Condo Conversion Secret

To date there has been no word from El Dorado management or the owner informing the residents of the "condo conversion". They haven't even told us they applied for the change. Mike Cirillo, President of Star Management, was seen at a Ventura restaurant with several of El Dorado's anti rent control residents recently. Why would that happen? Why do they get preferential treatment? Is this one of the things that makes them anti rent control? If Cirillo wants to talk to the residents, why not a meeting at the clubhouse? I think the picture is clear.
We need to get the Rent Control Initiative enacted before they carry out their plan.
I think that all of the work city staff is going to have to do for Measure I will delay their permit for the condo conversion and give us time to get the Initiative through.

The Seniors At El Dorado Need Your Help Now!

The rent control initiative will be at Vons and Super A on Saturdays from 1pm-7pm and Sundays from 1pm-5pm.
The initiative will make it so the condo conversion will be much harder to get approved. It will also reduce the rent increases significantly.
Without your signatures many seniors will have to abandon their homes. If the condo conversion is allowed, WE will be paying for all park maintenance. This added cost will drive seniors from their home. Then where do they go?
We also need to slow down the rate of rent increases. I think that the people who moved in within the last 10 years never realized what their 4.5% increases would do to their rent in 10 years. At 4.5% rent nearly doubles in 10 years. At the signing of the lease, they see the rent right now and don't think of 10 years from now. The initiative will likely cut the increases in half, helping the seniors to be able to afford to live here longer.
Please talk to everyone you know about this terrible situation and encourage them to sign our initiative.

El Dorado Owner Applies for Condo Conversion

In response to the filing of the Rent Control Initiative, the owner of El Dorado has applied with the city to do a condo conversion. The lots we live on will be up for sale to us. I believe that most of us will NOT be able to afford to buy our lot. Often, a condo conversion of a mobile home park is to defeat rent control. If one lot sells, there can be no rent control in the park. They could sell a lot for $1 just to defeat rent control. If the rent control initiative becomes law first the conversion will be prevented by the law, in my opinion. If they win, there will be no stopping their greed. They will have no obsticles to raising our rents beyond what we can afford (they have already done that to some here). Our home values are at least $100,00 less than at Rancho Santa Paula, where they have rent control. Rancho's average rent is about $370 per month while ours is about $700, almost double. There are ladies in El Dorado whose Social Security is their only income and it barely covers the rent and utilities. They have stolen our home equity, which is the life savings of many of the seniors in El Dorado. The owner and management company owner should be ashamed to go out in public.

Rent Control in El Dorado?

Yes, Rick Myers and I submitted a Rent Control Initiative to the city on Monday March 2nd. The legal notice will appear this Thursday in the Gazette. At that time we can start gathering signatures for the Initiative. As soon as I see the notice in the paper, I will help organize signature gathering to begin Saturday at 1pm at Vons and, hopefully Super A. Any volunteers? Call me at 4024. We will be there from 1pm- 7pm Saturday and 1pm- 5pm Sunday for about 3 weekends. I would like to be able to give the seniors who volunteer a 1 hour shift, the rest a 2 hour shift. Please come by and sign, we NEED your help. To sign you must live in the Fillmore city limits, be a registered voter and sign your name just like on your voter registration card.

Gary Creagle

First off, I want to point out that Gary recently lost his wife. Since then, he has been bashed by Martin Farrell and his caring followers. This is dispicable! You attack someone who is grieving? These attackers need to shut the #@$%^& up. Gary is at best, an advisor, not the one deciding things, so leave him alone.
Next, I would like to see Roy, Roger, Burt and company, finally admit that their supposed savings of $814,000 in sewer rate increases was just an accounting error that was corrected. Operating costs were inserted into the sewer budget too soon and they removed those expenses since the plant was not operating. Big deal! They corrected their mistake.

The "Great" Roy Payne Resigns

I think I'm in the majority when I say that Roy will most be remembered for bringing us a sewer plant that is less than half the capacity of Santa Paula's and cost more. And he says he worked in our best interest? I think that Santa Paula actually did their job, not Roy. The vote was clear from the good people of Fillmore. We want the people responsible for this huge waste (not water) of money gone! There are other water issues for them to over spend on, so let's get 'em all out now! We can't afford the likes of them, this is not a rich town. So who is next? Roger Dodger? We'll see!

Jan 13 at the Zoo!

Ok, the power struggle has reached the speed of sound. First, Tom Ristau writes the agenda from hell, then he complains that things are taking too long. I guess he wants it to appear that the new majority City Council can't get the job done. Nobody could get that agenda done in one day, let alone one evening.
Tom, it seems you don't like Clay (understatement of the young year). We can't have non staff people hearing what goes on behind closed doors, can we, Tom?
There was more defensiveness than Sadaam had last night. Something to hide ole boys? I swear, the whole staff couldn't spell transparency with a spell checker. We need to knock down those walls!
Well, i got the idea of how it was going by 9:15pm and went home for dinner. It was interesting, but the old guard objected to everything and wasted a lot of time, in my opinion. The ole boys are trying to bring this town to a halt. I say, Tom Ristau needs to leave and Laurie and Steve need to contain themselves and concede their loss of power.

Jamey Brooks

Martin Farrell thinks Jamey wants to ask for things he has no right to see, like all the city contracts, including our consultants contracts. To me, any elected official should immediately get aquainted with these contracts. Jamey asking for them at his first Council Meeting was his obligation. But our wonderful paper has to slam him for doing his job from the beginning. I'll tell 'ya, the media has lost contact with reality and just pushes their agenda. It makes me sick! Jamey takes responsibilty and gets blasted for it? I guess Martin is so used to the irresponsible spending of the past, that he is having trouble adjusting to change. Jamey deserves praise for doing as he campaigned, it's such a rarity.

My lawsuit against former HOA and Social Club

For those who haven't heard what this is about, here is a quick history of events. On Nov. 19, 2007 El Dorado's HOA had over $9,300 that they took from the preceeding HOA that raised all of the money. The bank allowed them to transfer this money because the older HOA was not active.The newer HOA gave that money ($7,500+ that was left after spending some) to the Social Club, claiming they were legally disolving the HOA. Raul Torres was on both "Boards" and was instrumental to the taking of this money. This was done in secret by a small group of individuals. On April 1, 2008 a new HOA was formed. This HOA now represents 169 dues paying residents. The Board of this new HOA decided not to sue the old HOA and Social Club for this misappropriated money. I took it upon myself to sue them. My lawyer said I had a 50/50 chance of winning. I and Gayle Washburn felt differently. I played up my lawyers guess and spead that around as my feeling. I knew they didn't owe ME the money, but I wanted to put up a fight so they would not get away with taking this money with no resistance. I can't imagine any court in America that would award me $7,500 personally for something like this. At best I should get $30.33, my share of the original $9,300 divided by the 302 space in the park. Well, I lost my claim, as I expected, but made a big impact on the defendants. They totally lost their cool and spent about $2,000 to defend against a case they could win without saying a word. Charles Richardson, the Social Club president, was their lead person in this defense. He had a lawyer as a witness (about $1,000) and paid for 9 subpeonas and a professional proccess server (only 1 witness ever spoke, the lawyer). Charles was shaking like a leaf at the courthouse, his cockiness was in retreat. The judge slapped him down early on by telling him to let the court handlle things and that he would not be calling witnesses like he thought. Charles thought he was running the show, like always, and got shot down right away! When the trial was over his followers congratulated him and slapped him on the back. They had no clue that they just wasted $2,000 on a case they had in the bag from the outset. This group still thinks they won?! They are now down to $5,500 of that money instead of $7,500 and that's a win? hehe

Is Martin Farrell from Earth?

Ok, I'm a week behind on reading. I just read Martin's "Realities" rant about Jamey. Is Jamey just supposed to sit there and nod his head every so often or did we elect him to get a grip on the situation? Martin prefers the former. Get over it Martin, Steve is no longer in charge of the money spending machine. There really is a way to spend money without giving it to everybody who wants it. It's ok to turn down a project because we can't afford it. We don't have the unlimited revenue to match the unlimited spending of the last City Council. They spent $100 million! This is a small relatively poor town, give me a break! A million $ for a skate park on the wrong side of 126? Dumb! $26 million to treat chloride? Dumber! Tens of millions extra spent on a sewer plant? Dumbest! This city needs accountability more than ever and Martin wants us to close our eyes and just nod our heads. I say, Jamey and Gayle are just what the doctor ordered for this ailing city! By the way, on the Realities page Martin has an editorial ripping Obama, but on that same Internet page is an ad for a company selling "Super Obama" t-shirts. Martin's opinion sells for very little.

We have our town back!

Last night the choke hold on our fine town was released as the old guard was shoved to the side. I feel how easy it is to breathe again. Jamie, Patti and Gayle challenged the old ways and shook the Council Hall. They made it clear that it was going to be hard to spend our hard earned dollars! No spending $200,000 on a running track with 90 degree turns (90 degrees???). This track is a perfect example of how things WERE done. Not even a little common sense, just spend away. Jamie put City Management on notice that their actions will be under a microscope. Job descriptions of all managers, all city contracts and on and on. Tom Ristau was stopped so fast he went through the windshield. I left before the Roy Payne incident. I have it that Roy Payne's contract was also going to be looked at. Steve and Laurie protested wildly, I understand. It looks like there is something to hide, otherwise why should they care. Maybe they should have taken better care of OUR money! This is not the same City Hall today.

Fillmore Middle School

There have been widely spread conflicting reports about what is going on at the Fillmore Middle School. Neither one has been confirmed by this reporter.
Story one.
Since the rising tide of support for Gayle Washburn and Jamey Brooks, the old guard at City Hall has secretly been moving all of their dirt to the Fillmore Middle School and created huge mountains. I find this hard to believe as there must be more somewhere else. However, it is easy to spread dirt throughout all parts of Fillmore and get away with it.
Story two.
Several camels were seen walking about the sand dunes at Fillmore Middle School. Rumor has it that the old guard at City Hall has brought in the Taliban to take back our town. In what might be related to this, our 7-11 now has 240 employees. Reports also say that a mosque is being built just west of McDonalds and will be the new home of the Taliban- Fillmore Chapter.

El Dorado Fundraiser

On November 29th the HOA had a fundraiser for it's Block Captain program. This program needed funds to buy equipment for emergency response. Many of the Block Captains are CERT graduates and will be among the first to help others in the park in case of a disaster. To do that effectively, they need the proper equipment. The Fire Department gave us a basic list of equipment that we need to get started. We estimated the cost of everything on the list at $1,500. Thanks to the generosity of El Dorado's residents, many of the businesses in town and all of the volunteers who helped with the fundraiser, we had a net profit of $1,118! WOW! This will bring the program close to it's goal. I want to thank everyone for the help. God Bless You All.

Obama Claim is Circulating

Below is part of an interseting email I received. What do you think?

Former Deputy Attorney General Philip Berg filed a lawsuit addressing the citizenship status of Barack Obama before the Democratic National Convention and copied Democratic Chairman Howard Dean. It should have alerted them that there was a possible problem before they selected their nominee. But that problem was ignored. Other lawsuits filed before Nov. 4 were also ignored, placing us in what could be a constitutional crisis.
The good news is the real election hasn't taken place yet. The Electoral College doesn't meet until Dec. 15. That gives us less than a month to find the answers to the looming questions regarding whether Barack Obama meets the constitutional requirements for the office of president.
The courts don't seem to be in any hurry to take up their responsibility as guardians of the Constitution, so now Congress must step in. You see, members of Congress are sworn to uphold the Constitution, and when they vote in January to confirm (or reject) the vote of the Electoral College, they can't very well do that unless they know for certain that the basic constitutional requirements for office have been met.
An ad running this week in the Washington Times Weekly asks three questions America needs to know: "Was Barack Obama really born in Kenya?" "Is he really a citizen of Indonesia?" And, "Does the Constitution still matter?"
As I wrote about last week, there are many reasons to doubt whether Barack Obama meets the requirements for the office of president. First, there's that pesky tape from Sarah Obama, Barack's grandmother, where she says, "I was in the delivery room in (Mombosa) Kenya when he was born Aug. 4, 1961." Secondly, there's the matter of U.S. law. If only one parent was an American citizen, as in Obama's case, the law at the time of Obama's birth required one parent to have been an American citizen for at least 10 years – five of which had to have happened after the age of 14. Since Obama's mother was only 18 at the time of Obama's birth, he would not qualify as an American citizen if his grandmother is right about him being born abroad.
Thirdly, there's no original birth certificate – just a "certification of live birth" posted on a website experts say is forged and altered. Fourthly, there's the issue of Indonesian citizenship, which is a prerequisite to attending school there. Add to that the fact that Obama's stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, is listed as his father on his Indonesian school records. If he had U.S. citizenship, according to Indonesian law, he would have lost it when he attended school there or if he was adopted by his stepfather as his records indicate.
As the ad proclaims, "The Constitution matters" and is still worth defending. All we are asking is that Congress takes their oath to defend it seriously. If Obama can prove he meets the basic but essential constitutional requirements, fine, he'll serve legally. But if he cannot provide simple proof, then he cannot. We're not asking for the world here, just the original birth certificate that each of us delivers when getting a passport, driver's license or Social Security card. If we can't tell the clerk at the post office to check out the digital photo of a certificate posted online, neither should the guy running for president. Members of Congress: If you have taken an oath to defend the Constitution, now's the time to keep it.

The Votes are in and the Dust has Settled a Little

Well, we got 5 out of 6 with the election. An intregal part of the realignment of our City Government, Gracy Donahue, didn't make it in. She would have been one we could trust to watch over the City finances. I'd like to encourage her to run again. The new City Council has begun the transition process and will hit the ground running. Better times are ahead.
It was great to see the will of the people tell our local government that they didn't like the direction we were being lead. America, 'ya gotta love it! This is what the world envies.
Right now, the economy has stopped much of the excessive building plans in Fillmore. Griffins huge development south of 126 has ground to a halt. I don't understand how they got permission to build there. The water table is very close to the surface. There is standing water right behind El Dorado from them moving some of the dirt! The City gave them that permit? This is the kind of careless thing that our new Council will put an end to.

Senior Center Saturday 12pm-4pm

There is an "Open House" at the Senior Center this Saturday from 12pm-4pm. All of our teachers will be there to give short demos and explain what their class is about. The classes we have now are- basic computer, yoga, crafts, water colors and a book club. Our library is shaping up and we have new furniture. The teachers will be there to answer questions and give you a preview of their class. As always, we welcome any suggestions and volunteers. Drinks will be served.

City Council Meeting

The Regional Water Board made a presentation at the City Council meeting last night. It was about an update on a plan to improve water quality (mostly chlorine) they will be sending us via the Santa Clara River from the fish hatchery. We will have to maintain that quality. This was obviously brand new to Cecelia. She asked a lot of questions that even I could have answered. You see, I was at the Water Board meeting several months ago at the Council Chambers when only Patti attended out of all the Council members. Patti took off work to be there, why didn't they. This is a big issue. Now that it's almost election day, Cecelia is concerned. Way behind the curve again. Steve, of course wants to throw money (ours) at it as a "step in the right direction". He wants to start building a $19 million water treatment plant now. Steve, your crew has just now learned some of the facts. It seems to me Steve was coached to say that. He immediately volunteered to be on a sub committee when it was suggested. I think that was so he could control it like he did to the rent control subcommittee. Spending our money is the first solution for Steve, no thinking needed. He wants to build another water treatment plant and send us the bill. Bert Rapp had a presentation months ago sighting salt water softeners as the main reason we will not comply with regulations and expose the City to fines. Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to convert all salt water softeners to a safe home water treatment system? We should offer to do it free (City paid), maybe a year (or more) of free Culligan, too. Reducing pay for city management to more reasonable salaries would pay for a lot of it. Not having to pay a Fire Chief who is suspended would pay some more. Yes we're paying for 2. There are many places to get money without further burden to our citizens and businesses.

The League of Women Voters/ Fillmore Gazette Debate

This is my view of the debate, as unbiased as I can be.
The star of the show was easily Gayle Washburn. She had the facts, directions for positive change and the confidence needed for a City Council position. Next best was Jamey Brooks. His absence was not really a bad thing. I think we know where he stands. Unlike the rest of the candidates, he did not project any negative images. Marcos was pretty good but needed more homework to keep up with Gayle (who doesn't?). Norris is well meaning and seems to have his heart in the right place. When is he going to start his homework? After the election? There is a lot to learn. Royce and Omero are still in first grade and are a long way from being able to understand what is going on with the City Government. Steve looked unprepared. He had no clue what was going on with the packing house proposal. I guess the developers hadn't told him what to say yet. Cecelia, as usual, was all about how great SHE is. Spending $100 million in this little town is NOT something to brag about. She is way out there.

Lions Club Dinner Oct. 11

On Saturday October 11 I was fortunate enough to share a meal with the Lions Club of Fillmore. This was their yearly "Taste of Italy" dinner. Wow! What a meal it was. The food was terrific. Paul and Joyce Schifanelli hosted the meal and entertainment. Joyce could be a master chef anywhere! Delicious! Paul arranged to have Delaney Gibson sing and play keyboard and guitar for us. Delaney has the voice of an angel and composes her own songs that are so beautiful. Her opera number got a standing "O"! I want to express my appreciation for being invited and to all the hard work that went into this wonderful event. The Lions do so much to help people, please support them if you can.

Tuesday Candidate Debate

The candidates were asked if they would revisit Rent Control. Everyone said yes except Steve Conaway and M. Cecelia Cuevas with Norris withholding comment. Cecelia's excuse was that it created divisiveness in El Dorado. The park was divided long before the Rent Control issue of 2007. The anti-rent control group has been running things since 1994. Things stirred up because the HOA did nothing but declare themselves the boss. We wanted a real HOA and that rumbling turned into the Rent Control movement. On Oct. 17, 2007, over 100 El Doradoans came to City Hall Chambers, even with the fires all around town, to tell the City Council that we want Rent Control NOW! So Steve put himself on the sub committee to investigate RC. He then proceeded to delay things for months until Mike Cirillo (Park Management) could come up with a plan to defeat RC. The threats followed and our supporters stayed home. The opposition was able to muster about 50 people to be at the City Council meeting to end RC (temporarily). Now, 100 wanting RC and 50 not seems like a pretty healthy majority to me, but with Steve and Cecelia people don't matter. Somebody with big bucks wanted their help and they did as told! This is how they are with all of their decisions. All of the other Senior Mobile Home Parks in the county have Rent Control, because Seniors are on fixed incomes and need affordable housing and they have honest, caring governments which we lack.
Our park owner is worth about $400 million and Mike Cirillo is worth a ridiculous amount of money as well. Yet they have raised rents to obscene levels. It's hard to give away homes in El Dorado now, because the cost of living here is no longer affordable. It's all GREED and not based on business needs. We need to BOOT Steve and Cecelia out of power NOW! Greed must leave our town.