Pass The Barbecue Sauce Janet’s Serving Up More Pork

Once again First District Supervisor Janet Nguyen is demonstrating that she is Orange County’s “Queen of Pork Barrel Spending”.  According to a story in today’s edition of the Orange County Register Janet is proposing to spend $100,000 of taxpayer monies on two metal arches for Main Street in Garden Grove pending approval of the city council.

The metal arches, which would be 14-feet-tall and 40-feet-tall decorated with ornamental strawberries, would be placed at each end of Main Street in downtown Garden Grove.  The arches are the brainchild of the Garden Grove Downtown Business Association and Janet in an effort to pander for votes and to pay back supporters is offering up tax dollars to do it.

You might recall that last month, in yet another effort to pander for votes, Janet proposed that 2.5 million in tax dollars be spent on a pedestrian bridge in Little Saigon.  Janet’s “Bridge to Re-Election” and her Little Saigon satellite office, which is also costing taxpayers $128,000 a year, are her cornerstone achievements since being narrowly elected to the Board of Supervisors.  Janet’s pork barrel spending must even make Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), best known for his “Bridge to Nowhere”, proud.

While the Downtown Business Association may be supporting the arches proposal not all the downtown merchants are supporting it.  According to the Register article, Virginia Zlaket, owner of Zlaket’s Market, as well as many others downtown, is against it.

“There’s so much clean-up that’s needed on Main Street,” she said. “We need to repair the bricks that people are tripping on, we need new benches and planters. $100,000 for decorative archways seems unnecessary and the least of our priorities right now.”

What Ms. Zlaket needs to understand is that repairing bricks, fixing up planters and putting in new benches will not afford Janet the photo-op that she desires.  This isn’t about doing what’s necessary downtown, it’s about Janet Nguyen and pandering for votes.  Janet wants to be able to put her name on things such as a bridge or an archway in order to get fluff and photo-ops for her campaign mailers and more importantly to pander for votes.

The Garden Grove City Council will be considering this proposal tonight at their meeting which begins at 6:30 PM in the council chambers at 11300 Stanford Avenue. 

12 Comments

  1. Fixing benches, planters and bricks on Main Street would have been just as good of a photo opportunity. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a pothole created in San Jose so that he can have a photo opportunity to show him fixing the pothole.

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/27/GOVERNOR.TMP

    All 5 of the County Supervisors have Fund 130 money. If you are going to criticize pork spending, it would only be fair to look at what the other 4 so-called Republicans on the Board of Supervisors are spending their Fund 130 money on.

  2. Oro-agua-

    Good point. Sean probably focused on Janet because she’s using all these silly pork projects to fatten up her reelection chances… And Sean & I happen to live in Janet’s district, and we’re obviously not very happy with these gimmicks she’s pulling. But hey, please let us know if you have dirt on the other Supes’ pork projects. We’ll be happy to report them here.

    After all, didn’t all the 5 Reeps campaign on “fiscal responsibility”? Does it really look like any of them is actually practicing that?

  3. Oro,

    I live in the First District so I will concern myself with the spending in my district. Janet is looking for my vote and the votes of my neighbors. I feel that it is my duty to inform the folks of the First District about Janet’s pork barrel spending.

    If you would like a report on the spending of the others perhaps you should write about them. In the interim I will focus on the “Queen of Pork”.

  4. Sean, I understand you are trying to be a good Democrat and shine the spotlight on Supervisor Nguyen in an election year. I was merely pointing out that she is only one of five Republicans on the County Board of Supervisors that have this type of money at their disposal and not the only member up for re-election.

    Andrew, since Sean has expressed that he is only concerned about the spending in the First District, perhaps you could share with your readers what you can find out about how the other four Republican Supervisors are spending their Fund 130 money.

    It was County money that was spent elsewhere prior to 1995 that lead to the largest municipal bankruptcy in the U.S., right here in Orange County.

  5. “Sean, I understand you are trying to be a good Democrat and shine the spotlight on Supervisor Nguyen in an election year. ”

    Oro,

    We (the Dems) don’t really have a horse, or shall we say donkey, in this race. So my shining the light on Janet has nothing to do with partisan politics.

    As a resident of the First District I am appalled at the blatant pandering for votes with taxpayer monies by Janet. She is throwing lots of money at Garden Grove and Westminster in an effort to court the voters in those cities. She is hoping to undercut Dina’s support in the Vietnamese community by using our tax dollars.

    She has essentially ignored Santa Ana because she knows that she won’t find much support here, especially after her anti-Latino campaign during the special election.

  6. “Isn’t the Logan neighborhood in Santa Ana?”

    Yes it is.

    I guess Janet figures that Latino’s sell their votes a lot cheaper than Anglos and Vietnamese.

    A $5000 swing set is chump change in comparison to the $100,000 arches and the $2.5 million bridge.

    $5000 doesn’t make up for her Latino bashing tactics in the special election.

    Hoa Van Tran appears to be reaching out to the Latino community in Santa Ana. He won’t be tainted like Janet and Dina (because of her connection to anti-Latino bigot Van Tran).

  7. I would suggest shining a light on the rest of the GOP Supes Board and see what they’ve all spent their money on.

    To only shine a light on Janet and complain about it is fairly benign when you consider that Lou Correa also had pork money and spent it just the same. Granted it’s an election year, so Janet is an obvious target, but where was the flashlight on Lou?

    Unfortunately, Sean — in his biased bashing — didn’t shine a light on his record since it’s partisan politics at play. Particularly since Democrats can never do wrong, apparently. :-p

  8. 17th Street,

    I have chosen to shine the light on Janet because I live in the First District and Janet is asking for my vote. I will leave to the others or perhaps you to expose the others.

    Your attempt to spin this into an attack on Lou is typical. Even if Lou acted in a similar fashion, and I am not saying that he did, does that change the fact that Janet is currently the “Queen of Pork”? Janet ran as a fiscal conservative platform and has been anything but. According to the Reeps Lou is a wild-eyed tax-and-spend liberal, so if he acted in such a fashion it’s to be expected. But fiscal conservatives like Janet should be fighting “pork” not creating it. Right?

    Perhaps the reason I didn’t shine a light on Lou was because I wasn’t blogging when he was on the BOS. Or maybe it was because he didn’t use “pork” as a means of pandering for votes.

    Since you want Lou exposed, why don’t you share for us something that Lou did that resembles anything like the pathetic vote pandering that Janet is doing.

  9. Just curious, as I can’t tell from the picture insert—does the proposed bridge have a ramp or elevator access? If the bridge is replacing an existing crosswalk, rather than supplying an additional access not presently available, then shouldn’t it have handicapped access? I would think that using State or Federal monies requires compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I know that Bolsa is a main bus line so there should be the expectation of handicapped usage.

    2 million for the bridge is fairly cheap. Dana Point’s pedestrian bridge started at 4 million (tax payer funded) and will be more since they have to add an elevator since they’ll close the present crosswalk in front of Denney’s on PCH.

  10. What is this…pimp my street? Janet shouldn’t be making up stuff to spend my taxdollars on. I know her brother law has his business right where the arches are supposed to go. C’mon now! This is an absolute waste of taxdollars. Janet needs to quit feeding at the trough!

Comments are closed.