Category: Money Grab

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The newly elected Irvine City Council wasted no time trying to tackle what many residents consider the most pressing issue the community is facing – traffic congestion.

Editorial –

Irvine Residents Need to Hire a Class Action Law Firm – Sue City Hall – the Developers and Individual Council-members – Seek Damages over Approved Runaway Development and Greed – Resulting in Traffic Gridlock – You’ve Got to Play Hardball with these Crooks and Dig Into the Personal Finances of Council Members – and You’ll find that they’re All in Debt Up to Their Asses and Will Expect Secret Money Payoffs for Voting to Approve Development and Construction –

Irvine, California –

Irvine wants to reinstate Transportation Commission, hire traffic czar to fight congestion

IRVINE – The newly elected City Council wasted no time trying to tackle what many residents consider the most pressing issue the community is facing – traffic congestion.

The council on Tuesday directed staff to prepare reinstating the Transportation Commission and start recruiting a transportation manager. The council approved these proposals by Mayor Don Wagner 4-0, with Councilman Jeff Lalloway absent.

“I’m certain it’s no surprise to anyone on this council or any citizen of this great city that traffic is an issue that we are grappling with as a community,” said Wagner, who was elected in November. “I wanted to make sure that I have the opportunity to say to all of you in this city, ‘We hear you and are very interested in doing everything we can to alleviate traffic and to grapple with that issue.’”

The Transportation Commission will be tasked with evaluating the traffic impact of development proposals, monitoring the progress of traffic improvement projects, reviewing traffic signal coordination and advising the Planning Commission and City Council, according to Wagner’s proposal. Staff must return in February with necessary resolutions or ordinances to form the commission.

The transportation manager will oversee all aspects of transportation matters such as traffic management and transit planning, while serving as the staff liaison to the proposed Transportation Commission. The city plans to pay for the new person with a vacant position that’s already budgeted.

The council also directed City Manager Sean Joyce to calculate costs for the following projects:

• A pilot project to install real-time signal timing adjustments along a selected corridor, such as Von Karman Avenue. The technology detects traffic volumes to give just the right amount of green signal time.

• Providing circulating shuttles throughout the center of the city.

• Promoting staggered business hours, non-peak delivery periods and ride-sharing in the business community.

In addition, Councilwoman Melissa Fox proposed that Irvine apply for transportation grants and funds.

The city has already committed to spending $116 million toward solving traffic congestion.

According to a survey conducted by the city, about 60 percent of the respondents said traffic congestion is a “daily annoyance” or a “big problem.” More than half of the survey respondents blamed increasing population as the No. 1 cause of Irvine’s traffic congestion. Irvine also draws commuters and those who drive here for shopping and dining.

Mayor Pro Tem Lynn Schott said Irvine’s traffic and population are near capacity.

“We are going to do our best to improve the situation to keep things flowing as smoothly as we can,” she said. “But I don’t think it’d be realistic for us to say we are going to be able to spend X amount of dollars and everyone is going to be able to just sail through every intersection at any time of the day that they like.”

Contact the writer: [email protected]

https://www.ocregister.com/articles/traffic-740808-city-transportation.html

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Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz – who crashed his car after drinking on election night, will retire at the end of the month

Fullerton, California

Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz, who has been leave since he crashed his car after drinking on election night, will retire at the end of the month, according to a letter Councilwoman Jennifer Fitzgerald read during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

“After many years working in public service, I have decided that my family now needs to be my first priority, and I will take some time away from working to spend time with my children as they enter their high school years,” read Fitzgerald from Felz’s letter while choking back tears.

In the wee hours of Nov. 9 after attending election night parties, Felz crashed his minivan within a half a mile from his house in a residential neighborhood north of downtown – driving it over a curb and into a tree. When police responded to the scene, they smelled alcohol on Felz but did not give him a breathalyzer test.

A police sergeant conducted a field sobriety test and apparently determined Felz was not drunk, according to a memo former Police Chief Dan Hughes sent to some council members later that day.

New Mayor Bruce Whitaker, who has been outspoken about the incident, wasn’t included in the email from Hughes to the rest of the council.

“Joe (Felz) has not had the opportunity to discuss with (then) Councilmember Whitaker so he asked that I delay sending it to him until he has an opportunity to do so,” read the email from Hughes, who left the city last month to take a job at Disneyland.

Whitaker previously said Felz called him the day after the crash and said he lost control of the car because he was fidgeting with loose wires underneath the steering column.

The city attorney’s office has denied requests by Voice of OC for both the police report on the crash and body camera footage. The case has been sent to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas for review.

Although the city referred a Voice of OC reporter seeking a report on the incident to an internal affairs investigator, neither the department nor City Attorney Dick Jones will confirm or deny an ongoing internal affairs investigation.

On Tuesday, Fitzgerald said Felz helped bring aboard Hughes to clean up the police department after the city was engulfed in controversy following the 2011 beating death of Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill homeless man, at the hands of Fullerton officers.

“When we needed a leader to step up and lead us through those tough times, Mr. Felz stepped up and was there,” Fitzgerald said.

“I can’t thank him enough for his decades of hard work in the city,” Councilman Greg Sebourn said.

After the meeting, Whitaker said he plans to press Rackauckas’ office for more information about the case.

Meanwhile, the city will hold a special meeting Jan. 5 to begin the selection process for an interim city manager. Human Resources Director Gretchen Beatty has been the acting city manager since the election night crash.

Spencer Custodio is a Voice of OC contributing writer. He can be reached at [email protected].

https://voiceofoc.org/2016/12/fullerton-city-manager-announces-retirement/

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Displaced business owner hijacks Tustin’s Wikipedia page to vent “Since 2009, Tustin has changed and is no longer a ‘Business Friendly’ community,” the introduction pronounced

Tustin, California

If, earlier this week, you clicked on Tustin’s Wikipedia page to research the city’s demographics or history, you may have found yourself either confused or amused.

“Since 2009, Tustin has changed and is no longer a ‘Business Friendly’ community,” the introduction pronounced.

The bio went on to list examples indicating Tustin’s “bad business climate” – mainly, the City Council’s recent vote to rezone a 7-acre piece of property from industrial to residential.

By Thursday morning, not long after city officials were approached for a comment, the Wikipedia entry had returned to its usual tone – dryly stating geographical location, population statistics and such.

“We don’t monitor Wikipedia every day,” said City Manager Jeff Parker. “But if someone brings something to our attention, we check to make sure things are accurate. Wikipedia is supposed to be as factual as possible – not opinion-based.”

So whodunnit? All clues hinted at one of the disgruntled tenants forced to leave the soon-to-be-leveled industrial complex, wedged between Old Town and the I-5. In September, about 30 businesses there received notice that their month-to-month leases would not be renewed by their landlord, who wanted to sell the property.

A 140-unit condominium complex is scheduled to break ground on the lot next spring.

Perhaps the project’s most vocal critic is Lyann Courant, co-owner of Advantage Manufacturing, which makes swimming pool pumps. Under a tight deadline, she and her husband moved their equipment and 23 employees to Santa Ana last week.

Asked if she knew anything about the Wikipedia hack, Courant responded, “I wouldn’t say it was ‘hacked’ exactly. Anyone can post on Wikipedia.”

Quite right, said the nonprofit’s spokeswoman Samantha Lien.

“By its very nature, Wikipedia will always be a work in progress,” she said. “It’s a living encyclopedia that can be updated in real time.”

Courant eventually acknowledged that she was the one who wrote the anti-Tustin rant.

“I’ve been screaming from the social media rooftops as loudly as I can,” she said. “Social media and the web in general give the average person an opportunity to share their side of the story in a way that was never possible before.”

Founded in 2001, now ubiquitous Wikipedia enjoys an almost all-knowing reputation – as though its words come from experts on the subject – despite myriad college professors warning students against using it as a primary source.

“That is the problem – people perceive Wikipedia as absolutely factual,” Parker said.

Yet anyone with a computer can easily insert information – as well as opinions and even fake news – simply by hitting the “edit” button.

That feature keeps Wikipedia ever-current, unlike a dusty set of World Books. But it also makes the site vulnerable to unvetted material, despite the site’s policy encouraging neutral and well-cited articles.

A University of California, Santa Cruz, study in 2010 estimated that about 7 percent of all edits to Wikipedia articles constitute “vandalism.”

Usually, it’s readers themselves who make the corrections, Lien said, adding, “The more eyes on a page, the more reliable and balanced its information.”

Needless to say, Tustin does not attract the traffic that a contentious news event or famous celebrity might.

Courant offers no apology for “enhancing” Wikipedia’s Tustin page.

“Yeah,” she said, “it was a little satisfying.”

Contact the writer: [email protected]

https://www.ocregister.com/articles/wikipedia-738578-tustin-city.html

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