SEBOURN made that statement, he of course brought forth a motion to sue the contractor for damages, quickly seconded by another council member. Well that never happened. Well then of course he made a motion to put the possible lawsuit against the contractor on the next city council agenda for consideration. Well that did not happen either. So GREG SEBOURN did absolutely nothing along with so-called self-proclaimed fiscal conservative Mayor BRUCE WHITAKER. Thank you Greg for sounding indignant and then doing absolutely nothing. Yet after all this, Ferguson defended Greg Sebourn’s total lack of action on the FFFF website. Well I guess because they are political buddies you and the FFFF owner and administrator will support them right or wrong. So this begs the question as to what is the real agenda of the FFFF website. Apparently it is not to hold all council members responsible to the people. Certainly not the ones that Tony Bushala went to great lengths to get elected and then reelected, namely Bruce Whitaker and Greg Sebourn. This is only my opinion based on everything I know and I Fullertonians I know a lot about this.
However, we the people do not have to and should not give Sebourn and Whitaker along with the rest of the city council a pass for their dismal failure to do right by the citizens of Fullerton. I guess 1.7 million dollars does not buy us much if you have the unfortunate reality of the Fullerton City Council looking out for us.
What does all these items above have in common? They have several things in common. First, the abdication of the city council’s fiduciary duty to run the city with a modicum of honesty, transparency and decency. Second, when very credible evidence and documentation is provided directly to the city council they refuse to deal with it and bury it like they have in each of the issues/scandals above.
What the city needs is a full time ethicist/historian to keep track and document each scandal fully? Since the City of Fullerton has no one like that on the city payroll, I have taken it upon myself, free of charge to the good people of Fullerton to fulfill this very important role.
What this all proves is that there is no real difference between any of our council members for each and every one of them went along with or failed to deal with each and every scandal mentioned above. For when it really counts, each and every one of them fails us. The next time one of our council members states what a great job they are doing for us, please feel free to provide them a copy of this article and watch them ignore you afterwards. After all ignoring the public is one of the few things our City Council does extremely well. For example, after Barbara Rosen Sunny Hills resident, spoke about the terrible condition of Las Palmas Avenue bringing large chunks of the road, Mayor Whitaker stated that her concern would be addressed at the completion of all the public comments. Yet, neither Mayor Whitaker nor anyone else on the dais addressed her specific concern about Las Palmas Avenue. All you have to do is pay attention at any city council meeting and you learn very quickly that our city council members are anything but good public servants.
* Well I have just learned that Interim Police Chief David Heinig has stepped down and now we have Captain Siko as the Acting Fullerton Police Chief. Based on my recent past experience with FPD Captain Siko, I will do everything I legally can to make sure that the next City Manager and our City Council do not appoint him as our next permanent Chief of Police. I also will strongly request that the contracts for our next Police Chief and next City Manager be no longer than 2 years each. For not to do this shows that the City Council has not learned any lessons from its past mistakes. With that statement, I am making a very generous assumption that the City Council wants to have a city government more answerable to the Fullerton public going forward and we all know that all the evidence does not support that contention.
#1 by Barry Levinson on June 21, 2017 - 9:45 pm
Council member Greg Sebourn responded to my public comment criticism of his formal non-action concerning the construction and design defects of the Hillcrest Park Stairs by stating he is in the process of reviewing the documentation involved the Stairs. His full statement is as follows:
“Regarding the stairs , it is something I am looking into. I have requested information from staff and staff have been very accommodating to present me with whole lots of plans, notes, memos, things to look at. I am reviewing those.”
If you were truly serious about taking action, you would have received and reviewed all the information in a matter of a few days not six weeks and counting. You would have contacted the Fullerton building inspector head to go over the many violations that are present on the stair construction. You need to be proactive and take steps to hold accountable both the design and construction company as well as those in the City Building Inspection Department who signed off after completion of the project. Those involved in signing off, i.e. approving the completed construction of the stairs need to be fired from the city. Finally, we need to learn was this just gross incompetence or was this result of a more sinister nature. If I was on the council, I would have been well on my way to following through on all of the above and not just reviewing documents given to him by possibly the same city employee responsible for this scandal.
How many more months are we the public to wait to learn that the city in my opinion seems to have no intention to sue the contractor and certainly no intention to hold any city employee accountable for signing-off on a 1.7 million dollar project with very obvious and numerous construction defects and possible design defects.
This is called a city scandal; this is called city malfeasance. Certainly the possibility of bribes or illegal activity may be in play here and Sebourn after 6 whole weeks is still reviewing documents dropped in his lap by staff. He did not clarify if he was planning to ask the city to take action against the contractor for monetary damages or any indication that he has demanded accountability and transparency on who within the city signed off on the design and who signed off on the quality of the workmanship of the finished product.