In 2020, Fullerton voters were promised a reset. Candidates Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap ran against prior city councils, whom they accused of fiscal irresponsibility, deferred maintenance, and general mismanagement. Their message was simple and appealing: tighten the belt, fix the roads, and bring competence back to City Hall.
Five years later, the results tell a very different story. Soon after taking office, the new council majority made a series of disruptive decisions. City services were cut. The City Manager was fired, creating instability at the top of city administration and costing taxpayers in severance and turnover. In 2021–22, City budget documents showed a roughly $9–10 million structural gap in the General Fund. Rather than fixing the underlying imbalance, the City relied on one-time measures, including $3.8 million in vacancy savings, to temporarily reduce the presented deficit. Rather than addressing long-term structural problems, the council leaned heavily on one-time federal COVID-19 relief funds to patch visible issues, most notably road repairs. Those funds were always temporary. Using them to address ongoing infrastructure needs didn’t solve Fullerton’s problems; it only postponed them.
Today, the consequences are hard to ignore. Fullerton’s budget deficit has grown, not shrunk. Road conditions remain poor by most objective measures, with deferred maintenance still looming. And now, after years of claiming fiscal responsibility, the same officials are asking residents to approve a tax increase to stabilize city finances. That can only be described as a bailout.
Fiscal responsibility does not mean cutting services while ignoring long-term costs. It does not mean firing top administrators without a clear plan for continuity. And it certainly does not mean funding recurring needs with one-time money and hoping future taxpayers won’t notice the cliff. Good governance requires boring discipline: aligning ongoing revenues with ongoing expenses, maintaining institutional knowledge, and making unglamorous investments that don’t always show up in campaign mailers. Fullerton did not get that. Instead, residents were sold a narrative of toughness and accountability while the city drifted into a weaker financial position. The result is a city worse off than it was five years ago; less stable, still struggling with infrastructure, and now facing a request for higher taxes to clean up the mess.
What makes this especially concerning is that this record is now being presented as a qualification for a higher office. Mayor Jung is seeking a seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, one of the most powerful and consequential governing bodies in the region. The Board oversees a multibillion-dollar budget affecting public health, housing, transportation, and social services for over three million residents. If Fullerton’s recent history is an example of fiscal stewardship, Orange County should be worried.
This is not about ideology or personality. It is about outcomes. Leaders who campaign on competence should be judged by results, not rhetoric. Promising to fix the roads and balance the books, then leaving a larger deficit and deteriorating infrastructure, is not success by any reasonable standard.
Fullerton deserves better than slogans. Orange County deserves better than ambition untethered from performance. And voters deserve an honest accounting of what has actually happened over the past five years, not a rebrand of failure as experience.
If there is a lesson in Fullerton’s recent history, it is a simple one: good governance cannot be improvised, and slogans do not replace sound financial management. Running a city poorly should not be a stepping stone to running a county.
Click here to watch a short documentary of Fullerton roads called Road to Ruin.
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Categories: Community Voices, Local Government, Local News
While I agree with this opinion on most points – such as the ridiculously expensive firing of City Manager (and replacing him with an incompetent unemployed friend of the council majority) – that can definitely be blamed on the council majority – I do think that following neighboring cities lead of slightly raising sales tax by pennies on the dollar to fund road and infrastructure upgrades is necessary. I also hope readers will watch Adrian Meza’s excellent video report on the issues that accompanies this article – it is long but a great explainer.
Please no more tax increases including sales tax. It’s not fair to those of us barely getting by as it is.
Just like the state of California and many other California counties and cities, we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, sometimes related to fraud!
“Just like the state of California and many other California counties and cities, we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, sometimes related to fraud!”
Totally unconstructive.
If you have cuts or fraud to share that would be sufficient to catch up the backlog of road maintenance, go ahead and make them. I want to know what your cuts are.
If you have them then we can make value judgements. If you don’t have them, then you aren’t making budgetary recommendations, you’re just sharing your anti-tax hopes and dreams. That gets us nowhere.
We have an accumulated debt of road maintenance. The history of underspending on road maintenance over time is a documented fact. This is by definition a “lack of spending” problem.
Don’t just tax us more. You may be able to afford it but like Enrique I can’t. It’s easy spending other people’s money.
Do like other OC cities have done and replace a very expensive dedicated police department with the OC Sherriff. OC contract cities spend 25–35% of their General Fund on sheriff contracts, while Fullerton spends 48–50% on its own police. If Fullerton switched to OCSD this would result in $15–30 million in annual savings and address the $8–10 million structural deficit while providing money to be prioritized for other areas.
Now use that savings to fix the roads, etc. Don’t just take our money without being efficient and thoughtful. It’s lazy and inconsiderate of others!
Melissa – you realize that the tax being talked about is a half cent per dollar? So something you buy for $5 would cost $5.02. If everyone pitches in those pennies we save ourselves from having to buy a new set of tires. That is how surrounding towns paid for their better roads.
The issue is that I do not have confidence that the money will be spent to repair roads. I am not willing to give this city counsel 2 cents on 5.00 dollars because I do not trust them with my 2 cents.
Sandi – agree with you on that point. But, of the two local measures on the upcoming ballot – one dedicates a half cent to infrastructure and roads that can’t be used for anything else by law – if voters approve it.
When they dig up the roads they also replace the aging water and sewer lines which have the same bad conditions as the roads – though I think some of that pipe repair is funded by grants.
Let’s not make Fullerton like LA!!
Voter approved countywide measures in LA have repeatedly added dedicated 0.5% or 0.25% sales taxes mainly for transportation, homelessness, housing, creating a ratcheting-up effect where increases accumulate and never reverse. Pre-2008, the baseline rate was approximately 8.25%. The current baseline rate is 9.75%. A proposed increase to 10.25% for healthcare funding is on the next ballot but not yet in effect.
This pattern reflects frequent, issue-specific hikes generating substantial revenue, but root causes are never solved resulting in the sentiment of some here to add tax proposals rather than perform broader reforms.
ED Comment: The Orange County tax rate is 7.75%. Anything cities add to that rate is kept within the city.
In our area La Habra, Buena Park & Placentia are at 8.75% and were able to improve their roads.
Interested readers can visit CA Dept of Tax & Fee Administration for listing of all cities in California at
https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/rates.aspx
I agree with Sharon K’s pointing out that Fullerton’s sales tax is below surrounding cities and could easily go up a half-cent with minimal pain to residents. See my city council meeting tax-explainer Observer article I wrote a few months back for details. My article also gave the legal background around solutions presented to the city council for the budget deficit. I did not see any solutions presented in Mr. Manassero’s opinion piece, just anti-tax inflammatory rhetoric that will not help with getting voters to approve solutions.
The city needs to exhaust all avenues to increase revenue and in my opinion they haven’t. They should be charging for public parking, but they don’t. They should be approving permits for tax paying dispensaries, but they don’t. And if I’m going to support tax hikes i would like to see those two solutions put into play. I would also like to see all revenue for all three be used exclusively for road and sewage repair until all roads have been made new.
How much revenue would that bring in, would it ever catch up the maintenance debt, and how long would it take?
This stuff has to work out to a functioning budget or it’s not a solution. Just rhetoric.
A tax solution works. Alternative proposals need to work too.
Start taxing these so called rehab houses and the ride share companies that bring the clients to and fro. From someone who lives near one it’s non stop Uber & Lift cars picking up and dropping off these people whom most don’t live in Fullerton. All their rides are paid for by the government or insurance companies(fraud scheme?). The constant traffic noise, car horns, the trash, the cigarette butts, the disrespect. Something needs to be done. Say NO to dispensaries as it mostly attracts the criminal element to our city. We want people to be productive, not smoking weed and playing video games all day while using EBT to exist.