Archives for category: Doug Chaffee

Live Blogging From Fullerton City Council’s District Elections Map Decision

June 7, 2016 //

All four maps overlay district elections

Greg Sebourn overlaid the boundaries of all four maps before supporting the one that cut his own neighborhood in half.

Matthew Leslie
9:09. Following over an hour of public comment, the council are speaking one by one about which map to adopt.

Greg Sebourn offered an insightful comparison between all four of the district maps. He supports Map 8A.

Jan Flory resented people for implying that she and other council members are in the pockets of the bar owners. She supports Map 8A.

Bruce Whitaker is offering thoughtful comments, appreciates Map 10A, and likes Map 11. Could support, 2B, 11, or 8A.

Doug Chaffee sympathizes with the bar owners because he thinks they’ve been unfairly maligned; downtown is a “city within a city.” Says Map 10A is the one he would pick, but he doesn’t think it would pass. Says that 2B wouldn’t pass in the elections. Says 8A has the best chance of passing. Wants to tweak it, wants to fix the weird split in the northeast (see my earlier story). Says he isn’t running again. Says that just to get it done, he will support 8A.

Jennifer Fitzgerald says we meet in the downtown. Cites political parties participating from outside of the city. Says the council agreed to a process, not a guaranteed outcome. Cites a bunch of statistics about Asians getting elected to provide cover for the fact that 8A is the only one with no majority Asian Citizen Voting Age Population. Says 8A keeps us unified in purpose but necessarily divided communities of interest. Cites Pasadena model. Supports 8A, says it has the best chance of passing. Moves to select 8A.

Passed unanimously. All members of the Fulleron City Council just sold out Fullerton’s downtown residents. None deserves re-election.

Vote against District Elections in November and let the district mapping process go to a judge instead.

Categories 2016 Elections, Bruce Whitaker, District Elections, Doug Chaffee, Downtown Fullerton, Fullerton City Council, Greg Sebourn, Jan Flory, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Uncategorized

A District of One’s Own: Bar Owners’ Map # 8 Carves Out a Space For Greg Sebourn

June 6, 2016 //

Matthew Leslie

Can you follow this border without getting dizzy?

Aside from somehow managing to not come up with a majority of Asian Citizen Aged Voter Population in its District 1, containing the largely Korean-American Amerige Heights, one of the most remarkable things about the bar owners’ Map 8 (and it’s now updated version 8A, below) is the quirky little isthmus of territory that juts westward from its District 3, on the East side, into its District 2, to the West. Take a look at the map above.

The entire map is so gerrymandered to achieve the pointless goal of connecting all districts to Downtown Fullerton that one might easily miss the finer points of its corrupt design. One of these mildly subtle features is the inclusion of about half of a neighborhood just north of Rolling Hills Drive into the Cal State Fullerton eastern District 3. Why is there a curved line here, instead of a straight line that follows St. College Blvd. to the city’s border?

Like Fullerton’s own Berlin Wall, needlessly dividing a neighborhood.

With so many other eccentric boundaries lines in place in Map # 8A, one more might not seem out of place, unless one considers that Councilmember Greg Sebourn lives just above Rolling Hills Dr., just east of the line that cleaves his neighborhood in two. This curious residential division places his house in a different district than that of his fellow council member, Doug Chaffee, against whom he will have to run for city council once again in 2018, should they both decide to seek new terms in office. During the May 17 meeting of the Fullerton City Council, Mr. Chaffee even made light of the possibility that he and Mr. Sebourn might end up in the same elections district, joking that the two of them could just endorse one another. (Of course, it is entirely inappropriate, to say the least, for members of the city council to even bring up the subject of their own residences while considering which map to adopt for district elections, but more about that subject later…)

Map # 8A won’t have either of them worrying, as It provides a cozy little niche that keeps Mr. Sebourn not only away from Mr. Chaffee’s district, but also separates him from anyone else in the vast and wealthy Golden Hills/Raymond Hills region, District 2 in this map, that has spawned so many other past and current members of the Fullerton City Council. This egregious example of gerrymandering is just one reason to vote against Map # 8A, which is being championed almost exclusively by bar owners, whose map would rob the residents of the greater downtown area of a collective voice by dividing their district five ways. Mr. Sebourn should stand up for residents of the city he represents, and not be tempted by the geographic morsel offered up for his support of what is easily the worst map up for consideration on June 7.

Tags 2016 Elections, Doug Chaffee, Downtown Fullerton, fullerton city council, Fullerton District Elections, Greg Sebourn

Categories 2016 Elections, District Elections, Doug Chaffee, Downtown Fullerton, Fullerton City Council, Greg Sebourn, Uncategorized

Some Video of the Ron Thomas Settlement Announcement (Unrecorded by the City of Fullerton)

December 1, 2015 //

UPDATE: The Rag has updated the video links on this post to separate them individually because some readers experienced problems playing all five videos as a playlist.

On Wednesday, November 25, the Fullerton City Council met at 8:00 a.m. for a Special Meeting to announce a settlement in the civil lawsuit brought by Ron Thomas, father of schizophrenic Kelly Thomas, beaten into brain death by members of the Fullerton Police Department four and half years ago. The council had already met in a closed session meeting two days earlier on Monday, November 23 to decide whether or not to settle the case, scheduled to begin that very morning in a Santa Ana courtroom. Council members Jan Flory, Doug Chaffee, and Mayor Pro Tem Jennifer Fitzgerald voted in favor of the settlement, while Mayor Greg Sebourn and Council member Bruce Whitaker voted against it.

Although video of the November 23 meeting is available on the city’s website, along with other archived videos of past meetings, no such video can be found there of the Nov. 25 meeting. CORRECTION: The November 23 meeting was not recorded either, even though several members of the public offered comments prior to the council retreating into Closed Session. When pressed for an answer about the video’s absence by Parks and Recreation Commissioner Barry Levinson during public comments at the regularly scheduled December 1 City Council meeting, City Clerk Lucinda Williams responded that the city’s contract only covered regular meetings, and that a special call needed to have been made to arrange for the video recording of special meetings, and that that call had not been made ahead of the November 25 meeting.

The timing of the November 25 meeting was already suspect. Rather than wait until the regularly scheduled December 1 evening meeting, which would be both video recorded and broadcast live, to announce the expensive and embarrassing settlement, a Special Meeting was quickly scheduled early in the morning on a weekday, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday break. There is no logical reason for not video recording the November 25 session, which was a pubic announcement. Although a complete recording of that meeting is not known to exist, the Fullerton Rag does have five videos shot from the audience to preserve parts of the proceedings. Below are the announcement of the settlement by City Attorney Richard Jones, along with explanations by four council members of their respective support or opposition to the decision (Council member Jan Flory was not present for the November 25 meeting). Click the links below to hear remarks by each present member of the Fullerton City Council.

First, City Attorney Richard Jones reads the settlement text..