Meetings are on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 5:30 pm. Upcoming agenda information and streaming video of meetings are available at http://www.cityoffullerton.com City Hall is located at 303 W. Commonwealth, Fullerton. Contact Council at (714) 738-6311 or council@cityoffullerton.com

PROCLAMATION: American Red Cross Month

During the American Red Cross month in March, we recognize the compassion of people in Orange County and reaffirm our commitment to care for one another in times of crisis. Today, kind-hearted individuals in our community exemplify Barton’s commitment as they step up through the American Red Cross of Orange County to provide a beacon of hope for our neighbors in need.

Their voluntary and selfless contributions make a lifesaving difference in people’s darkest hours, whether delivering shelter, food, and comfort during disasters or providing clear critical. Blood donations for hospital patients, supporting military families, veterans, and caregivers through the unique challenges of service, and saving lives with first aid, CPR, and other skills are delivering aid and reconnecting loved ones separated by global crises.

Red Cross Board members Barb Robbie and Ashley Glo accepted the certificate. 1379 S Harbor Blvd · Red Cross blood, platelet, and plasma donation center. Schedule an appointment today at 1-800-Red CROSS.

PRESENTATION

Conservation, Recycling, and Groundwater Recharge

Extreme weather conditions in recent years have presented Southern Californians with an unsettling preview of the challenges ahead – periods of severe and extended drought to record-setting wet seasons.  Metropolitan’s Annual Achievement Report, the district’s annual report to the state Legislature of its accomplishments in conservation, recycling, and groundwater recovery, spotlights Southern California’s ongoing efforts to address water demands amidst these climate changes. Facing unpredictability head-on, we detail strategies to adapt to climate challenges and secure our water future.

Weather Conditions

The year started with drought conditions and continued stress on the Metropolitan’s imported water sources for Southern California – the State Water Project from Northern California and the Colorado River.  This resulted in a meager initial 5 percent allocation from the SWP.  However, hydrologic conditions markedly improved with the arrival of multiple atmospheric rivers. As a result, the final SWP allocation of the year reached 100 percent — a milestone not achieved since 2006.

Conservation

Everyone plays a role in water reliability. For Metropolitan, this calls for sound conservation messaging. During the 2022/23 fiscal year, Metropolitan provided about $46 million in rebates, landscape and irrigation classes, research, and outreach to help consumers reduce water use in their homes and businesses. To add to that success, Metropolitan processed over 31,350 applications for about $16.6 million in regional rebate funding. Metropolitan was also awarded $49.5 million in grants from the Department of Water Resources and the U.S.  Bureau of Reclamation to support these programs.

Groundwater Recharge

Metropolitan has invested $198 million to fund 28 groundwater recovery projects, which have produced about 1,124,000 acre-feet of water—enough to serve more than 3 million households. Metropolitan also partners with local agencies to store imported surface water in groundwater basins for use in times of shortage.

Pure Water Recycling

Pure Water Southern California, a proposed regional water recycling project partnering with the Metropolitan and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, entered the environmental review phase and launched a major public outreach effort to secure community input. In May 2023, the state of California provided Metropolitan with $80 million in funding to advance the Pure Water Southern California project. Support for the program continues to grow.

CAMP4W

In 2023, Metropolitan launched a Climate Action Plan for Water (CAMP4W), a collaborative effort to create a roadmap for future capital investments and business decisions to prepare for a changing climate and the impact on water reliability. Through the CAMP4W process, Metropolitan is working with its 26 member agencies and involving government officials, environmental and community-based organizations, tribal entities, and the public in our planning process. The CAMP4W complements the Metropolitan’s existing long-range planning efforts, including the Integrated Water Resources Plan, Energy Sustainability Plan, Climate Action Plan, and Capital Investment Plan.

Public Comments

Freedom of Speech

Albert, a white supremacist Holocaust denier, gave a three-minute speech.

City Attorney Dick Jones said, “By case law, it is determined that these kind of comments are legally allowed under the 1st Amendment.

Parking

Tanya: The parking is so bad. I appreciate how you fit us into the five-year plan to put asphalt on our street, but you added more red to our street when you did that, so there’s less parking on my street.

Sam Elkar: He built an ADU, but his tenants have no overnight parking on his street, and he finds this a major issue. As more people build ADUs in the city, parking will need to change.

Zee: I want to congratulate parking enforcement and Fullerton and the Fullerton Police Department. For the past 11 weeks, there have been no safety issues at 1301 S Gilbert Ave due to the no parking signage on both sides of the streets being enforced. No vehicles are forced to drive into oncoming traffic, so congratulations.

City on the GO

Maureen Milton: “I loved the Pop-up City Hall event at Hillcrest Park!”

Save Seniors at Rancho La Paz

Todd Harrison: My wife Yolanda and I are housing endangered residents of Rancho La Paz in Fullerton.

I would like to ask if there’s been further progress on the changes to the TBR rules regarding assistance to seniors who own homes in Fullerton Mobile Home Park.

Those changes are now all the more immediately needed. Two months ago, we provided Mr. Saunders, his management company, Star Management, and the managers of Rancho Lapaz with a petition signed by a substantial majority of the residents of Rancho La Paz of notice the fact that both homeowners and rental tenants alike signed the petition objecting to the conversion of Rancho La Paz to an all-ages park. The regulations gave Mr. Saunders no choice but to delay the implementation of the change by six months. His correspondence states the conversion would be in August of this year. Rancho La Paz is already advertising renting out and permitting the sale of homes to families without any resident age restrictions.

In fact, the 1st house was rented to an all-ages family less than a week after the meeting. Like every other statement or promise by Mr. Saunders, the August date was a lie. Functionally, Rancho La Paz is no longer a seniors-only community.

Collectively, the council could have prevented that, or given this or given his disregard for rules and laws, at least made him consider the consequences of defying an emergency ordinance. Those in Fullerton dealing with the unhoused dying on our streets are warned there’s going to be a lot more seniors losing their homes.

So please, if there’s a further report on the progress of fine-tuning the language of the TBR, can it be implemented immediately?

Council Communications

Councilmember Dr. Shana Charles:

I will start by thanking all the speakers who spoke during public comment. And I say yes, all because even comments that I find to be very difficult, as you know, I am Fullerton’s first Jewish Council member, it is important that we understand that anti-Semitism is real. And that was a reminder of that fact [see the first public commentor]. I invite our public and everyone to explore the resources online of the Shoah Foundation, which has collected many first-person stories of the Holocaust. The Museum of Tolerance on Pico Blvd in Los Angeles is an incredibly moving experience. It was a little overwhelming, and I had to take a three-hour break to recover. But I do suggest that you go and learn about the actual history. There’s also a Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, with online resources. And all those things are based on facts and history and truth, which matter. And conspiracy theories, while comforting, and I honestly wish I lived in a world where the Holocaust didn’t happen, but that is not real history. The truth is hard, but the truth is important, so I would encourage people to educate themselves about the truth.

On another note, American Red Cross Month was wonderful to proclaim, and also Happy Women’s History Month. I would like to acknowledge the women who have sat up here on the dias before me. There were nine of them in Fullerton’s history, going back to the 1950s. Women have had a history of holding elected office here in Fullerton along with my colleagues on the Fullerton School District boards, the Fullerton Joint Union High School District Board, and even the Placentia Yorba Linda Union Board, which is also on my side of town.

Speaking of the Fullerton Joint Union High School District Board, I want to extend my condolences to Trustee Lauren Klatzker on her mother’s passing. I was with the trustees, Joe and Foley, at the funeral today.

Speaking also of Women’s History Month, I was honored to attend the Fullerton Hills Girls Softball League opening day. Congratulations to all of our baseball leagues. They also had their opening days this past weekend, and they’ll have a great season here in Fullerton. And I want to thank the Mayor for a great speech and certificate right next to the City Hall on the Go. It was a very impressive event. I’m looking forward to the next one, which will be aligned with our opening of the Hunt Library on April 13th.

The staff also did a great wedding show at the Fullerton Community Center, and I heard we are booked every Saturday for the rest of the year. It’s great that people are using our Community Center. Congratulations to our Parks and Rec staff on handling all those events. You can also get married on Sunday; it’s a wonderful place to do it.

We will be holding health fairs; we have already held one at Independence Park. There will be an upcoming health fair on April 20th in the Community Center focusing on services for older people, although there will be health services for all and then later this year, possibly sometime in the summer. I will keep you all posted. We will also do one on the east side of town, focusing on family and community services and partnering with folks like Solidarity to ensure we get services there. I will tell you.

My community office hours continue on Thursdays from Noon to 2pm. I always hold my office hours on Thursday during the first week of the month here in City Hall. And if it’s raining, I will also return to City Hall. So that had to happen a couple of times in February. You can find a calendar listing my locations. The city manager has created this flyer in their office. You can you can pick that up. I also post it online on my Facebook and Instagram. Please feel free to reach out. And my newsletter has restarted, so please feel free to e-mail me if you want that every two months. I’m going to be sending that out now.

Councilmember Dr. Ahmad Zahra:

Any form of hate, anti-Semitism, anti-Arab, homophobia, Islamophobia, and Asian hate are rejected here in the city of Fullerton. We are a city of kindness and a city that embraces its diversity. Hate will never be tolerated here.

Now, on a fun note, Happy Women’s History Month. On March 16th, the Museum Center is hosting the Women’s Festival. It is a wonderful event. Last year was the inaugural, and this is our second year doing this. I hope that everybody can join us and celebrate. And if you haven’t gone to our museum, please stop by; it is wonderful. But it’s been a pleasure for the last two years serving on its board representing our city, and we are doing better, but we can always do more, and the museum still needs community support. So please support our staff there, the Volunteers, and the volunteer board; they do an amazing job programming and curating art.

Congratulations to all the little leagues. I got to go with the Mayor to Chapman Park in East Fullerton. It is always fun to see that, and kudos to all the families and the parents who encourage their kids to do the Little League. Before I end, can we get some questions answered from the public comments? I’d like to know the status of the TBR. And can we reassess the red curbs at South Corona Ave and see if there is additional parking that we can do? Address the overnight parking ordinance and the street sweeping alternate options when these come to the council.

Councilmember Bruce Whittaker:

Our rain season in California starts July 1st and runs through June of the next calendar year. We’re about eight months right now into this rainy season. We’ve already exceeded the annual average. We’re pushing. 16 1/2 inches of rain locally. The annual average going back many years is a little under 14 inches yearly. We’re pushing about 17 inches this year, with more rain coming. Prado Dam storage for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority is a little over its allowable level of 505 feet. It has about 20,000 acre-feet of storage to be slowly released over time and percolated into our aquifer.

The Army Corps of Engineers is focused on flood control operations at Prado. Since we’re at the peak with an outflow of 800 cubic feet per second, the inflow remains at about 750 cubic feet per second. So, what does that mean in terms of capture? There are efforts in Orange County Water District to capture storm flows, although when they’re very strong, it’s impossible to capture all of them. We cannot currently capture 440 cubic feet per second of the Prado outflow, so the total surface storage of OCWD is in over 24 percolation basins. It is a little over 25,000 acre-feet in Anaheim and Orange areas. So, in addition to what we have at Prado Dam, it looks like another fairly robust year.

Last year, we nearly doubled our annual average at almost 26 inches of rain, but as I said, we have four more months in this rainy season to continue. So, if anyone has questions on this, I’m happy to address them or try to get the best available numbers for you.

Mayor Pro Tem Fred Jung:

Although he serves on multiple boards, including the OCPA and Metropolitan Water District, he had no comments.

Mayor Nicholas Dunlap:

First, thanks to all the speakers who came out both in chambers and online. I want to echo the sentiments of both Councilmembers Charles and Zahra. Simply put, the beauty of our democracy and our society is that we have the opportunity and privilege to come to a microphone to comment and criticize those in office and policies that may or may not even be related to something the council or body might deal with. But the hateful and hurtful comments that were made tonight in no way, shape, or form represent the City of Fullerton or its residents. And quite frankly, I find it offensive and a waste of everyone’s time that people would bring that hatred here. I think that, with many things, it is more a reflection of those individuals than those of us who are forced to listen to it.

And so, with that, I want to move on to a few more positive things. First, I want to give a big thank you and a big shout-out to our staff, who did a phenomenal job putting together the Pop-up City Hall event at Hillcrest Park. It was a good learning experience for staff because we’ve also figured out how to better market that event to the community, using next-door utility bills, etc. I think it was a good opportunity for people to get out and ask some of the questions of people that they might not otherwise know how to find here in this building. I don’t doubt our next event will be an even bigger success. It’s great to put city resources in neighborhood parks for the community to benefit from.

Opening day ceremonies between Fullerton Hills Softball, Golden Hill Little League, and E Fullerton Little League were excellent. Over 1500 kids are registered to play softball or baseball in those three leagues alone. I had the opportunity to attend all three of the opening days. It was a great event to see all the families and the kids that are so excited about being able to play in the season ahead. I also had the opportunity to throw the first pitch at the Sunny Hills baseball game.

I also noted two questions: Could we get the city manager to discuss the TBR and the pilot parking plan?

City Manager Eric Levitt:

The TBRA is effective now; people can contact the housing office to apply for that program.

We’re bringing the parking (2 to 5am) back to the council next month. We are making some refinements, including looking at another option. A pilot or short-term program to ensure it works the way we think it will work before fully implementing it. That should be coming back either at the next meeting or the next one.

And then red curbs, I can look into that. Red curbs usually have to do with fire restriction, in my experience, so I need to look at the reasoning for the red curbs, and then we can get back to you.