Overall, weak answers, a lot of canned or superficial responses from candidates, and a lot of “Me-tooism” at the League of Women Voters forum. But it was still better than the Collaborative’s forum because of questions asked by the audience – though it would have been better had there been an opportunity for follow-up questions on revenues/taxes/ WOW and more.

I thought that Jan Flory and Nick Dunlap came across best, although that is low praise. Fred Jung, Nick Dunlap, and Jamie Valencia unabashedly answered as a block, with Valencia’s responses especially canned and parroting Jung’s (her reputed mentor). Had she been sitting on the other side of Jung and forced to answer questions before he did, we might have learned more.

Kitty Jaramillo was the strongest I’ve seen–but she could have gone harder on the other candidates who are either developers or have strong financial support from developers. Her comment that “if we had more affordable housing here, we wouldn’t need rent control”  was a good point.

Linda Whitaker had nothing notable to say, just that she had lived in town for a long time and relied on her husband Bruce Whitaker’s experience and work to essentially present herself as a continuation of what he has done on the council. It is interesting that Jung and Dunlap don’t align with her.

Matt Truxaw and Fred Jung were taking turns making remarks about each other, adding some drama to the debate. Ahmad Zahra’s position on the council was brought up by almost all the candidates, even though he was not in attendance, in a discussion regarding selecting the mayor and mayor pro tem by seniority and that he has been skipped over to keep the Mayor & Mayor-pro tem positions within the council’s majority.

Answers to questions about reaching out to the public were disappointing, basically passive: “I am there if they call me”; “We walked around Laguna Lake if people wanted to talk to us (This is the second time I have heard about walking around Laguna Lake from the Whitakers; the other time was as an alternative to the UP trail, etc.)  Truxaw said he liked Shana Charles’ idea of regular Council open office hours. Basically no other positive effort to connect to the community was shared.

Answers about support of an independent redistricting committee were nonsensical –  except for Kitty Jaramillo, who said she was on the past committee and that it could have been better with just one representative from each council member instead of adding two extra representatives (Tony Bushala & Shawn Nelson) selected by the committee majority. Another former committee member described it as a farce – in no sense “independent.” Linda Whitaker’s answer was problematic and ironic since she is running in a heavily Hispanic district – “Ahmad’s district is heavily Hispanic, but he’s not,” said Whitaker, adding that she is not a fan of districts. Truxaw said he would support an independent committee and countered Whitaker’s statement that Hispanics should only vote for Hispanics. “It doesn’t matter what race, religion, etc, you are, he said.”

Dunlap’s anti-cannabis stance in answer to the cannabis question was hypocritical, given the vaping and liquor stores on every corner and the bars where women are regularly roofied and sexually assaulted.  Dunlap and Jung have both stated that since we are the “Education Community,” we should not endanger our students with legal cannabis dispensaries while at the same time supporting the numerous and more dangerous bars. Jaramillo’s answer to that question seemed to make more sense: “We need to get rid of illegal stores by regulating where legal ones can be located away from residences, schools, etc. At the moment, it is a constant game of whac-a-mole where they are closed down and pop up somewhere else in the city. Legal regulations would change that.” Truxaw pointed out that Santa Ana earned $50 million in taxes over four years by regulating where legal shops could open.

On how to fix the budget deficit, Dunlap espoused “increasing revenue by growing the economy” with no specific policy ideas about what this would look like beyond bringing in a new flying Uber to the airport. Whitaker said we should have no new taxes, and that cutting the budget was the answer. Jaramillo said that “the cities of La Habra and Placentia look better than Fullerton because they added a 1/2 cent sales tax,” and adding two or three employees dedicated to economic development could help. Jung answered that businesses are being overtaxed and suggested streamlining registration. Valencia answered, “Increasing revenue to bring more people in.”  Flory pointed out that the city gets only one cent of the 7.75 current sales tax. Adding 1% to 1-1/4% to that could rebuild roads and suggested kicking corporations off Prop 13 homeowner protections. Truxaw said increasing draws to Fullerton, such as WOW, could help.

On the question of  Do You Support WOW – Yes, comments came from Jaramillo saying she had seen “public support, and if the majority of businesses are in favor – I do not understand why not?”  Flory said, “Can’t we have 200 feet for WOW?” and Truxaw pointed out that other cities like Santa Barbara had very successful similar areas. “I would like to look for more opportunities rather than less,” he said.  With no examples of what he meant, Dunlap said he was “looking for a win/win compromise.”; Jung said,  “As a small businessman (he manages a sports team), I object.” Valencia said the street needed to be open for fire and police (it has been OKed by the Fire Department) and suggested “we can find space elsewhere,” without saying where that might be; Whitaker questioned whether businesses and the public really liked it.

What was notable was the complete lack of passion about why we needed them to be on the council and what they would do to make Fullerton a better and more livable place. Anyone looking for the feelings and emotions that are driving these candidates did not find it at this forum. It was not an exciting – or particularly enlightening – evening.

NOTE: D4 candidate Markowitz failed once more to participate, and Dunlap ignored all of the many emails from the League about attending the debate, and many assumed that he wasn’t going to show up – hence his handwritten name badge when he did come.