Hornet Media and the Fullerton Observer interviewed Jan Flory, running for the Fullerton City Council District 2, at a candidate forum at Fullerton College on Oct. 7, 2024. The Fullerton Observer reached out to all candidates running for this office for the opportunity to take part in a video interview at the forum and interviewed those who responded.
This video series is a joint production of the Fullerton Observer, a volunteer-run community newspaper, and Hornet Media, the student-run media outlets housed in the Fullerton College journalism program.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity but have not been independently fact-checked.
View live coverage of local elections returns on Nov. 5, 2024, at 7 p.m. on Hornet Media’s YouTube channel @fchornetmedia
Video Transcript:
Hornet Media / Fullerton Observer
What plans and policies have you put in place in the past at your time in the council that you are the most proud of?
Jan Flory
The thing I’m most proud of is the most fanciful, and that is the rehabilitation of Hillcrest Park, which my council approved in something like 1998 and it was 18 years later that the fountain was dedicated. And I always considered that if that fountain were ever restored, it would represent the renaissance of the downtown area. And in fact, it is true to that I live in the neighborhood that’s really close to Hillcrest Park, and I walk the park all the time. And there is absolutely no question that that park is really well used now, whereas in the past, I mean, there was prostitution, drug deals. You didn’t send your kids over there, and you didn’t walk it yourself either. So I’m proud of that. But then there were a lot of other things. There was the modernization of the police department, the expansion of the main library. There were, there were lots of things that happened through the collaboration of the council, both conservative and liberal. Although, you know, for the first eight years I was on city council, I was the only Democrat, which accounts for the reason that, after 14 years, I was only the mayor for one year. But that’s okay, it worked.
Hornet Media / Fullerton Observer
So what’s motivating you to come back and run again?
Jan Flory
Going to a few city council meetings this past year, I first attended the City Council when they were wrestling with hunt branch library. I was on the ad hoc committee, and so that took a while in many community meetings. And then there was the rotation of the mayor. I was very concerned about that, because once we went to district voting, then it seemed only right to me that every district should have an opportunity. Should have bragging rights to say, hey, we’ve got the mayor this year, and ahmadzara was excluded from that. But worse than that, worse than that, was that the council majority was, in my opinion, was disrespectful and dismissive of the public, the staff and the minority council members, and I had never seen that before, even on the councils that I had served on, my colleagues were very Collaborative, and we always tried to find a solution. And it occurred to me that that what was particularly egregious about this was that oftentimes the speakers were Spanish speaking women who had been activated for the first time in all the years that I’ve lived here since 1970 that sector of our city began to speak through the the efforts of Ahmad Zara and a woman by the name of EDG nuncy who lives in, I think she’s in district five, and and so these women would get up and they would speak, and they would be terrified to speak in front of the city council, but they would force themselves to do do this through the ministrations of Eglin in Amad and I know for myself, even though I sat on that dias for 14 years, when I would get up to address the council, I would be nervous, right? So you can imagine how terrifying that experience would be. And I just and I thought to myself, if people feel like they are being they are not being heard and they are being dismissed, how can they have faith in governance? How could you and so that is what really activated me to do this and then throw on top of that the Union Pacific trail. That was a project that was approved by my last council in 2020 and it was stalled for three years due to the influence of a very well heeled local developer. And it was the influence. To that developer that was beginning to show and I thought that was troubling. That’s another reason I decided to run
Hornet Media / Fullerton Observer
What would be your plans to balance the city budget? What would you plan to cut, and where would you look for revenue expansion?
Jan Flory
I actually saw that question in advance, and I called the city manager to talk to him about that. I said, don’t we always have a balanced budget? I think by law, we have to have a balanced budget. And he says, yes, and one of the ways that they’ve been balancing the budget is to dip into reserves, because the city must have a reserve. When I was on city council, beginning in the mid 90s, the reserve only had to be 10% of the general fund. In general our fund, the general fund, is somewhere in the 100 and 30 million, about $132 million and it is the general fund that pays for the ongoing activities of the city. What a lot of people don’t know is that three quarters of that general fund money, almost three quarters of it, goes to public service or public safety, that which is firefighters and police, and the remaining part of that budget pays for everything else, Parks and Rec, library, public works, administration, economic development, community development planning department, airport, all of it so as as the salaries and the benefits of our public safety employees increase, which it should, because we pay our public safety employees less than other jurisdictions. In fact, the crime of it is is that city of Fullerton will take a new firefighter, and they will train that firefighter for three years, and after three years, they go off to City of Anaheim, and the city of Fullerton has paid for their training at great cost. So was that the high sign? Okay?
Hornet Media / Fullerton Observer
Out of your endorsements, who are you the most proud of and who is endorsing you this time around?
Jan Flory
I’m most proud that, I bet you that two thirds of my the donations are coming from people who are retired, people who remember me from a long time ago. John Phelps is a strong supporter of mine, and he is biggest donor, and he was the first one that jumped in and said, How much can I? Can I donate? And I said, I’m not talking about that kind of money, John. I just I need to get started. And he gave me a good start, and I have not had any fundraisers. And through small to middling donations I’ve raised as of today, $15,000 just texting people leaning on them. You wanted me to do this? Okay, put your money where your mouth is. So
Hornet Media / Fullerton Observer
Is there a specific policy or area that you would address for the high cost of housing and assuring that affordable options are for college students?
Jan Flory
Well, I don’t know that the city has a whole lot of control over that, but one of the areas that we are very deficient in, as in the city, and part of it has to do with the fact that we’ve had a dearth of employees. Not all of the positions in the city are filled, especially in the planning department. Our housing element is two years out of date, and it is the housing element which is part of our general plan that prioritizes where the city’s priorities are. And we need to spell that out, particularly in view of the Rena assessment. The reach RH in a regional housing needs assessment has told us that in the next well, we’ve got six more years to go. In the next six years, they give you an eight year spread of time we are to plan for the development of 13,000 residential units in a built out city. This is very controversial. That doesn’t mean that the City actually has to do it, but in a current housing element, then we would be able to avail ourselves of certain state programs that favor first time home buyers and have programs for that, but we can’t do it because our housing element is out of date, and we’re actually being sued because of it.