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The OTHER “Subsidy Steve,” the Disney Drone who really ought to know better. (Note that courtly Ricardo’s original headline was the far less inflammatory “A Call to the Least Objectionable of the Subsidy Four Endorsed Candidates” — and that the last paragraph was added in editing to echo the headline.)
To the great satisfaction of its proponents (who did not include candidates Jordan Brandman and Lucille Kring), the district election process has already produced what was expected in terms of greater interaction among neighbors. If the candidates were not already familiar with the concerns of the communities they will represent, they are quickly learning about them, especially in the East flatland and West side districts of the city (which do not yet host council members.) In the two central districts, the incumbents council member candidates, Kring and Brandman, are having a hard time trying to defend their records supporting the subsidies to the resort area and their votes on other controversial issues.
The candidates in my district had failed to attend the recent meeting of the local District Neighborhood Council, which is considered the essential forum where the concerns of the neighbors are presented. They all apologized and offered their assistance dealing with the issues. One of the candidates, Steve Faessel, is a long term resident in this district, lives very close to the area where the meeting took place and which issues were presented to the candidates in writing. As Mr Faessel has participated in several city commissions, he offered to help by facilitating meetings with the pertinent city departments.
So far the process of getting to know ourselves as neighbors, of discussing our problems and brainstorming how to solve them is working. The candidates have caused a good impression for their willingness to know our issues and resolve them.
The problem is not their willingness and varying degree of problem-resolution
expertise, but their position on the central financial factor defining the budgetary priorities of the city, which is the subsidies to the resort industry.
Out of the four candidates, Mr Faessel is the only one supporting the subsidies, which has created doubts on his ability to effectively address the neighborhoods’ problems. Just this weekend another wave of pro-subsidy financed propaganda supporting Mr Faessel hit my district, this time from the “Moving Orange County Forward” group, a Disney “front.”
By now, everybody should have read the VOC‘s Disney Breaks Its Own Spending Record in This Year’s Anaheim Council Election :
Disney has spent at least $904,000 on 10 different groups that in turn have directed over $1 million into supporting and opposing Anaheim council candidates… The Disney–funded groups have spent $865,000, mostly on mailers to voters, supporting Brandman, Kring, Lodge, and Faessel; and $203,000 opposing Moreno, Lopez, Ferreras, and Barnes… Most of the Disney spending has flowed through a committee called “Moving Orange County Forward.
In addition to the subsidy problem, the candidates need to get familiar with the diversity of our communities, especially with those most neglected, During the 2012 election cycle (in which Kring and Brandman won office, the former by hiding her true positions), these issues were already being exposed in discussion of the Other Anaheim:
“[The] 1% idea (allocation from the TOT to neighborhood improvement) …does not represent shifting away from the perverted priorities that prevail. It strikes me as a slim ‘say to play’ bone thrown out to the working class residents. The statistical choice of 1% in the era of Occupy’s binary rhetoric is rather telling! Let them eat tres leches cake! …
The tone of questions regarding policing was actually quite striking (not in a good way) and underscored a deep disconnect between most of the candidates and the working class residents of Anaheim. You are wise to invoke Luis Rodriguez (Vice Presidential candidate of the Justice Party.) A Mayor or council members in the know would have phoned folks like Rodriguez and Father Gregory Boyle *before* unrest ever broke out. Instead, the first effort after was to corral the Ducks, Angels and Disney as corporate “philanthropists” of a ‘Heal Anaheim’ farce…
…. Wait a minute! my produce marketa was torn down in the name of progress, here in State College and La Palma. It was replaced by a drive-in Starbucks! They’d better stock up on plywood panels, and keep them handy when the outcome of the investigation on the police shootings is released. Don’t we love Anaheim?!”
Some supporters of the subsidies may genuinely believe that they are necessary to benefit the residents. A significant large number of residents do not think so, and some of us will be willing to consider that there are tangible benefits when the neglected neighborhoods issues are resolved. Until then, I hope that neighbors like Mr Faessel are willing to reconsider their position as well.
If the subsidies to already rich entities and the neglect to significant sections of the community continue, we may end up with more expressions of social unrest.
Steve Faessel — like his three opponents — is smart enough to know this, as his opponents already do. It must take a great amount of effort for a man of his experience and intellect not to know that what is being vended by his wealthy supporters is a nicely wrapped basket of lies. Or, alternatively, not to care what happens to his city — and his brand new district. But the money in not knowing and not caring — in blinding himself to the realities of today’s Anaheim — is quite good!
Allegedly this gentleman is opposed to the PringleCorp®/DisneyGang® street car. If he wins I wonder how long it will take to get that chain yanked.
Mr. Toro –
Steve Faessel’s support of the Resort’s Transient Occupancy Tax subsidy and the fact that he is being endorsed by Disney and SOAR do not hamper his ability to effectively address issues in District 5 neighborhoods.
His choice of where to worship, which you’ve previously brought up, also does not affect his ability to address issues in our neighborhoods.
And the fact that he wears glasses, which someone working for this blog seems to have either a childish or unhealthy desire to deface photos of people with eye glasses, does not affect his ability to address issues in our neighborhoods.
Steve has reached out to you regarding your concerns about the vacant grocery store property on Rio Vista and Lincoln because he agrees that it is blight and something needs to be done to fix it.
How has the response been from the other candidates? Have their antagonistic position towards the Resort District driven them to the same or greater level of action that Steve has shown you to this point?
He has acted on your list of concerns because he is sincere about improving the living conditions of all the residents in our district. He will continue to act regardless of if he is elected to office.
Steve and his wife were helping this community long before SOAR was around. Their love and desire to improve it will continue long after 11/8/2016 is just a memory.
Do you know why I support Steve? It’s because I brought him a laundry list of issues that I felt needed to be addressed back in April. I then sat back and watched him work on those issues.
I watched others bring their concerns to him and he diligently worked to get resolution on those as well.
While I agree with the idea of a Transient Occupancy Tax subsidy, I wouldn’t have thrown my support or even voted for Steve if he acted in a way that contradicted his claims about how much he loves this city.
I don’t expect you to change your mind on the Transient Occupancy Tax subsidy, but we have a lot of hard work ahead of us to resolve many of the issues that both you and I agree are problems. Avoiding using cheap shots will keep the work from being more difficult than it really needs to be.
Thank you
Here’s the problem: the people that brought us all the Resort monkey business is exactly the same crew that brought the back-room Angels Giveaway, the ARTIC mess, the Convention Center Charter end run, the streetcar scam, the hiring of a new city attorney a few days before the election, the (fortunately aborted) attempt to giveaway an acre of park to a private charity, etc., etc. The list of misfeasance grows virtually every council meeting – even if you choose to ignore the police brutality issues that plague the city.
Has your man addressed any of this OTHER stuff? I don’t think so, but please correct me if I am wrong. If he hasn’t, he’s not a serious proponent of honest, transparent government.
Faessel gives every indication of being a completely loyal foot soldier to the current fire sale regime, and honestly, the “we have a lot hard work ahead of us” routine is pretty funny to those of us who have been fighting the crony capitalist operation in which City Hall gives every indication of actually being run directly from Pringle’s office. Until the rat’s nest is cleaned out everything else is just window dressing.
Mr Bartash,
I don’t doubt that Steve loves the city, but the massive financial support he is receiving from the entities that many residents question, erodes his credibility and good intentions. He didn’t needed to add more propaganda in our streets, he would’ve earned respect if he had told the Disney “Moving OC Forward “PAC to donate the funds instead to the homeless centers.
Tell me what you consider cheap shots, so that we could clarify what the real issues are. I wear glasses myself, and the broken glass picture is a satirical way of saying that we don’t willfully want to see reality. I appreciate your comment, and that we can talk about issues other than stolen and defaced signs.
Talking about cheap shots. Have you seen the attacks against the opposition candidates? : $203,000 opposing Moreno, Lopez, Ferreras, and Barnes…
I was the graphic artist there, Mr. Bartash, and you can review my answer to Cynthia’s comment below on the topic. In short — how do YOU think that I should depict Mr. Faessel’s WILLFUL BLINDNESS to the facts about the shoddy, shady studies that the City uses to funnel an egregious share of the City’s resources into the wealthy owners of the Resort District?
It seems to me that showing shattered eyeglass lenses — WHICH HE COULD EASILY REPLACE IF HE GAVE A DAMN ABOUT SEEING CLEARLY, which, Mr. Bartash, HE DOES NOT — is a relatively mild way of depicting the concept of willful blindness.
Here’s the way in which Mr. Faessel is the MOST objectionable of the SOAR candidates. He’s smart. He has relevant experience. He’s not driven to swallow the City’s stories by overweening ambition, like Brandman; or by a desire to keep the money rolling in, like Kring; or by some deep psychological kink, like Lodge. None of them have his intellect (though perhaps Kring did in her prime.) He should be able to look at the records of city finances — the way that Cynthia has done; the way that Tait did when he took over the city’s reins in December 2010 and realized that it was sliding into the abyss — AND BE HORRIFIED!
He has the intellect, Mr. Bartash. He lacks something else — and I don’t even know what it is. He is perpetuating a series of egregious lies — and he is too smart to be excused as the sort of shallow thinkers the way that Brandman and Lodge are. He’s an adult and should be judged like one.
He’s doing this to — actually, I don’t know, get along? — and it is miserably wrong. I do not believe that he could hold his own in an extended debate with Tait or Cynthia about the flaws in the City’s assumptions and projections and species proofs; but SOMEHOW, Mr. Bartash, he has decided that he wants to go along with the Great Train Robbery of Anaheim’s future.
My only hope for Faessel, Mr. Bartash, is that he might become the “anti-Kring” and switch sides — NOT because, like her, he likes the smell of Pringle’s money, but because he has a sense of shame.
Do you think that he DOES have a sense of shame, Mr. Bartash — enough to admit that he is wrong if and when he sees that the City staff is deliberately hiding the truth about how much the Resort District does AND DOESN’T do for the City? Can we trust him to be an honest judge of what is TRULY — on the basis of PROVABLE FACTS — in the public interest?
What are you yourself rooting for, Mr. Bartash? If Mr. Faessel takes a real hard look at the budget figures and discovers that he is among those who have been sold a bill of goods, bolstered by bespoke tricks to hide the fakery from all but the most dogged and skillful investigators of it, will you be PROUD of him for switching sides, for being the anti-Kring?
Or will you be DISAPPOINTED?
Sorry that you didn’t like my eyeglasses illustration, David. Sorrier still that your candidate is intend on not getting a new pair to see things more clearly.
Does anyone else find it odd that the items on the “laundry list” and their results of said “work” have no mention in the above post ?
I find myself in an awkward place, as Steve and I go way back. But if I leave out my personal opinions and look at the ‘greater good” of the city, I have no choice but to bring up the following with Mr. Bartash;
Why did it take YOU bringing up a laundry list of issues with Steve to get action? Steve attends nearly every Council meeting, and yet nearly never speaks, unless it is for a completely non-controversial subject like promoting a charitable event (very worthy of his time, but a Council seat is not needed for such issues.)
The point I have been trying to make for YEARS is that as long as we keep shoveling money out the back door to the special interest crowd there will BE NONE to fund the rehab of an old shopping center or address the deferred maintenance started under the Pringle regime and then continued under the current heavy handed Council majority, whose ONLY civic improvement funds came from over-borrowing on the bonds from the Convention Center ALSO funded on the backs of taxpayers from the General Fund. It is this mindset and this same crowd that Steve has sadly chosen to align himself with, and that is why I have maintained my distance from his campaign. Steve is very good at the “go-along-to-get-along” thing, refusing to rock the boat even when it NEEDS to be rocked. When it comes to standing up to the special interests whispering sweet nothings into the ears of decision makers, I fear for Steve’s ability to tell them NO. Nothing Mr Bartash has said so far has addressed that issue, and it is THE biggest issue of this campaign, bar none. I don’t think anyone is saying Steve is a bad person (we save that for Lodge) but I have no choice but to join others in saying Steve does not choose his friends wisely in aligning himself for this campaign, and we tend to be influenced most by our friends. Forgive us for being afraid of more of the same.
Something else you mentioned, Mr. Bartash, also confirms our misgivings about adding another vote to the current Council majority. You say you brought Steve a laundry list of issues and he set about getting them handled. You and Steve and Jordan Brandman and others share the same mentality in this area, one of a “spoils” system in which complacency, compliance and comradery equal access, and when you have the personal cell number of the big wigs and know which wine they prefer (steve has told anyone who listens he keeps Curt’s favorite grape on hand) then things get done. But access to decision makers and the ability to get issues resolved SHOULD NOT BE RESERVED for the special insiders club. The flip side is when those of us who oppose the politics of the insiders club have a genuine need from the government WE pay taxes into also, and we are dismissed. We all pay into the system, we should all have equal access to the benefits and services of that system. And we should not have to kiss anyone’s…uh…ring, to get access to the government supposedly of the people, by the people, and for the people.
I am not a resident of District 5 so my views matter little here, but I want to defend my friend and colleague Ricardo, who is simply sharing his reservations about someone who appears connected at the hip to the same people who have pillaged and plundered our community for the last decade, and we see the results in the decay of our neighborhoods. We cannot afford more years of this so a Council member can play a game of popularity contest.
My two cents, which are not in any way rooted in an old relationship with anyone, and simply trying to view the race through the eyes of those who DO live in that District and DO have concerns that don’t seem to be addressed by the candidate.
Thanks Cynthia,
I am sure that both Sandra and Donna, and Mark , would’ve done the same as Steve : offer their contacts to help addressing the neighborhood problems, if they had developed an inside relationship with the city govt.
I will second Mr. Bartash’s concerns regarding whatever it is you guys think you did with Steve’s glasses. The effect falls flat and appears juvenile, let’s rethink a policy of alterations to people’s physical images, please. It’s like when Tony and company would put cockroach antennae on people, it just turns anyone off to the message you are trying to convey, and RIcardo’s words are worth reading.
(the exception being Ass-Clown Harry Sidhu. Still a classic.)
Hey, I remember those cockroach images with very funny captions. They became instant classics. But the cockroach antennae weren’t on people – they were on a cockroach, and they twitched!
The reference was always Harry Sidhu’s fake address at the rather declasse Calabria Apartments.
Here’s a sample:
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2010/hide-and-seek-harrry-on-the-move-again-claims-new-address/
OK Mr. Zenger that WAS a great cockroach as well….
No idea what that glasses thing is about. It wouldn’t be anyone “from this blog,” and I haven’t seen it. I’ve been busy trying to replace all of Donna’s stolen and defaced signs, which I am not blaming on any of our opponents.
See my answers to Cynthia and to Bartash, Vern. And please don’t change the graphic.
Oh, please, Cynthia. How would YOU illustrate the concept of “willful blindness,” such as that which Faessel has shows towards the actual facts, and the shoddy and tendentious studies, that characterize Mr. Faessel’s failure to apply his intellect to whether the convenient claims that the City makes are accurate?
Mr. Bartash is absolutely wonderful at “playing the refs” — but as an eyeglasses wearer myself the idea of depicting willful blindness by eyeglasses with shattered glass — from a guy WHO COULD EASILY GET ANOTHER PAIR OF LENSES TO ALLOW HIM TO SEE CLEARLY, IF HE CARED TO DO SO, struck me as not juvenile at all, but as quite apt and measured.
Faessel doesn’t WANT to see the truth and so he lets his eyes be blinded to it. You understand that better than anyone, Cynthia — do you have some time to review with Mr. Bartash the truths about the City’s shoddy, sucky studies that Mr. Faessel is determined not to see?
I’m sorry if this seems impolite, but I have had it up to my eyebrows with people demanding politesse from critics while shivving the residents of Anaheim in the gullet. I’d love to see you give Mr. Bartash a proper “what for” here.
So you did see this caricature? Where? His signs don’t have his picture. Are people defacing his literature?
Yeah, if this is a “shattered lens” meme, you make a good case for its aptness.
Vern, can you see the illustration at the top of this piece? I just overlay shattered window glass — white on a black background, with a “lighter color” blending option — over his glasses frames. It’s not a “caricature”; it’s what so far as I can tell is his official photo.
I hope that, if he wins, he gets a new pair.
OH. Sorry didn’t look up there. Carry on…
Well, I do have a vague sense that you might be busy these days….
Tonight I am FINALLY reading all the propositions…………….
Mr. Diamond, excuse me for not registering what the imagery was supposed to be (ironically I got new eyeglasses this week after my own eyes figured out they were now 50 years old) if I were to illustrate willful blindness I would have blindfolded him.
If you want me to address the studies, we can do that. How much time does Mr. Bartash want to spend on it? Mr. Faessel refused to put in ANY.
For instance…for years the Community Development staff has had an annual report on the hospitality industry and the state of the economy, asking the perpetual question; “do we still need to offer any type of subsidy and why have our subsidy offers not succeeded to date?” but i 2013, staff STOPPED ordering those reports. That same year, the gardenwalk hotel deal was redrafted to “benefit” the taxpayers, a benefit that simply drew out a slightly shorter percentage of TOT over a longer period. The amount of subsidy remained the same at $158MM. but imagine a car dealer stretching your payments out over 5 years instead of 3. You PAY THE SAME for the CAR you simply have drawn out the financing over an extended period. Same with the Gardenwalk The Sequel. AND….where past subsidy agreements had been significantly smaller (the ONLY hotel built under a subsidy was the Doubletree also owned by Bill O’Connell, which sets us back less than ONE MILLION per year in TOT kick back and did genuinely build a hotel that would otherwise have remained a blighted and weed-choked abandoned parking lot. Instead, the gardenwalk agreement was rooted in taxpayers underwriting Bill O’Connell’s BAD DEAL from buying the land at TOP DOLLAR during the feeding frenzy of the bubble, AND a very high interest rate to fund O’Connell’s sub-prime mortgage. The whole thing was a junk deal, and while the rest of us took the hit on our losses in the real estate market with some having to completely walk away from property they had invested in to cut their losses, the Council majority stuck the taxpayers with underwriting the loss of one of their own! O’Connell SHOULD have been left to deal with the losses on the deal HE AGREED TO and if that meant having to walk away and sell and let someone else pick it up at its current value and develop a hotel well that is why they call it “free market” and the private sector reaps the benefits of wild profits when it works, but they also take the risk. If we have now eliminated the risk of investing (as long as one is a pal of those who control the flow of PUBLIC FUNDS that can be diverted to private benefits) then the public whose funds are being committed (without our input and against the widely stated will of the public) what do WE get as return on investment?
So the gardenwalk agreement of 2013 was the WORST POS ever in Anaheim History in terms of no benefit for the investment, and rather than admit to the failure and commit to never doing it again, the City turned around and made that POS agreement into a POLICY and offered it to ANYONE WHO ASKS, regardless of NEED. Since the City would o longer base the subsidy on feasibility gap and need, there was o reason to keep doing the studies to show the economy still can’t over the nut on a 4 star hotel. How convenient. Our public servants literally told staff not to worry about whether an “incentive” was NEEDED in order to incentivize something we are simply going to grant a blanket offer, and pretend nothing would happen without the incentive, and skip over the part where we PROVE nothing would have happened. In the case of Anaheim Plaza staff didn’t even ASK if they would redevelop without subsidy, despite the owners sitting on a wood framed building far beyond its useful purpose-built life span! And yet to this Mr. Faessel wants to add his own support as a “good policy” for “economic development.”
Shall I go on? How about the fact that NOBODY read the prior agreements from the 1996 documents, outlining the original standards for the Gate tax Exemption. So while our Council majority sat there insisting the 2015 extension for decades into the future was merely “more of the same’ they did not bother conducting BASIC DUE DILIGENCE to determine what the original was, or if all parties are in compliance (they aren’t.) You don’t buy a timeshare condo with this little due diligence much less subsidy worth hundreds of millions. In the last few years we have literally watched our Council and exec staff pay off their insider pals TWICE, granting them public funds for items they were ALREADY obligated to and compensated for!!!
Mr. Bartash, the fact that some os US have a problem with this outright GIFT OF PUBLIC FUNDS without ANY public benefit coming back to us (since those involved were already legally on the hook for performance) the bigger question is, WHY IS THIS OK WITH YOU?
[WILD APPLAUSE]