What Jacob Ellis has done to the City of Corona is no laughing matter

After looking at the most recent string of events Corona, a pattern hit me like a hurricane. The only way the rag-tag assembly of community leaders trying to fight against the rampage of Jacob Ellis are going to stop what is happening is to totally destroy him and his support network. I am convinced of it.

At the last two Corona City Council meetings, a few things happened that sealed the pattern of behavior that I have identified and laid out the opinions I have in my mind beyond any doubt.

One of the recent controversies has swirled around the downtown revitalization project that has been exposed as a front for low income housing, and not the alleged commercial center that Ellis has been selling it as. The original renderings had no residential, then the next few had some and then it swelled to 400 units of Condos. The council cut it to 196 condos, which I believe is the minimum required by state law to comply with the state-mandates for “affordable housing” in every project. The project however showcases a Hotel, parking structures and other uses that I’m told do not comply with the state surplus land Act. It appears once again Jacob is working to sell the council and community a project that may not be feasible. Perhaps he should look at what happened in Anaheim. The meeting also featured an Ellis mini-rage on Wes Speake, one of the cuck councilmembers of Corona. (More on Ellis’ personal behavior in a bit, read on)

At the most recent council meeting, an item was sprung onto the agenda at the last minute by Jacob Ellis. The link to the city website is now broken (shocked, I tell you, shocked) but your intrepid blogger knows the breed and downloaded the packet. In a nutshell, what Jacob Ellis and his newest minion, Economic Development Director, Joel Belding, tried to do was get the City Council to sign off on an Amortization plan to force businesses out of the redevelopment zone in Downtown Corona along 6th St over a ten year period – thus removing the grandfathering. Community activists flagged this, called councilmembers who were taken by surprise and the issue was tabled for 6 months. (Because the council was too scared to kill it outright in my opinion) Our forces on the ground did some hard digging into Mr. Belding and luckily unraveled some information from his prior cities of Riverside and Irvine, that the council will be surprised to learn. More on this in the future.

The backgorund is about 3 miles along 6th St. were re-zoned over 20 years ago. The existing businesses were grandfathered and allowed to continue to operate, as long as none had a 180 day gap in operations.

So, on the heels of losing a vote on the council over the number of hosuing units in the ongoing redevelopment project, Ellis attempted to re-assert his authoritah with another power move. He got beat down (sort of) by the Corona City Council.

It is my prediction that Ellis will go into a tailspin, because his behavior pattern has indicated everthing is black and white. There is no compromise for Ellis, it is only a win / loss situation for him. With two votes in a row where the council has tried to split the baby, it is clear to everyone that the meniacal would-be-dictator of Corona has lost his grip somewhat on the ruling cuck junta of Corona. The humilation has to be extreme for Ellis, especially going in to the Thanksgiving week where he will be with family and friends while licking the wounds of the recent losses.

Don’t forget that Ellis had to impose his will on the city, demanding that the new logo (that cost an estimated 500K all by itself) be implemented immediately with no phase in. No sane person could draw that conclusion that this was about anything else but his own self-aggrandizement and making the city his.

Why is your intrepid blogger making such a hyperbolic statement about Jacob Ellis? Ask yourself what kind of person sends out his “minions” as some sort of goodwill ambassador to ask businesses trying to survive in a downtown destroyed by the City to sell for pennies on the Dollar. And, when I say everything, I’ve talked to property owners whose “settlement offers” were clearly retaliation over not having told his majesty yes at the outset – later being offered a pittance and unviable locations to move to. What kind of City Manager does this to businesses in a city? Jacob Ellis and his fleet of legal staff went so far as to have (ahem coerce) businesses into signing non-disclosure agreements so that the public and other property owners could not see settlement offers. (Aka covering their tracks to hide their behavior)

Under the Ellis rampage you have Public Tax dollars being spent then hidden. Bravo for transparency Ellis! Where is the social justice in this???

Having spoken to several other clients that are councilmembers in other cities, all have said Eminent Domain is a last resort and non have ever condoned its’ use as a coercive tool to force businesses to sell to a proposed City Project. Ellis? He got the Council to spring for a giant legal budget so he could send lawyers out daring people to sue the city over their abuses. Why? Ellis knows that most can’t afford the legal bills to sustain a fight, so Ellis and crew abuse the law to do immoral things saying “whatcha gonna do about it?”

The City Council, even in the last two meetings with stunning votes against Ellis’s wishes, still lacked the courage to outright say, “No Jacob, this is wrong”. Jacob Ellis knows this, which is why he bullies people to get what he wants. Worse, I’ve been told that at leasts two of the current councilmembers know they are in deep doodoo for re-election so they have decided to go along with Ellis until getting run out of office as some sort of final F U to the residents of Corona. Any self-respecting council with good personal boundaries and healthy egos would fire the City Manager over this stunt of insubordination.

Perhaps the residents need to start recalls now on all of them in order to save the city from the Jacob Ellis Rampage, because it appers the councilmembers have egos too and would rather literally watch the city burn than admit they made a mistake.

Literally Burn. As in 6 fires in City Owned Buildings in the last two years.

If you think the City Council is not in on the deliberate blighting of downtown, witness the Mayor of Corona calling his own downtown a “S–thole”! Gheez, Mr. Mayor, you caused it. The lack of self-awareness of all these people is clinical.

It goes beyond the fact that the Ellis run city does not care about the needs of families and parents – allowing them to have to play Mad Max to find parking at the few youth sports facilities in the city, while millions are wasted on Taj Mahal ego-feuled legacy projects driven by the meniacal would-be-dictator in City Hall.

Sell your business to me, demands Ellis. Here come the lawyers. Here comes the deliberately induced blight in the area of the targeted businesses with homeless infested burning buildings, boarded up buildings deliberately un-maintained to injure the remaining businesses (by dissuading people from going to that part of town), and when all that does not work – attempt to slip in amortization to speed up the process of screwing good people out of their livelihoods in order to complete the utopian dystopia in Corona.

If you think this pattern of destruction is going to stop or slow, think again. Ellis’ stunt with trying to slip amortization onto the agenda shows everyone that the path Corona is on is about him, and nothing else. His tactics will get more and more extreme until the cuck City Council actually checks him (see also termination) rather than an ego-covering / face-saving 6 month pause on amortization.

When Jacob Ellis was hired, he was a 6’5″ pretty boy with a glib tongue that was competing against an old grizzled warrior of many cities past. The old man told Corona he could get them through the next 5 years without a tax increase, but Ellis was pretty and had the right brand of BS. Taxes went up and while the city burns (literally), the council can’t bring themselves to stop protecting their investment. This means the only path out of this mess for the residents of Corona barring a miracle is the total destruction of the Corona City Council, Jacob Ellis and the Flying Monkeys around them all. Yikes.

What this council has failed to realize and with new light being shed this week, it now appears the three seats up for election will not go uncontested with new options in each district. What the council does not understand is that when you wage war on a community as they have allowed Ellis to do, it comes back to bite them when you have an organized force.

I have been in the political game since 1997, and the Corona situation is one of the worst I have ever seen at the local level. That said, I have been stunned to see just how fast this new group of citizens and business owners has pulled together to stand up to the rampage of Jacob Ellis and crew. The Corona City Council has failed to realize the war they just ignited and the band of businesses area wide, many who are not in the city who are pledging whatever it takes to efffect change in Corona.

The Corona City Council is about the realize that your intrepid blogger is not the only person from another part of the State of CA that is mobilizing to come get some. Can you feel it coming in the air tonight?

Fire Jacob Ellis now, either with the participartion of the city council or after the council is replaced, otherwise more of this is in store for Corona: