Orange County News Blog

​An Irvine, California-based property management company was forced last week to remind tenants in a Santa Ana housing complex about common rules of decency. In a letter mailed to each unit, the manager urged tenants to "please be considerate" by using trash cans for trash, keeping noise down at night and monitoring unruly, screaming children playing soccer in the building's concrete courtyard. But that was not what caught our attention. The manager's final request was, no joke, "And please do not defecate in the elevator." He went on to threaten that further elevator defecating would require installation of surveillance cameras to catch the public poopers.

Gandhi: The Nativo Lopez of India?

​As an Aztlanista, I always wince when reconquistadores go over the top with illogical arguments justifying amnesty for illegals. I'll never forget when the usually genteel, always sharp Larry Mantle of Airtalk on KPCC-FM 89.3 once ripped into a Chicana activist because her response to some immigration matter was pablum about families. When Mantle pressed, the woman rambled even more.

But when I recently read that longtime O.C. yaktivist Nativo Lopez compared his latest cause to the actions of Gandhi, I laughed. Loud. Man, it's almost as bad as the time he held a dinner rally on the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The issue at hand is whether illegals should volunteer themselves to get counted in next year's census. Disregard the existential question at hand (how can you count something that's not supposed to be there in the first place?), and follow me: Larry and others argue the undocumented shouldn't bother with the census because the government doesn't bother with them--or, rather, bothers them too much with raids and the like.

"Refusing to cooperate with the U.S. census count is a political act of noncooperation and noncompliance in the best of Gandhian tradition conducted for the purpose of pressuring the political regime that pursues the persecution of immigrants on a daily basis at all nexus of social connection," Lopez told a crowd during a recent lecture at Princeton University. "This action seeks to dissociate ourselves from this repugnant and immoral policy, which strikes at the heart of the immigrant family."

Um, yeah.

Bisno: Doesn't pay bills

​A source sent us the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Robert Bisno, the man who essentially bought an election for SanTana Mayor Don Papi Pulido's regime by pouring tens of thousands of dollars into a campaign that extended term limits for the SanTana city council. Maybe the developer of the desolate City Place Lofts on the city's north side should've been paying his bills instead of fucking with democracy, though.

In his August 31 filing, Bisno claims to have between $100,000 and $500,000 in assets and admits to $10 million to $50 million in liabilities. But that number is dwarfed by the claims businesses and creditors have against Bisno--the top 20 alone say Bisno owes them an incredible $258,390,160. Yes: more than $258 million. Is the entirety of the CityPlace lofts even worth a tenth of that?

Among the funny creditors listed include $1.4 million in legal fees, $247,106 from the IRS, more than $100,000 in disputed credit card bills and $120,000 in divorce proceedings to add insult to injury. And none of this includes the multiple lawsuits filed against Bisno and his various businesses over the City Place lofts, mostly for unpaid bills. I glimpsed only a tiny bit of the massive combined cases against Bisno yesterday, but did see a claim by drywallers for more than $300,000, and a construction company saying Bisno hadn't paid $8 million for their job on the lofts.

What's most disturbing about this entire episode is that Don Papi Pulido and Councilwoman Claudia Alvarez were gladly stumping for Bisno's proposition and entertaining a proposed tower next to the City Place lofts when companies were already filing lawsuits against Bisno. Does anyone in SanTana City Hall bother to do their homework outside of assignments that teach them how to keep power and keep a city down?

Bustamante: As stupid in speaking as he looks here...

​"Fifty, sixty years from now, people will be talking about what we did in this room, and how we moved forward"

--SanTana Councilmember Busty Bustamante, talking during a nearly illegal city council meeting about plans to make the city into a regional transportation hub to the tune of at least $600 million. Besides the fact that the world is going to end in 2012 and the only city council action ever spoken about in SanTana history is how members lynched a Mexican way back when, Bustamante and the council never bothered to address why they're starting to give away millions to well-placed companies. Where's the U.S. District Attorney's office when we need them to take down these clowns?

Who says good things don't happen in SanTana? Mostly me, but I praise when need be, and much love toward a great event this Sunday at world-famous Librería Martínez. Over the summer, the bookstore hosted Barrio Writers, a group of about 30 local high schoolers who kept journals ala the Freedom Writers of Long Beach fame. Mentoring them along the way was local author Sara Rafael Garcia, author of the acclaimed Las Niñas, which details her recollections of growing up in SanTana during the early 1980s. She and other authors of note (not included in that group but in the author audience is meself)  will be in the audience this Sunday, though, as the Barrio Writers read from their journals. Event starts at 3 p.m., Librería Martínez is at 1200 N. Main St., Ste. 100-D, and the phone number is (714) 973-7900. Help out a great program, and a wonderful bookstore. And now, the obvious YouTube clip:

Fourth Street, SanTana: mid 1950s. What was so great about these segregated days?

​ Orange County is a place where booster myths have masqueraded as fact and history since the days of Serra, but an article in this month's Orange Coast by former Los Angeles Times writer Agustín Gurza on SanTana and its Artists Village takes the orange crate label. It starts with the title ("The Resurrection of Santa Ana," implying the county seat was once dead, which should come as a surprise to all the Mexicans who've continuously been around the town for, oh, the past 110 years) and only gets stranger and more inaccurate from there.

Gurza's thesis is that all the controversies surround the establishment of the Artists Village in the middle of one of the most Latino big cities in the United States are over, that hipster and bohemian now cohabit fine with wab, and that he can't believe it but now firmly does, and did Mayor Don Papi Pulido mug Gurza and take over the keyboard for a bit? There is no mention in the article of the Renaissance Specific Plan, about its chronic infection of conflict-of-influenza, and how those same activists Gurza describes as essentially accepting of the city's initiative to establish a hip downtown by subsidy (bowdlerized in the piece as redevelopment funds) were the very "rabble-rousers" who stopped that plan cold last year. Or the vacancies plaguing the area. Or all the struggles that the annual Dia de los Muertos event have in trying to placate the loft dwellers next to the Yost Theater (no mention of that place at all), or the organizers' eternal suspicion of the artists in the area for better or worse.

And some of Gurza's statements are flat-out wrong.

At least John Huston was a classy villain...

​(*Updated, with new info on the bottom. Post originally published August 1...)

At the end of the day yesterday--a Friday-- whoever's in charge of compiling the agenda for the SanTana City Council slipped the following item into the consent calendar:

GO LOCAL PROGRAM STEP 2 TECHNICAL ANALYSIS - Execute an agreement with Cordoba Corporation in the amount of $4,845,026.

"Go Local" means the choo-choo dream SanTana Mayor Don Papi Pulido has pushed for years; "Cordoba Corporation" is the well-connected firm that is in charge of the trolley folly despite SanTana city staff recommendation to the contrary; "$4,845,026" is the total of the contract, with no indication that any of it is going to the two firms city staff recommended as better than Cordoba, Parsons Brinckerhoff and David Evans and Associates Inc., firms that Don Papi vowed would work alongside Cordoba and receive a chunk of the change.

A city issue so controversial...a line item on a pinche consent calendar.

THE FIX IS IN, PEOPLE!!! And betcha no one will care.

UPDATE: As expected, this passed, although the vote--4-0 for--was interesting

Martinez: a vendida?

​. Councilmember Claudia Alvarez was not present, Busty Bustamante said long ago he wouldn't vote on the issue since Cordoba head George Pla sits with him on the Santa Ana Business Bank Board. Don Papi Pulido, in an act of benevolence that recalls Louis XIV, also abstained, saying he was doing so because of "abundance of caution in order to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest." HAHAHAHA!

So it was left to councilmembers Sal Tinajero, David Benavides, Vince Sarmiento, and Michelle Martinez to push through this ridiculous proposal. I won't ding Sal, David, or Vince too much on this issue since they've tended to side with Don Papi for reasons known only to them. But Michelle: you campaigned in 2006 as someone who would shake up the establishment, someone specifically opposed to Don Papi's cabal. Hell, you ran against him for mayor last year. If you had abstained against the choo-choo joke, there wouldn't have been a vote due to a lack of quorum, pushing the issue a couple more weeks so the public could have their input. If you had at least voted against it, people could still call you a progressive warrior.

Instead, you went with the Don Papi. And my beyond-cynical view of politics just got darker...

​Another part of old SanTana disappeared this week as Phoebe Olivos passed away July 23 at 89. The artists and hipsters who currently troll the city's downtown, marveling at how authentic the area is compared to the rest of OC while munching down on $9 "street" tacos owe her respect, as she was the matriarch of the Olivos clan who helped keep one of the county's few brick-and-mortar downtowns from the wrecking ball through their Yost Theater.

For decades, the movie palace located on SanTana's Fourth Street screened Mexican films, brought in film and movie stars from across Latin America, and served as the cultural focal point for OC Latinos. After gabachos left SanTana to the Mexicans in the 1970s (although don't believe the Know Nothing hype: wabs were always there), it was the Yost's continued vibrancy (and, in later years, the West Coast Theater the family purchased) that ensured those old buildings kept tenants and saved them for the city council's current gentrification plans. The Yost's takeover by city officials in 1985 remains the Chavez Ravine of Mexican OC history, an episode so traumatic it drove Phoebe's beloved husband Lewis to insanity and the rest of the family to ruin. Thankfully, after a quarter-century of use as a Pentecostal Church, the Yost is alive again, although few who use it, whether hipster or immigrant, know its full history.

Phoebe and her familia also helped desegregate SanTana's ritzy Floral Park neighborhood in the 1950s, only to be greeted by burning crosses. Born in Calexico but raised in Anaheim, Doña Olivos received her only real public recognition in a 1999 Los Angeles Times profile of the Olivos family. "It was a dream come true for [my husband] once we got the Yost, to have his own theater," Olivos told the reporter, but also adding that city officials "just wanted us out of there" as the years went on. The more things change...

According to the paid Orange County Register obituary in today's paper (how about a story on Phoebe instead of a front-pager on a $27,000 bed?), Olivos' viewing is tomorrow from 6 to 9 p.m. and a "Celebration of Life" service Saturday at 9:30 in the morn; both will occur at First United Methodist Church of Santa Ana, 609 N. Spurgeon Street. Burial at Fairhaven Memorial after.

Brown: Loves his pedo-anything!

​About two months ago, the Catholic Diocese of Orange put out a help-wanted ad for a new position: Associate Superintendent for Finance & Advancement. The job, a description stated, entails the applicant "to offer oversight, support and professional consultation to parishes/schools, high schools, Office of Faith Formation, and to other diocesan organizations on school marketing and full enrollment concepts, financial planning for schools, formal long-range planning, and fiscal management."

True to form, sources say Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown has hired a pedophile protector to the position, but the surprising part is that His Excellency went outside his rotten grove to nab the hire: Tracy Brennan*. Yes: the same Tracy Brennan who was principal at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana last year when one Alonso Manuel Gonzalez was arrested (and later convicted) for molesting a disabled child yet never got around to alerting parents about the pervert and commanded staff to shut up about the incident. Who ignored previous warnings about said pervert. Who did virtually the exact same thing at her previous job for the Anaheim Union High School District.

The best reaction comes from the late, great Wally George: SICK, SICK, SICK!

A diocesan worker (sure as hell not official spokeshole Ryan Lilygren, who wouldn't return a call or email for comment from me if I had proof of the Holy Grail) confirmed Brennan starts work next week. And, finally, the depraved worlds of the Orange diocese and the Banana Republic of SanTana unite...

*This Tracy Brennan is not the same Tracy Brennan who graduated from Cornelia Connelly High in 1986 and is now a major Hollywood agent.

My email and Facebook in-box have been invaded with the news that longtime Latino activist/racialist Larry "Nativo" Lopez was arrested on felony counts of voter fraud this Wednesday. We'll see whether the charges (that he voted in Boyle Heights but lives in OC), but my only comment at this point is either Lopez is colossally stupid, lazy, or this is a modern-day case of Al Capone getting nabbed for keeping false books. Meanwhile, here's Larry on The O'Reilly Factor:

Pulido: Pay your taxes!

I'm supposed to be relaxing at the Parker Resort in Palm Springs, a beautiful lil' oasis where UC Riverside MFA program in creative writing is holding a writer's retreat (I'm an invited lecturer), but news that SanTana mayor Don Papi Pulido is busy lubing Orange County's seat for the Freudian 37-story symbol that is a proposed skyscraper has me too pissed off to swim in the night heat. The building, of course, is the notorious One Broadway Plaza, proposed by megadeveloper Mike Harrah years ago to satiate his ego. What's stopped Harrah from beginning construction is a clause in the development agreement that requires he fill the building to at least 50 percent capacity before beginning construction. He couldn't do it during boom times, and there's no way he can pull it off now.

In steps Don Papi Pulido, who just loves to stretch and even break the law. He wants to use federal stimulus money to "to move at least some county offices into the proposed tower," according to the always-excellent Orange County Register reporter Doug Irving. But guess who would benefit the most from such a move? Harrah.

I don't have access to as many public records right now out in the desert (hold it...cute girl in low-rise bikini passed by the pool...), but I do know that Harrah has in the past rented out many of his downtown SanTana buildings to the county. One I know for sure he still owns is 1200 N. Main, where Harrah maintains his offices and whose main tenant is the county's Health Care Agency. If Pulido gets his way, Harrah gets subsidized to move his current tenants to One Broadway Plaza, which would either mean more money from the same source or a good chunk of his buildings would then stand empty. Regardless, in this day where so many local businesses are failing, why the hell is Don Papi favoring Harrah? Oh yeah--because Harrah is a former donor, and no one in SanTana really gives a shit.

Yesterday, Saddleback High special-ed assistant Alonso Manuel Gonzalez plead guilty to child abuse and endangerment in a case that has dragged on since November yet has provoked no public or parental notification from Santa Ana Unified High School District officials. Prosecutors knocked down Gonzalez's original charge of a felony for a lewd act with a dependent adult to the misdemeanor crime. As part of the plea bargain, Gonzalez will suffer four years of formal probation, serve 240 hours of community service, pay restitution and--lucky bastard--spend one day in jail. May the world know Gonzalez is a SICK pervert for preying on a special-ed student--and that SAUSD officials care so much about children that they never told Saddleback parents about Gonzalez's arrest and probably never will. Oh, and they ignored the warnings of parents. School year ain't over yet, people: call Saddleback High principal Robert Laxton (wait a minute...did the pedo-apologist Tracey Brennan quit or get fired?) at (714) 513-2900 and tell him what the fuck.

With IRS troubles like his, will Don Papi become Obama's ambassador to Mexico?

For years, opponents of SanTana Mayor Don Papi Pulido have openly wondered how an invisible politician can make so much cash that he can afford an estate in the city's ritzy Floral Park neighborhood. His Form 700s have always included a grab bag of new investments, projects, and other cash inflows that the Don Papi has pursued--real-estate deals, car-related efforts, and a longstanding stint as a director of the Fullerton Community Bank. But one Don Papi moneymaker has long perplexed me: his involvement in something called the La Farga Group.

He's run the company since 2004, and the latest Form 700 (the public paperwork politicians and candidates must file under California electoral law that disclose their finances) shows Don Papi paid himself between $10,000 and $100,000 in salary last year. But what the La Farga group does is a mystery. Don Papi claims it's a consulting firm of which he is president, but the inexact science of Google pops up nada. Zilcho. Nothing. Even stranger, however, is La Farga's supposed location. The Form 700 lists it as being 900 E. Katella, #B in Orange, but the business there is a tax preparation service partially run by Jim Pleman, who filed the articles of incorporation for La Farga (submitted as Lafarga). Nowhere in the office or complex to which it belongs is there any indication a La Farga Group is based in there.

It's telling that Don Papi Pulido lists his business as a tax preparer, as he and the IRS go together like SanTana and Orange County Register readers. Public records show that Pulido's business is currently suspended in California due to failing to pay $1,114 in taxes since March of last year. And this wasn't the first time the La Farga Group's articles of incorporation were suspended for a failure to pay taxes; the Franchise Tax Board did the same in November of 2005, ultimately reinstating Don Papi's biz in 2006. So, the question remains: why can't Don Papi Pulido pay his taxes on time? What does the Lafargara/La Farga group do? And shouldn't Pulido associate himself with better tax preparers?

Not scheduled for gentrification

There is perhaps no business more fundamental to an Orange County politico's creation myth than Ace Muffler Shop, on First Street in downtown SanTana and belonging to the family of SanTana Mayor Don Papi "Miguel" Pulido. It was the city's planned demolishing of Ace Muffler through eminent domain that spurred the young Don Papi to enter politics in 1986. It was the fight to preserve Ace Muffler that earned Don Papi Pulido the coalition that elected him to the city council that year and later on toward the mayoral seat in 1992. And it's the muffler shop that the now-magisterial Don Papi--who now lives in a ritzy estate in SanTana's ritzy Floral Park neighborhood--continues to use as proof of his working-class origins.

But the business--technically owned by the Pulido Family Trust, of which Don Papi is invested in per his statement of economic interest filed with the California Fair Political Practices Commission last month--has recently proven to be a burden. We previously wrote about how Ace Muffler was hit with over $14,000 in tax liens in 2003; those were settled, along with a $8,639 lien in 2007 and $13,838 in personal California state taxes that Pulido and his wife were dinged for in 2005 but paid off a year later.

Those ignominies pale to the embarrassment that currently afflicts Ace Muffler: Not only does the Pulido negocio currently face a tax lien of $10,789, but its business license has been suspended since September 2 of last year. Read that again: California Secretary of State records show Ace Muffler is operating without a business license. Ain't that against the law?

This isn't the first time Ace Muffler had its business license revoked; it previously happened in 2004, but was reinstated within a year. And it very well could be that the Pulidos have rectified this situation, although Secretary of State records are current as of last week. We'd love to hear Don Papi Pulido's side of the story, but he hasn't returned our calls since...well, ever. Feel free to leave a comment here, Miguel!

By the way, tax records show that Anaheim mayor Curt Pringle and Irvine councilmember Larry Agran, the two men whom along with Don Papi Pulido form "The Tres Caballeros" of local political infamy, have never been dinged for tax liens. Not once. Ever.

Spurious George

As we predicted, Don Papi Pulido and his SanTana City Puppets rewarded Cordoba Corporation over more-qualified candidates with a contract to head a proposed streetcar project because of Cordoba head George Pla's many SanTana connections. Doug Irving of the Orange County Register had a great piece over the weekend about how SanTana officials are stonewalling his efforts to unearth public records pertaining to the $6 million contract. He also elicited a quote from Pla:

Pla said his work with the [muy connected Santa Ana Business] bank "has nothing to do with it" and said he won the contract because he put together a team that knows the city and knows its needs. "It's not about political connections," he said. "It's about trust. ... Getting this project to be a success is about having trust in the team."

HAHAHA! If ever there was a group that existed solely because of its connections to politicos, it's Cordoba. The best takedown of this company was a 2000 LA Weekly piece; read it, but below are just a few of Cordoba's greatest hits. All which begs the question: why did Don Papi Pulido reward the choo-choo contract to Cordoba? We know the answer...anyways, the hits!

* Cordoba is a company that historically has been averse to paying taxes. Just this past February, they were hit with $1,549 in tax liens, liens that government documents show as still outstanding. This followed a 2003 settlement with the IRS in which Cordoba paid $251,000 to settle $2.1 million in unpaid taxes, according to Forbes. And the IRS took such a miniscule amount only because "collectability was in doubt" on the owed sum.

*In 2000, the City of Oakland sued Cordoba for $1.2 million for breach of contract involving Y2K (remember that?) upgrades of the city's computers. Still trying to find out what happened with that case.

*A 1997 Department of Commerce audit found that Cordoba improperly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds to build a center for minority hirings. The report was so damning that government officials, according to a Los Angeles Times report, issued a "warning to other federal agencies to be careful about hiring Cordoba for future contracts." Cordoba earned this contract despite being ranked lower than other firms who had submitted bids for the project--gee, where have we heard that one before?

Cordoba has many, many other brushes with scandals--so many, in fact, that I tried listing them all but my computer kept crashing and I'm publishing the above snippet for the meanwhile. So, we'll leave you with this tidbit: in Los Angeles, Cordoba's biggest supporter was the corrupt councilmember Richard Alatorre, who served home detention for failing to pay taxes. Guess which other major Latino politico Cordoba has connections with that also doesn't like paying taxes? Don Papi Pulido! The Chinatown comparison gets bigger every day...

Don Papi Pulido is a Floral Park resident

This weekend, the Floral Park Neighborhood Association  hosts its annual Home and Garden Tour, a fantabulous two days where residents can pretend they don't live in SanTana. "Stroll tree-lined streets, enjoy the ambiance of a simpler time gone by," reads a promotional brochure, and ain't that the funniest code for "before the Mexicans ruined the town" you've read in a while? The starting point will be on the corner of Santa Clara Avenue and Victoria Drive, a place where the docents can lay down the true history of Floral Park but probably won't because look at how pretty the houses here are!

According to the association's history, Floral Park began as a place where World War I vets could return to live--indeed, nearby Memory Lane is dedicated to the soldiers of the Great War who didn't return. "During the prosperous years of the 1920s, it was said that 'every man could have his castle and he could have it any style he wanted'" reads the brief recap, before listing architectual schools such as Spanish Colonial and English Tudor revivals. What the Floral Park folks didn't include was the style of Whites Only.

If only this saga came with Faye Dunaway--instead, we have to settle for Michelle Martinez...

It's been almost to the year since I last wrote about how the SanTana City Council would most likely award a light-rail contract to Cordoba Corporation, a company whose president George Pla sits on the SanTana Business Bank alongside councilmember Busty Bustamante. I theorized a scam of Chinatown-esque proportions, in which Busty and Don Papi Pulido would maneuver to get Cordoba the contract instead of more-qualified bidders, which would make Cordoba fabulously rich and get the SanTana Business Bank fabulously rich and create a transit system that would launch Don Papi's much-dreamed-about Renaissance Plan and make him fabulously rich and so on and so on.

Well, we're now through the looking glass here, people. Tonight, the SanTana City Council will vote to authorize City Manager Dave Ream to negotiate a contract with Cordoba for them to do a technical analysis on Don Papi Pulido's streetcar desires. Busty definitely better not vote on this project due to him receiving dinero from Cordoba folks and his connection to Pla. More--much more--on this story as it unfolds just like I called it...

I don't follow extreme sports, so the name Benjamin Snowden does nothing for me. But what did do something form me is that this BMX biker was arrested within the past couple of days, charged with being a part of a robbery ring that targeted schools in the SanTana Unified School District. According to the Orange County Register story, "two adults would drive the juveniles to the burglary sites and act as lookouts. The other three adults, including Snowden, would fence the stolen goods for BMX and skateboard parts." Here's Snowden's brief side of the story.

Is Snowden the type of individual that Don Papi Pulido and his Brave New Urbanists want in SanTana. You betcha! Wonder if Snowden passed code enforcement for the backyard layout he has in the below video. Try to guess what neighborhood it's in, because I can't really determine it (watch out for the SanTana water tower!

Ben Snowden gives a tour of his house and backyard. from BMX or Life on Vimeo.

Now, with less SanTana property!

Walk by the CityPlace lofts during the night, and you'll quickly reach for your cell phone for illumination. The SanTana development, created by controversial grease-a-palm developer Robert Bisno, is a spectacular disaster; lofts that once went for $700,000 are now going for half that rate, if not more--and still, many sit alone.

Perhaps this is why the latest edition of the Greater Santa Ana Business Alliance auto-erotic rag called CityLine published a small note letting readers know he has sold off a chunk of his CityPlace holdings for a couple of million dollars. I don't have the paper in front of me, and I'm not sure if the land in question holds lofts or the land on which he proposed to build a 27-story tower, but what's undisputable is that Bisno is as hurting for money to fund his Robert Moses dreams as SanTana's other big-time, Claudia Alvarez-owning developer, Michael Harrah. An assignment for those interested: compare Harrah's real-estate holdings in SanTana from 2004 to today, and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Click here for a foodier take on CityPlace's troubles!

Don Papi Pulido in his other preferred sport: maintaining his kingdom

Art Pedroza at Orange Juice! had quite the scoop last week in reporting that First District Supervisor Janet Nguyen recently allocated $170,000 to the building of a clay tennis court at Cabrillo Park in SanTana. Pedroza opined out loud that the tennis courts came at the request of mayor Don Papi Pulido, a known tennis fiend, because he's a Francophile (past media profiles have documented Don Papi Pulido's French fluency and supposed Gallic heritage, a genealogical aspiration amongst wabs as notorious as that mythical Cherokee princess in the family trees of many gabachos) and thus wants to replicate Roland Garros. Dan Chmielewski at The Liberal OC, who despises Pedroza for reasons I know longer remember but whose back-and-forth with Pedroza (and the occasional--okay, frequent--chime-in by Orange County blogger supreme Matt Cunningham) makes for the most entertaining news war since Pulitzer and Hearst, shot back that tennis courts will keep kids off SanTana's mean streets. Chmielewski proudly proclaims his Irvine residency, which explains why he hasn't a clue about SanTana reality.

Consider the scene that happens almost every evening at the tennis courts at Willard Intermediate School, mere minutes from the estate of Don Papi Pulido--well, it would be, if you could enter Floral Park going north on Ross Street. These are tennis courts in name only. No nets exist; the pavement shows neglect. Yet they're crammed with the shouts and pounding sneakers of soccer players. Through the ingenuity that is the Mexican race, these wabs break into the courts, set up goal posts and boundaries, and play until the twilight, and frequently beyond.

Full disclosure: tennis is the only sport I've ever played regularly.  Horribly--my colleague Nick Schou and I used to volley every Sunday morning for years, and the final score was something like 200-4 in his favor, no exaggeration. But for Don Papi Pulido to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on tennis courts in SanTana is like Westminster naming a school after Martin Luther King instead of the Mendez family: it's a nice gesture, but stop ignoring the wants of the people, already!

Nope. In a June article last year for The Sports Network website, noted tennis coach Vic Braden profiled Don Papi Pulido's efforts to make SanTana tennis-crazy. "The mayor of Santa Ana, Miguel Pulido, an ex-collegiate tennis player, is working tirelessly to make Santa Ana a huge tennis town," Braden wrote. "Organizations and foundations are beginning to take notice, especially since the program also involves instruction in physics, science, math and languages...It's a win-win situation for everyone and while Santa Ana has been noted as a great soccer town, things are changing as the spotlight begins to focus on tennis."

Question: how about putting more educational focus on soccer? Other questions to ponder: why does SanTana continue to insist on ignoring its Mexican reality? And does the Don Papi prefer a baseline game, or is he strictly about the net?

You may have missed it in the comments to this post, but someone going by the handle "cook", who apparently attended the plaque unveiling ceremony for fallen hero Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor at the Walk of Honor Plaza in Santa Ana Thursday morning, poses an interesting question: Where were the Santa Ana residents and, more importantly, city officials?

"I was disappointed that only a Marine vet from the Wilshire area and myself, a Navy from the Willard area, were the only Santa Ana residents to stand for our fallen veterans," cook writes. "The Santa Ana High School Jr ROTC did the colors, so that is 4 more.

"I guess no one told city management about this happening in 'down town orange county' so our own mayor or a few council members could stop in for the 1 hour the ceremony lasted."

Actually, Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido was in Irvine, at the Orange County Great Park Corp. Board of Directors meeting, when it began around 10:15 a.m. A director, Pulido spoke early in the meeting about the Great Park trying to tap into President Obama's stimulus money before cutting out early. Board chairman Larry Agran explained Pulido had to catch a flight to Washington, D.C.

Can't speak for the Santa Ana council members, though. 

Too bad that the Weekly moved its world headquarters away from SanTana and back to Costa Mesa's industrial-park blackhole this week (although the offices we now occupy ain't that bad), because the best non-Carona story to emerge this weekend was the shutdown of the revolutionary FOB II art exhibit by SanTana officials and not the usual elderly Vietnamese brigade of First Amendment haters. The exhibit, held by the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association, got those aesthetic Know Nothings yelling and accusing artists of communism because one of the pieces in question featured imagery of the Republic of Vietnam. Much better coverage about the issue on the Bolsavik blog.

But here's what's interesting. In a city where virtually every civic, state, and national code gets violated daily, where artists create makeshift lofts in industrial areas and people engage in all types of illegal activity, why on Earth did Don Papi Pulido decide to shut down FOB II? Yes, the building in which it was held wasn't zoned to exhibit art, but wanna know something? The former Weekly world headquarters is still the home of the Santa Ana Business Bank, where all sorts of shady characters sit on the board of directors? The permit for that building's elevator was expired for TWO YEARS (they were just renewed), yet I never saw SanTana code enforcement take the building's owner to task--maybe because bigtime developer Mike Harrah owned it for so long? Art Pedroza has his own theories as to why Don Papi Pulido's shock troops closed FOB II, but I won't add any here. I will point two things out:

1. In a city that supposedly prides itself on its Artists Village, to shut down FOB II is foolish and ignorant. The original FOB exhibit was a landmark presentation held in 2002 in a building owned by Nguoi Viet that  showcased a new generation of Vietnamese artists (I wrote about it then but can't find the damn link). Any city that truly cared about fostering an arts scene would've bent over backwards to host it. But since VAALA isn't involved in SanTana politics, no go.

2. Speaking of the Artists Village, a challenge to ustedes and the people over at the Santiago Lofts: which will be the brave, permit-holding gallery to offer FOB II a new home?

*Note on picture: disregard Chinese script and focus on the guy!

Supporters of longtime Santa Ana Mexican consulate employees who say they were fired without cause last month by a newly politicized consular team which some have accused of favoritism and elitism, protested in front of the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores) in Mexico City late last week. The group demanded the reinstatement of the longtime Santa Ana consular employees and the intervention of Mexican president Felipe Calderón.

The tricky thing for the group, however, is that Calderón hand picked current consul Carlos Rodríguez y Quezada to replace his popular predecessor, Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro last February. The group of protesters, which included former local consulate employees Silvia Jimenez and Socorro Sarmiento (both of whom quit before last month's firings), also published an op-ed in the huge, popular, left-leaning daily, La Jornada on Thursday, the same day of the protests. The op-ed was signed by MALDEF, LULAC, Friends of Orange County, the National Alliance for Human Rights and the Mexican American Political Association and Labor Unions.

In it, the group writes: "It would take too long to enumerate the various political changes at this consulate, the changes in service and outreach to our communities, and the ongoing organizing of elitist social events."

Silvia Jimenez, who was among those in the group seeking an interview with government heads, says the interview wasn't immediately granted, but that the group will continue to appeal for the government's intervention. Jimenez is among other former employees who say the consulate and community outreach programs have suffered since Rodriguez y Quezada set up shop in Santa Ana last year. 

Nothing made for funnier reading this holiday season than an article in CityLine, a newspaper put out by what was once known as the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce but now calls itself the Greater Santa Ana Business Alliance so they can justify holding mixers outside of their beloved city. Under the headline "HR Director Praises Santa Ana Workforce," it turns out the Irvine Co. has, as usual, swooped into SanTana and signed up a bunch of cheap, expendable, non-union immigrant Mexicans to work at their newly refurbished Resort at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach.

"We were focused on Santa Ana because in the service industry, you look for people who want to be in the service sector," said one Arte Nathan, whom CityLine identifies as vice-president of human resources for Irvine Company Resort Properties. "Santa Ana has a large segment of its population that's in the workforce, and a big percentage of them are in the service sector. So we thought it was an obvious focus for us."

"You look for people who want to be in the service sector"--in other words, you look for the cheapest labor, and what better place to strip mine than the most-Mexican city in America? Will Irvine Co. head Don Bren spring to subsidize transportation for his SanTana workers as they've requested, instead of making them take a maze of OCTA routes? Benefits? What happens when SEIU gets involved? More importantly: why give jobs to people in SanTana where you have a workforce of teens in Newport Beach and the surrounding wealthy cities needing some job experience? So many questions, too much hilarity...

One good bit of news to report in this young year: Librería Martinez, the main stomping grounds for Macarthur Genius-winning barber-turned-bookstore owner Reuben Martinez isn't closing as previously feared, but moving next door from their current location. Over the New Year's Day weekend, Martinez wrote to customers in a mass e-mail that the store will reopen February 1 at 1200 N. Main St., Ste. D, with the same hours and phone number (714-973-7900) as the old store.

"Thank you all , and rest assured that as we enter the new year, we do so with an optimistic view of things to come and a revitalized commitment to our journey that started many years ago," Martinez concluded. "We hope we can count on your continued support in helping bring literacy and a promise for a brighter tomorrow to all the members of our community."

The old location is still open, so be a mensch: visit, buy, and buy some more.

For months we've had a sneaking suspicion that the new Mexican consul in Santa Ana was working hard to transform the consulate from the effective, outreach-heavy post it once was under wildly popular former consul Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro to a mere prop of elitist Mexican puffery. Many have whispered that the consulate has taken a turn for the worst under the direction of new consul Carlos Rodríguez y Quezada and his sidekick Manuel Herrera, the deputy consul who clashed with Ortiz Haro on numerous occasions (and proceeded to lie to us on several). Ortiz Haro was appointed by former president Vicente Fox, served for five years and then was dismissed by incoming president Felipe Calderón, who tapped Rodríguez y Quezada, a former ambassador, for the post last February.

We've just heard from several of the consulate's longest-serving and most-experienced employees that they've been fired without warning or explanation. Three of the five employees who were given verbal notice a few days ago have sent a letter of protest to president Calderon, outlining Rodríguez y Quezada's shrewd takeover and the intimidation tactics used by Herrera since he was promoted in February. The ousting of these five employees is the latest in an exodus that began earlier this year. Faced with pressure from the new consul and Herrera, and an environment that many have said has become increasingly hostile to the population of Mexican residents it is set up to serve, longtime consulate employees like Socorro Sarmiento and others, like Silvia Jimenez, have quit.

Nervous, frustrated employees and non-profit affiliates have said that the Rodríguez y Quezada-Herrera consular tag-team is creating of a kind of self-serving ambassador's post--one that is quickly being re-populated by Mexican elites more interested in promoting high culture and rubbing elbows with local politicians than in helping their brethren in need. 

The case of Saddleback High special-ed assistant Alonso Manuel Gonzalez--arrested Nov. 17 on charges he sexually molested a student at the SanTana high school--continues. Today at an arraignment hearing in Orange County Superior Court, Judge Cheryl Leininger allowed Gonzalez to remain free on $25,000 bond and set a Jan. 13 preliminary hearing on the case. The dour-looking Gonzalez didn't offer a plea; instead, he stood quietly as Leininger issued a protective order for discovery, required Gonzalez to "stay away from the victim" (Leininger's words, not mine, so I'm not putting in the mitigating "alleged" in front of the word) and turn over any weapons he may possess. But the whopper: Gonzalez can't set foot on a school campus for three years unless a judge says otherwise. Maybe all of this is standard protocol in molestation cases, but something smells rotten in the Banana Republic, and it ain't the strewn trash off Standard... and betcha Saddleback High administrators say nothing about this case to parents!

*Continually moved to the top to ensure this story doesn't get lost over the Thanksgiving holiday...

When Julia Orozco found out that SanTana police arrested teacher's assistant Alonso Manuel Gonzalez on November 17 on suspicion of a lewd act with a disabled student at Saddleback High School, she "got a headache out of shock and anger." Orozco is the mother of a girl with Down Syndrome who pulled out her daughter from Saddleback because, among other reasons, she didn't trust Gonzalez around her daughter and other female students. With Gonzalez's arrest, says Orozco, "all our efforts are paying off, little by little."

Orozco spoke to the Weekly yesterday at length about her experiences with Gonzalez and SanTana Unified School District officials, whom Orozco and others say ignored repeated warnings by Saddleback parents and teachers that Gonzalez was acting inappropriately with  disabled students. She says the first warning flag came in the fall of 2005, when she and her daughter attended Back to School Night. The two were leaving Saddleback's special-ed classroom when Gonzalez appeared and tried to hug Orozco's daughter. "I told him that was inappropriate--that  we encourage the kids to shake hands." Spooked by the encounter, Orozco shared it with another parent, who said they had complained about Gonzalez's actions to administrators to no avail.

Enough Saddleback parents complained about Gonzalez and other issues that about 15 of them eventually met with then-Saddleback principal Esther Jones and Richard Erhard, then the head of SanTana Unified's special-ed program, at the school. Other parents at the meeting told Erhard and Jones that Gonzalez had a propensity to want to spend time alone with children--scratch that, only with female students--and that the children felt uncomfortable around Gonzalez. Nothing came of this meeting, so another was held at district offices about a month later.

Orozco claims that when the subject of Gonzalez came up, school officials said, "Nothing. Nothing. Not a single word. They didn't even try to make up excuses." Sick of the stonewalling, Orozco transferred her daughter ouf of Saddleback and to Santa Ana High in 2007, where she graduated this year and is currently in the school's adult transitioning program. The single mother feels bad that her and other parents couldn't get Gonzalez out of Saddleback: "I wish I could've had more time bothering them and making phone calls."

Jones and Erhard no longer work at SanTana Unified, but Orozco wants to find them to let them know of Gonzalez's arrest--especially Jones. "I do want to rub it in her face," she says. "I want to tell her, 'What did we tell you a few years ago? Is this what you wanted to happen? Look what you've done.'"

If you have any information about the Gonzalez matter, email GArellano@ocweekly.com. Anonymity guaranteed...

I accompanied a friend to the Wells Fargo near MainPlace this past Saturday when I noticed that SanTana Mayor Don Papi Pulido strolled up to a teller's window and proclaimed his account number for everyone to hear. I'm not exaggerating--I was a good 10 feet away from the diminutive man with the booming voice, and what originally caught my attention wasn't that it was Don Papi Pulido but that some moron was yelling out his account number. Didn't anybody ever teach the Papi that one shouldn't be revealing vitals to the public, that one shouldn't follow the lead of that guy who owns the company that says they'll protect you from identity theft, and he gives out his Social Security number on radio commercials? Either Don Papi Pulido is arrogant as hell, or he's plain dumb. I say both.

I digress. He starts making small talk with the cute teller--Thanksgiving plans, the like. Nothing flirtatious, just small talk. LOUD small talk. Dad's here, sister's there, who cares? We're now standing five feet from each other. I think about asking why he never returns my calls, but it's a nice Saturday and I want to go read. I finish a transaction with another teller, a young, portly Latino. Once I leave, Don Papi Pulido tries to talk with the guy. "So what are you going to do for Thanksgiving," the leader of SanTana asked. "Eat?"

He says this last word in a sotto voice, much more sotto than usual, in a tone that mocks more than asks. The poor teller is flustered and just smiles. Don Papi Pulido must've learned his humor from the Busty Bustamante School of Silliness...

Last year, Dr. Tracy Brennan (the lady addressing the crowd in this picture) took over as principal at Saddleback High School in SanTana. She replaced Esther Jones, who made international headlines in 2005 for urging teachers to change the grades of failing seniors. But Brennan hasn't proved particularly popular amongst Saddleback faculty and parents, if one is to believe the comments left at Orange Juice!'s SanTana Unified School District section (and you should--more on this in a future post). We don't blame those folks for despising Brennan--as the Weekly reported a couple of days ago, Brennan has neglected to alert Saddleback parents about the arrest of Alonso Manuel Gonzalez on allegations he sexually molested a disabled student. But, in some ways, an ambivalent attitude when it comes to sex crimes seems to be part of Brennan's modus operandi.

In 2004, Brennan was an assistant superintendent of education at the Anaheim Unified High School District when police arrested 14-year-old Jose Avina on charges he robbed and raped his peers (he's now serving a life sentence for those crimes). As in the Gonzalez case, Brennan was in a situation where she and her superiors neglected to alert parents about a serious case. "I feel devastated for the students that this allegedly happened to," she told the Los Angeles Times then without ever explaining why AUHSD officials waited more than a week after learning Avina tried to rob a boy before letting parents know about the predator. "But I'm glad that it has come to light and police have put an end to it."

Two years later, Brennan sued the Anaheim Union High School District for wrongfully terminating her contract. An Orange County Superior Court judge dismissed the charges, and Brennan appealed the decision to the California Court of Appeals--they, too, did not agree with Brennan. The ruling is telling to the kind of controversy Brennan brings wherever she has set up camp in Orange County. Choice entries from the ruling (and the hyperlink) after the jump!