An ethics policy that won't be forgotten

One issue sure to draw voter interest in this year’s contest for three Yorba Linda City Council seats is current council members’ unwillingness to adopt a tough ordinance to outlaw campaign contributions from city contractors and limit special interest money.

And several candidates who are now signing up to oppose incumbents Allen Castellano, Hank Wedaa and Jim Winder are expected to make the matter a key issue in the coming campaign. (Filing ends Aug. 8—or Aug. 13, if an incumbent doesn’t seek re-election.)

A list of ethics policy options occupied council agenda space for more than a year before members addressed the topic recently by reaffirming a previous policy, adopting a model code of behavior and turning away a strict code regarding campaign money.

The 5-0 vote to “reaffirm” a largely forgotten resolution adopted by a 1972 council is nice, but meaningless. The four-page “code of ethics for city officers and employees” has no enforcement provisions or penalties and wasn’t effective in the past.

For example, the ’72 code wasn’t even mentioned when secretive management bonuses were revealed in 1999 or when council members and top management staffers met with developers to plot unsavory Town Center tactics behind closed doors in 2005 and 2006.

In fact, no one recalled the city had such a policy until the document was found in the City Clerk’s files after Councilman John Anderson asked that ethics policy options be researched and presented for council consideration last year.

Also well-intentioned is an admirable “model code of ethical behavior,” adopted 5-0, which outlines eight ethical values and 29 specific behaviors for the city’s elected and appointed officials, employees, volunteers and other government participants.

The commendable values include being ethical, professional, service-oriented, fiscally responsible, organized, communicative, collaborative and progressive. But the code has no procedures for evaluation and appears destined for another City Hall file cabinet.

Real reform would have been a new ordinance “regarding campaign contributions and disqualifications,” supported by Anderson but opposed by Castellano, Wedaa, Winder and Councilwoman Jan Horton.

The tough law would have forbidden council members from accepting campaign contributions from individuals and firms with city contracts and prohibited them from voting on matters involving contributors who donated $100 or more the prior 12 months.

A FINAL NOTE

One bright spot in recent council decision-making was the 4-1 vote to place an initiative outlawing the use of eminent domain for private development on the Nov. 4 ballot. The lone opponent was Winder, who didn’t want to “bind the hands” of future councils.

Supporters Anderson, Castellano, Horton and Wedaa probably will sign ballot arguments in favor of the welcome measure, sure to be popular with residents upset with past actions regarding redevelopment and wary of “willing seller-willing buyer” pronouncements.

File period for races open--who will challenge?

Many elected officials have a dream scenario: residents so happy with their service that nobody runs against them, eliminating the possibility of losing and saving thousands of dollars in campaign costs.

Whether or not the dream comes true for incumbents representing Yorba Linda on five governing bodies will be known Aug. 8, when filing ends for 13 positions slated for the Nov. 4 ballot.

All of the past 22 City Council races have been hotly contested, but school trustee and water board elections have been cancelled due to a lack of candidates and the high cost of campaigning in large voting districts.

For example, the 2000 and 2004 elections for Placentia-Yorba Linda school trustees were dropped, since just three candidates filed for three seats: Carol Downey, first appointed in 2000; Judy Miller, first elected in 1988; and Craig Olson, first elected in 1992.

This year, seats held by Downey, Miller and Olson’s appointed replacement, Eric Padget, are again scheduled for the ballot, if more than three candidates file to run. Padget lost to Karin Freeman and Jan Wagner in a three-way race for two seats in 2006.

The last incumbent to lose in the district with 90,225 voters in five cities was Cathy Brooks in 1998, but she had announced her withdrawal before voting.

Toughest races for challengers will be the four trustee slots open in the North Orange County Community College District. Although trustees represent specific areas in the district, they’re elected district-wide, from all or parts of 18 cities with 422,072 voters.

In fact, five of the current seven trustees were first appointed to office, including two Yorba Lindans, Jeff Brown and Mike Matsuda. Brown, named in 2002, gained a new term in 2006, and Matsuda, appointed in 2005, is slated for this year’s ballot.

Others with expiring terms are Leonard Lahtinen of Anaheim, who beat an appointed incumbent in 1990; Molly McClanahan of Fullerton, appointed in 1995; and Manuel Ontiveros of Anaheim, appointed in 1999.

Already assured competition if they seek re-election are Councilmen Allen Castellano, Hank Wedaa and Jim Winder, who’d face 42,056 voters, and Yorba Linda Water District directors Mike Beverage and Ric Collette, who’d face 46,576.

Announced challengers are 32-year resident Nancy Rikel and past three-term Councilman Mark Schwing for council and Cynthia Verdugo-Peralta and Dave Rosenberger for water board, all endorsed by the Yorba Linda Residents for Responsible Representation group.

Roger Yoh’s Orange County Water District term also is up. The Buena Park resident’s Division 3 has 113,925 voters in Yorba Linda and four other cities.

Filing is extended through Aug. 13 for non-incumbents if an incumbent doesn’t run. Council contenders sign up at City Hall and others with the county Registrar of Voters.

A FINAL NOTE

Total attendance at four Town Hall meetings has been 221, including council members, city staff and media types, out of an estimated 65,621 population. Next gathering is July 29 at East Lake Village Clubhouse, site of last year’s largest crowd, 82.

Challengers seek water district director seats

Usually, the elections for Yorba Linda Water District directors are laid-back affairs—of 23 ballots scheduled since the public agency’s 1959 formation, six were cancelled when only incumbents filed to run and only two directors have ever lost to challengers.

But this year, two candidates backed by the grassroots political action committee Yorba Linda Residents for Responsible Representation hope to overturn an electoral advantage long held by incumbents.

The 23-square-mile district provides water to 23,634 accounts—20,554 in Yorba Linda, 2,670 in Placentia, 342 in Anaheim and 68 in Brea—and has 46,549 registered voters.

YLWD also owns or maintains 194 miles of sewers for 16,331 single-family, commercial, industrial and public school accounts and 1,240 multiple dwelling units.

The prospective challengers are Cynthia Verdugo-Peralta and Dave Rosenberger, who’ll face four-term incumbent Mike Beverage and first-termer Ric Collette, assuming all four complete the filing process that opens Monday at the county Registrar of Voters office.

Verdugo-Peralta, an air pollution and energy conservation specialist, served two terms on the South Coast Air Quality Management District board, 2000-07, and has led energy efficiency and conservation programs for utilities for 30 years.

Rosenberger, a manager for commercial laundry equipment sales, was a finalist for appointment to the Irvine Ranch Water District and has taught in the North Orange County Community College District for more than 30 years.

Beverage, first elected director in 1992, served a term on the Yorba Linda City Council, 1980-84, and owns an advertising and marketing consulting firm.

Collette, elected in 2004, is an executive with Taormina Industries, which provides trash-hauling service for seven county cities, including Yorba Linda, Placentia and Anaheim.

Only 20 individuals have served on the district’s five-member board, including current directors Beverage and Collette and Paul Armstrong, Bill Mills and John Summerfield.

Armstrong, Mills and Summerfield were appointed to new four-year terms in 2006 when nobody filed to run against them.

Shareholders in the Yorba Linda Water Company, formed in 1909, chose directors until 1959, when local voters approved $1.9 million in bonds to purchase the mutual’s assets.

Two former Yorba Linda council members have tried and failed to win a water director seat. Seven-term Councilman Hank Wedaa lost to Beverage and Art Korn in 2000 and three-term Councilman Mark Schwing lost to Beverage and Collette in 2004.

A FINAL NOTE

Signups also open Monday for a seat on the 10-member Orange County Water District board now held by Roger Yoh, who represents Yorba Linda, Placentia, Buena Park, La Palma and Cypress. OCWD manages north and central county groundwater supplies.

Yoh, who replaced longtime Yorba Linda and Placentia ranchland owner Larry Kraemer, won a bitter 2004 battle against former 28-year Placentia Councilman Norm Eckenrode, the target of a series of undeservedly mean campaign mailers.

Yorba Lindans often give opinions at the polls

A suggestion by Councilman John Anderson at the most recent City Council meeting to allow Yorba Linda residents a say on as many as three different issues in the November general election follows a longstanding city tradition.

Yorba Lindans have voted on council or citizen-made proposals 11 times in 41 years—that’s half of 22 elections held for council members during the same period—so asking for voter input on municipal matters isn’t rare.

Anderson wants the council to place initiatives regarding ethics, eminent domain and city manager pay on the Nov. 4 ballot before an Aug. 8 deadline passes.

Voters could consider an ethics policy tougher than two recently adopted plans, a ban on using eminent domain for private development and a cap pegging city manager salary at two and one-half times the city’s median household income.

If the city can prohibit taking private property for private development—once approved as a “tool in the tool belt” during the 2005-06 Town Center redevelopment process—by ordinance, Anderson would drop his ballot proposal.

Added election cost would be about $5,000 per measure for translation into Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese, City Clerk Kathie Mendoza estimated.

The city’s first ballot measure was in 1967, when residents approved incorporation 1,963 to 638. The increasing vote totals for most of the next 10 measures reflect Yorba Linda’s steady population growth.

The first referendum vote came in 1970, when voters nixed a 13-acre apartment zone just behind what is now Henry’s Market, 1,302 to 887. The first citywide low-density General Plan was approved 2,317 to 1,902 in 1972.

Two advisory votes were held in 1978: a proposed bond election to purchase Nixon Park property lost 4,927 to 3,216, while a plan for an election to choose council members from districts won 4,192 to 3,807, although the election was never scheduled.

Another advisory measure to ban “safe and sane” fireworks was approved 8,651 to 4,207 in 1986, with the council quickly adopting the prohibition. But in 1992 a 17,604 to 4,817 advisory vote for a two-term limit on council service was ignored.

Voters favored two measures in 1996, but a three-term council limit became law, since the 15,087 to 6,906 “yes” vote was higher than the two-term limit 13,008 to 8,517 tally.

Finally, a 1998 citizens’ initiative to halt Imperial Highway widening failed with 7,337 “yes” to 12,596 “no” votes, and a 2006 citizens’ initiative requiring elections on major zoning and General Plan changes won 6,921 to 6,622.

A FINAL NOTE

The above ballot measure list doesn’t include elections in which Fairlynn and Country Club county territory residents opposed merging with the city or the street lighting and landscaping ballots, which are cast by property owners only.

In the former, the most recent election was in 2004, when the areas opposed joining the city 681 “no” to 304 “yes.” In the latter, landowners approved assessments in 1997 but defeated increases this year, both overwhelmingly.