Galloway versus Tait: Cynthia’s retort to Dan Chmielewski.

The Liberal OC recently ran an article in which they accused Mayor Tom Tait of “taking credit where it wasn’t due.”  I understand most of our readers don’t visit that blog (even though we provide an RSS feed to it) so I will cross-post my reply here – I think it is information worth repeating, as Anaheim decides who to back for the most important and most contentious election we have faced in decades.

Dan, I think you forget, I have been watching Galloway for a long, long time, and apparently paying closer attention to her actions than you have. I didn’t want to go there, but you want to bring this stuff up, then the info is fair game.  First, in defense of some previous remarks of others which Dan takes exception to:

Jason Young:  Galloway has “turned on a man of integrity.”

Gee, what else is it called when you publicly rip on the guy who put his own reputation on the line for a decade defending you against your worst enemies?

Greg Diamond:  Tait supports traditional Democratic issues.

I would argue that Tait supports what we would consider traditional “Good Government” issues, and I know Greg’s view of Democratic issues are based on his desire for “Good Government.”

Is Galloway is too stupid to be Mayor?  (Cynthia Ward: “And if Galloway was so dumb as a rock that she didn’t know any better, or failed to find out if she was unfamiliar with [The Daily Show], what makes her think she is smart enough to run this City?”)

Dan, are you telling me her appearance on the Daily Show was the work of a genius? The role of Mayor is to be the spokesperson for Anaheim, representing us on national and sometimes international television. Watch this and tell me this is how you would allow your city to be represented, Hell Dan, you wouldn’t let one of your clients appear on a program without vetting it and prepping the person for what they should expect, Galloway just blindly marched in, cute shoes and all, and made an ass of herself, or allowed Stewart’s crew to make an ass of her. Go ahead, have you forgotten what a disaster that was?

Dan C:  “Comments on her decorating from someone who never set foot in her Colony home during her BoS run  (Dave Zenger, ‘I seem to remember this was shot in her second fake new home. Just check out the thrift store furniture. Even a bad house stager would be embarrassed’). Note to Dave, it wasn’t cheap furniture and the home wasn’t fake, but you certainly are).”

Zenger was not ripping on her décor so much as he was ripping on the carpetbagging of a woman who bounced from borrowed house to borrowed house, both owned by a known supporter with real estate to spare, in search of at least one that was zoned residential so she could legally claim to reside there. Dan, what is your definition of “home?” Did you open closets? Was there laundry in the hamper, female product in the medicine cabinet, leftovers in the fridge and not just the catered food brought in for the day? Or were you taken in by a staged home?

I have friends who live there, like RIGHT THERE Dan, and other than someone coming and going every now and then during the day to lower blinds, etc. there was no sign of someone running out to get the paper in a robe at 6 am, no glow of TV late at night, no Bella barking at the mailman, no sign of life unless she was having an event for those like you who needed plausible deniability.

Dan continues…

  • “what did she really do during her time on the council?…
  • “I can keep bringing up her work on affordable housing that helps working class families in Anaheim…
  • “She helped create the Anaheim Family Justice Center to help curb domestic violence…
  • “served on the OCTA…
  • “and has received numerous awards for public service…
  • “So if an elected conservative Republican mayor takes credit for something they actually voted against, is that a mark of integrity?”

We’ll come back to all those….

Dan quotes the Mayor saying, “When I took office, the city was losing $56,000 a day and had been for two years. If I didn’t do anything, we would have run out of money. We had eaten through $30 million in reserves. We had to make immediate cuts. A lot of people didn’t like that but it had to be done.”


Dan:  “ ‘If *I* didn’t do anything’ is the key phrase here.   As it turned out, Tait didn’t do anything.”

AHEM. From the minutes of the March 2011 meeting:

RESOLUTION NO 2011 030 A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ANAHEIM approving a Letter of Understanding between the D1154 Anaheim Municipal Employees Association General and Clerical Units and the City of Anaheim Council Meeting Minutes of March 22 2011.

That’s not the budget. Indeed, the overall budget that got us in over our heads, budgets loaded with pork barrel projects for the special insiders’ groups, was approved repeatedly under Galloway’s watchful eye. I have not gone back to check her votes, I will say that I cannot recall a single time that she called attention to the insane spending habits of Pringle’s world class crony capitalism, but I know one need only to scratch the surface to see her own friends loaded up with enough goodies to get her to go along. That’s not good government, that’s not creating consensus or collaboration, that is simply being cut in on the take, after robbing taxpayers blind and putting us in the deepest hole Anaheim had been in for years.

  • “…Mayor Tait responded his concern was that for a two week period an employee would work for 9 days and be paid for 9-1/2days and he would not be able to support this unless it was a one for one exchange…”

For a guy who signs the fronts of paychecks, how can you not get that? He was right to oppose it, I thought it at the time and I believe it now. Would you pay your team for 9 ½ days, work them for 9, and call it a cost savings?

  • “…wished he could have been part of the decision making process earlier on however he would not be able to support a concession that provided an hourly rate increase. Council Member Murray remarked she had given this proposal a great deal of consideration and also would have liked to have been part of the team coming up with the terms of this negotiation…”

I am not clear on how the City conducts their negotiations, I am only familiar with the smaller government entity where I am privy to the Closed Session process and we are all involved in negotiating MOUs from the beginning. So I am baffled as to how this gets so far without input from the Mayor and at least one Council member. Perhaps there is a committee that negotiates and then it comes back to the full Council? In which case your explanation that Galloway made the deal but Tait and Murray were out of the loop would make sense. That Galloway would offer staff more pay for less work is not a win. Tait’s reasons for rejecting what was negotiated are valid, and the fact that the same majority also unable to do the math on the Stadium, streetcar, and hotel giveaways actually approved the MOU does not make it a good deal.

To dismiss the cuts made by Tait to the overall budget for years at a stretch because he wanted MORE cuts from one component of the process is bad math, Dan.

Instead, let’s look at what your gal DID do at CityHall.

Dan:

  • what did she really do during her time on the council?
  • I can keep bringing up her work on affordable housing that helps working class families in Anaheim.

You mean like the Elm Street Commons?

On November 28, 2006, SADI, the developer for Elm Street Commons, was scheduled for DDA approval, where  the Housing Authority’s standard split is 85% to the City, and the developer keeps 15% as profit. The 85% is then recycled into more housing projects, which keeps Anaheim building apartments for the working poor. In addition, Elm Street Commons, received many millions of dollars in incentives like a sewer project and other mitigation measures on the City’s dime. Nobody took advantage of SADI development.

Yet during the 11-28-06 meeting, Richard Chavez pulled the item from the Consent Calendar, and after a truly bizarre song and dance act between Galloway, Chavez, and Sidhu, the City Council changed the agreement, bumping the developer’s profit from the standard 15% to a whopping and unprecedented 50% profit! Go watch the video and tell me the fix wasn’t in from the beginning. None of the three are very good actors.

This item begins about 38 minutes into the meeting.

Mayor Curt Pringle went postal, saying (correctly,) “By taking money out of that pot and not returning it to that pot it limits the amount of affordable housing we will do in the future.” The change meant that the developer would not be paying back 35% of the cost of the project to a revolving fund, and therefore that 35% would not be available for housing the working poor in the future.

This is how Galloway serves the poor with affordable housing projects, by diverting the pool meant for the population of Anaheim’s workforce, and instead lining the pockets of a developer who was later investigated by the FBI. After approving the vote, Lorri admonishes the developer, “I hope you acknowledge how much Council has been supportive of you.”

Meanwhile, SADI funnels money into a shady PAC (Hometown Voter) just before the 2006 election, funding an Independent Expenditure on behalf of Richard Chavez’ failed re-election.  And they certainly didn’t forget Galloway, in 2008, funneling money through PAC filings with that paragon of virtue, Treasurer Kinde Durkee, Elm Street put up $15,000 to fund the Clear Channel billboards promoting Lorri’s re-election. They also underwrote a large mailing, and the graphic arts for the mail piece.

But wait, there’s more! Jump over to the filings for Orange County Leaders for Change, where Elm Street money mixed with a donation from SunCal, again using Kinde Durkee, was spent on the campaigns of both Lorri Galloway and Diane Singer. If you recall, both Diane and Lorri backed SunCal’s development that prompted the formation of SOAR. I guess this is the “compromise” and “bridge building” Galloway wants us to understand she can bring to City Council…again. Oh and try going over there, the project is the epitome of POS construction, the Styrofoam building details are already showing through the thin stucco barely sprayed over, it is a mess and the City is now stuck with it. At the time I called it “the slum of tomorrow” and it didn’t take long for “tomorrow” to become now.

  • “…She helped create the Anaheim Family Justice Center to help curb domestic violence…”

There is no doubt that the Center does a great deal of good in the community, I understand it to have been Chief John Welter’s idea, which is why they named the Center after him when he left the Chief’s office:

Officials announced at a luncheon Thursday that the Orange County Family Justice Center is adding “John Welter” to its name. It was Welter, the Anaheim police chief who retired this year, who brought the concept of a family justice center to Orange County.

I do know that the City had been leasing the building at a very nice, affordable rate, and then spent big bucks from that diminishing pool in order to buy the building from the developer…coincidentally the same guy who provided the “homes” for Lorri to “live in” while running for Supe. There was a lot of questioning at the time regarding the value of the building versus what was paid. You want to ask her about that or should I go dig up the paperwork?

  • “…served on the OCTA…”

Yep, she did. And the boondoggle we both agree is a complete POS was done under her watch. I have the documents, boxes and boxes of them, showing that staff kept Pringle much more up to speed on the project than they did Tait. Tait had nearly no knowledge of the project when he came on board and staff appears to have kept it that way. Many, many months went by in which he was not briefed at all, and he had no reason to believe the project was anywhere near the point it was at.

Do you know who would know? The one person on Council during the Pringle years, who then served as OCTA rep under Tait’s administration. While your pal Galloway did vote against the streetcar, she brought up few relative objections other than she really, really likes MagLev. Where was her concern for the lack of public process?

She was the only one who would have known the staff was flat-out freaking LYING to their own Council, and she failed to catch it and alert the Mayor that they had a problem. And at the next vote, she approved-along with Council-moving forward with the next phase of the project by giving Hill (Steve Lodge’s contract) over NINE MILLION DOLLARS to complete work that had been promised to the public in Phase one in 2008 (where your girl was there, Tait was not) and was not delivered.

Never mind the many millions of Federal dollars sandwiched in the middle, approved under Galloway’s seasoned and watchful eye. Galloway was THE biggest bridge between the administration that began the project and should have known what was promised for the money, and where it ended up while she was OCTA rep, I would not call her service a resounding success. I had to do the research and bring the info to the Mayor (after the fact) that our OCTA rep should have been on top of. So should Anaheim end up with the one project you and I agree should never be built, at least one of the stations could commemorate Galloway the eagle-eyed champion of the taxpayers’ dollar.

  • “…and has received numerous awards for public service…”

…where she is now taking a salary, where I understand at least one daughter is on salary, where her best friend is on salary…while THEIR husbands serve on the Board!

Dan, I have grant deeds  showing Galloway allows the Eli Home real estate holdings, donated by others, to be transferred to Kim and Robin Tulleners, who take equity out of the properties claiming them as their own primary residences, and then transfer them back to the Eli Home, worthless. 

I also see the grantee/grantor records are pretty busy lately when I run those names in more recent searches, I will be checking those shortly to see if there are sources of revenue etc that have recently come in. In short, if someone is propping up the dying charity, I am going to find it. Any bets on who might be behind her run? How did Galloway go from begging to keep the doors open, to being in a position to run for office? Has she explained that? Nobody jumps in without some promise of support, and the only visible support I see right now is Dan and John S, both men I generally admire, but neither of you is going to run an IE campaign for her from your own pockets. So who talked Lorri into this suicide mission? Who has the most to lose should she run for Council, where she had a clear shot, and even I would have left her largely alone, I would not have supported her, but I’d have left the thermonuclear war at home, and that is saying a LOT considering our history.

  • So if an elected conservative Republican mayor takes credit for something they actually voted against, is that a mark of integrity?

I don’t know Dan, you tell me, because your choice for Mayor does it ALL THE TIME. Again, from her 2008 re-election campaign; materials sent from Galloway’s own campaign showed her taking credit for the following projects:

1 New Police Station.

2 New Libraries.

2 New Community Centers.

1 New Police station has indeed been added to the streetscape. The new Police Station on Beach Blvd. held its groundbreaking on September 13, 2002. Lorri Galloway was not elected to office until November 2004. She had nothing to do with the planning or funding of the new Police Station and her only connection was in attending the Grand Opening on March 31, 2007.

1 New Library was indeed added in Anaheim while Galloway was in office. The Haskett Branch Library was demolished in September 2004, a month prior to Galloway’s election.

Plans for the new library were underway before Lorri Galloway even filed papers to run for City Council, and the grant application shown here reveals that funding was requested in the year 2000, without involvement from Lorri Galloway.  Lorri did attend the opening. Maybe that is what she takes credit for.

The West Anaheim Gymnasium, attached to the West Anaheim Police Station, was constructed with the Police Station, and funding was approved before the election that put Lorri Galloway into a City Council seat.

And let’s not forget a Family Center that was the idea of a Police Chief, but she did get her buddy cut in on the pork so maybe that is what she means…

Dan, again I wasn’t going to go there, but if your girl wants back in the game, then game on. I had packed everything into the attic, hoping to never see it again. I have good friends who believe in her, and I don’t want to personally disillusion them, but I’m not going to let you drag down a good man of integrity in order to build up someone I have watched for a lot of years, with a very sour taste in my mouth.


About Cynthia Ward

I am a truth-teller. It gets me in trouble. But if you ask me if a dress makes you look fat, I will tell you so, and help select another, before you go on television and realize it for yourself. My real friends are expected to be truthful with me as well. A secret shared will be taken to my grave, but lie to me, and it will end up here…on these pages… especially if you are tasked with the stewardship of public resources. I am a registered Republican who disdains the local GOP power structure, a born-again Christian who supports everyone’s right to spend their lives with the partner of their choosing. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister. I am a loyal friend to those who merit that friendship and when crossed I am a bitch with a capital C. I do not fit into a box, nor do I see others through the stereotypes that politics and public affairs so often tries to shoehorn us into. I think for myself, and so do you. Welcome to our shared space in this world.