Vern Nelson, Huntington Beach. I just want to get a few things straight here. Let me know when I’m done if I have anything wrong, because I write for a blog and I hate to get things wrong.
OK. When you heard there was a chance these Fairgrounds would be sold, rather than fight the sale and protect the Fair as any other Fair Board would have done, you began plotting how to buy it for yourselves.
One of the first things you did was hire former Senator Dick Ackerman to go back up to Sacramento to make SURE the sale went through. The world calls that lobbying. I realize you call it other things, since it was illegal for him to lobby.
In any case he convinced most of our legislators that Costa Mesa and Orange County wanted the Fairgrounds sold, which you know was a bald-faced lie. Around the same time there was a conference call with the Governor’s office on which somebody falsely claiming to represent Costa Mesa gave the green light for the sale. We’d sure like to know who that person was.
And we’d also like to know who sneaked the sale language into AB22 late at night July 23rd. It’s hard to imagine it wasn’t Ackerman, who has admitted to “drafting legislative language” facilitating the sale. But notably, NOTHING was included about keeping the Fair a Fair, and the bill in fact encourages sale to the highest bidder, with future profits to be shared by the state.
Shortly before that, most of you had formed yourselves into a non-profit “Foundation” to buy the Fair yourselves, meeting in violation of both Open-Meetings Law and Agricultural Code 3964.5. What made you think you’d end up with the winning bid, or that the property would go to anyone who cared about saving the Fairgrounds?
In October you paid Probolsky Research to conduct a poll of OC residents, and 84% of us told you we opposed selling the Fairgrounds to a for-profit entity. Well, that’s exactly what’s ended up happening thanks to your machinations.
At some point you evidently gave up on your plan and didn’t submit a bid, so now it looks like the winning bidder, as we’d always feared, will be a developer, a developer of malls. Was this your plan all along? And as nice as Craig Realty is talking right now, they’ll certainly do whatever they need to do to maximize their profits after putting up $56.5 million plus untold millions in transitional costs.
So that means goodbye to the beloved, historic Fairgrounds you people were entrusted with. And Costa Mesa is left having to spend $200,000 to try to protect their crown jewels – a sad outcome for alleged fiscal conservatives, I should think!
Maybe there’s some secret reason you wanted it to turn out this way, but as guardians of our Fairgrounds you have FAILED EPICALLY. Herbert Hoover failure. Enron failure. If you were in Japan, you’d be disembowling yourselves about now. If you were in South Korea you would jump off a cliff. The least you could do as self-respecting Americans is either resign in shame, or call the Governor NOW and tell him to stop the sale!
Thank you.
And how was this presentation received?
My hara-kiri section drew chuckles from the Board, applause from the audience. (An audience mainly of a few dozen derailers.) As expected, no board members gave me responses or corrections, although I made sure they all had my e-mail address so we’ll see. There were about twenty other good speeches, all anti-sale, many more conciliatory than mine. We really don’t see why the Board shouldn’t change their tune and oppose the sale now that the Fair has slipped through their fingers – and maybe Arnold WOULD listen to them, after all they’re his friends, contributors, and appointees.
And after our speeches, Board president Kristina Dodge produced a request she had just received from Katrina Foley requesting a meeting and requesting them to oppose the sale and back AB 1590. Dodge noted that the request wasn’t received in time to act at that meeting, so proposed that it be sent to some (? liaison I think?) to start the slow-motion bureaucratic process of being considered at next month’s meeting.
DAVE PADILLA, who is the only current Board member to have always opposed the sale and never joined the Foundation, emphatically insisted that this was an emergency measure as “Arnold could sell the Fairgrounds any day,” and he managed to get the time frame down to ten days, so they’ll be considering opposing the sale Feb. 2.
The meeting droned on… CEO Steve Beazly lectured us on the virtues of privatization and recommended we read some 2004 tome of Arnold’s, told us we would have more success saying “let’s do what you want but in a better way” rather than “stop this.” Shortly thereafter Beazly got a raise, which pissed us off when we remembered how stubbornly non-responsive he had been when questioned in early November about his hiring of Ackerman, and his general boosting of the sale. The meeting droned on… I left into the rain…
“We really don’t see why the Board shouldn’t change their tune and oppose the sale now that the Fair has slipped through their fingers ..”
These people are all politically connected, right?
They see tax dollars Vern – big fat property and sales taxes. As private property the Fairgrounds property will bring in big dollar tax revenue compared to the relatively small amount of tax dollars brought in by the Fair and swamp meet, etc.
Everyone one of those bastards, including Costa Mesa – especially Costa Mesa, sees greatly increased tax bucks on the horizon.
Thank you Vern!
Good work, amigo. I suspect the Board was disappointed you didn’t whip out the old tape player and croon a little “Tainted Sale” to them. 🙂 Thanks for your persistence in this matter.
Great speech Vern! Way to give em Hell!
Vern, you roasted them.
one day- ppl will acknowledge that quite a few of us on this blog are big brains, unsung heroes, quite gifted with the “art of persuasion” and extremely effective communicators.
Here is where great minds unite.
I could not have communicated your message better– and I am quite a speech writer.
Congratulations- you absolutely minimized their existence and they probably wanted to crawl out of their skin.
By the way, are you able to add
a statement (fine print and in italics) under the
Orange Juice Blog- Orange County’s top political blog
“For Entertainment Purposes Only” this is the best protection of our Freedom of Speech here on this blog.
I’ll start by adding this statement on all my comments. LOL
“For Entertainment Purposes Only” signed Just in Time
way to go Vern, wish I was there.
Good Job Vern. Thanks for showing up and speaking your mind.
If Karma is a reality, these people have something really really bad coming their way.
“The least you could do as self-respecting Americans is either resign in shame…”
Amen to that, Vern.
Oh Vern, before you get too carried away with congratulating yourself on how you have smote the evildoers at the OC Fair, you might want to reconsider your praise of Padilla. I know the derailers have lifted him up as the one righteous man in Sodom but you fail to realize that he has not “always opposed the sale” (check the board minutes). In fact, I would hazard to say that he didn’t opposed the sale until he realized that he would not be invited to be on the Foundation. So, what you and your onanistic followers might want to consider is the idea that your notion of integrity pertaining to the lone board member might actually be sour grapes.
Think about it. After all, even bloggers have some integrity, don’t they?
Maybe you’re right about Padilla. Who cares. He wasn’t even part of my story. Just came up in the comments. Thank you for your input.
Is this Lilly Boyd under a new name?