9:55 pm
The Fullerton City Council is currently meeting at the Fullerton Public Library’s Public Conference Center instead of City Hall next door. There is no live broadcast of the meeting, although it will be available as a video recording on the city’s website in a few days. The recording will not be broadcast later on television.
The City Council had not yet taken up the Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan. During the public comments period of the meeting, City Council candidate Jane Rands suggested that some council members may need to recuse themselves from participating in the proceedings. Mayor Chaffee did not address her concerns at that time.
10:40 pm
The City Council is taking a short break before taking up the Core and Corridors Specific Plan. Stay tuned…
10:55 pm
To make a long story short, the City Council has decided to continue the entire item to a date uncertain. The Rag calls that a victory for now.
11:10
City Manager Joe Felz explained that the deadlines associated with approval have gone away. The grant that funded the DCCSP can be certified without any timeline dependent on the council approving the plan, or not.
City Attorney Dick Jones suggested that Mayor Chaffee and Council Member Fitzgerald may not have to recuse themselves from the discussion and vote because the general community interest would allow for a variation (more on that idea later). He suggested consulting the FPPC about the issue. One wonders why no one had thought to do so already.
7,000 notices will go out in the mail to alert property owners in the plan areas about the next meeting, whenever it is scheduled, as they ought to have been for tonight’s meeting.
October was mentioned as a possible month for the meeting.
Good night, and thanks for reading. More on the DCCSP and issues of recusal in the coming days.
fullertonrag.com 
I spoke with the city attorney during a break. He said that only Councilmember Whitaker had asked his advice as to recusal. Bruce was inquiring regarding his residence.
City Counsel also stated that the FPPC would likely allow all council members to participate because It is such a large area. Oh the irony, a project so large property owners don’t have to be noticed and council members with financial interests don’t have to recuse themselves.
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One expects no less. Jones & Mayer have a pretty storied track record of dubious advice.
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They all took naps this afternoon so they could outlast the citizens.
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When the meeting ended, there was this one lady still sitting in the front row. She was holding a notice from the city. Her single family residence was to be rezoned under the DCCSP. She noted the date the letter was postmarked was only 10 days prior to the public hearing.
She sat there through a 3 hour public hearing where the council repealed a permit that would have allow 20 people to meditate at one time in some other single family residence. Meanwhile, she sat wondering why she had just made umpteen repairs to her home under threat from Community Preservation while at the same time Community Preservation (AKA, Planning Dept) was scheming to rezone her home into commercial real estate.
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The city of Anaheim recently was recently successfully sued by the ACLU and ordered to begin district wide (East,West,North,South,Downtown) instead of “at large” elections which are usually won by the political candidate willing to spend the most money. I personally think that Fullerton is ripe for a similar lawsuit. Bad news is that these lawsuits cost 1/2 million to defend if the city council decides to fight the ACLU to keep “at
are type of elections. If the city had to run their elections district wide I guarantee that this type of BS would go away.
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Not so sure elections by district are as necessary in Fullerton.
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Have you ever received a response from a city council person when you have a concern in your neighborhood? I have written many times to all 5 councilman over 20 years and have never received ANY response whatsoever. Its about making a councilman responsible for their own district. Accountabilty breeds responsibility. People tend to take better care of people when they are accountable to them.
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I have contacted a couple of (not current) council members both of whom were very generous with their time. In one case we agreed to disagree and it resulted in nothing. In another, we were entirely in agreement and this person went out of their way to help, and as soon as it hit the desk of the then bureaucrat in charge, it also resulted in nothing – at least not as a result of a council members intervention. I do not disagree about the importance of having a responsive council, but I believe the real and enduring accountability problems are with city staff.
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Not saying there isn’t a case to be made for elections by district, just that there is not as obvious a need for it as there is in someplace like Anaheim. What do you think a council elected by districts in Fullerton would look like?
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In short, it would allow sincere local candidates like Jane Rands, and Jesse LaTour, whose campaign tends to be perpetually underfunded. to compete on an even playing field with the candidates like Bankhead,Jones,McKinley,McClanahan, Silva,Fitzgerald, and Keller,who are perpetually fielded and funded by the local corporations,real estate interests,downtown businesses, public employee unions, and chamber of commerce financial interests. How many of us Fullerton residents can honestly afford to raise the required $50,000 that it takes to get elected to an $8,000 a year job?
If you need further prodding, I suggest that you read current Fullerton Police Lieutenant Andrew Goodrich’s manifesto that he penned for the members of the FPOA when he was the Union President of the FPOA that’s still up on the old Friends For Fullerton’s Future website. It’s level of contempt for the residents of Fullerton is unacceptable to me…however the manner in which the FPOA and the rest of the public employee inions have “gamed” the current political system may be morally reprehensible to me personally, everything that they have done to get their people elected has been perfectly legal.
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To play Devil’s Advocate, what’s to prevent the wealthy forces above from backing individual candidates in each district, and spending more in each race from their relatively unlimited funds?
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Nothing. According to recent US Supreme Court rulings, candidates can accept unlimited amounts of money from virtually anybody.
What I believe district elections would bring to the table here in Fullerton, is that the candidates are chosen by, and also from, the district’s in which they reside, reducing the chances of candidates who are hirelings of special interests.
Since the size of the district that each candidate is chosen from would only be 1\5 th of it’s current size, candidates and residents alike would benefit in much the way that a student and instructor benefit when school districts are able to afford to keep student to intsructor ratios at 20 to 1, as opposed to 100 to 1.
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You say it reduces the chances that candidates are owned by special interests, but fail to say how. It will still be FPOA and developer/shill money that will fund the candidates. Indeed, one can see how it might be even easier for a candidate, well funded by the usual suspects, to more easily steamroll someone running a grassroots campaign with fewer available resources in, for example, west Fullerton. And remember, you really only need three of a kind to win every hand.
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Please show me where I said that in a district election that it would reduce the chances that a candidate would be owned by special interests?
What I’m trying to convey, is that if a candidate only has to reach only 1/5th of the amount of people that they would have in an at large type of election, than the candidates would be able to run more “grass roots” type of campaigns due to only having to cover 1/5th of the amount of potential voters.
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“Please show me where I said that in a district election that it would reduce the chances that a candidate would be owned by special interests?”
OK here, which I almost used verbatim:
“What I believe district elections would bring to the table here in Fullerton, is that the candidates are chosen by, and also from, the district’s in which they reside, reducing the chances of candidates who are hirelings of special interests”
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I understand where you’re coming from, I just don’t really see how it would change the outcome of elections. Yes, a grass roots candidate would have only 1/5 of the electorate to worry about. But so would the FPOA/developer flunkie candidates.
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At large elections allow 50% of the voters to control 100% of the population. So if 3 of you want to listen to hip hop and 2 of you want to listen to rock n roll and 50% of the populous wants to listen to elevator music… Guess what we’re going to hear 100% of…easy listening elevator music.
Sound familiar to anyone here in Fullerton?
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A week ago I predicted that the city of Fullerton was ripe for the picking to be sued for their “at large” type of elections…
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/city-631636-fullerton-council.html
….
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Good call for both of us: https://fullertonrag.com/?s=district
I’m working on something about the suit now.
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