Water board race: historically different this year
Yorba Linda’s 24th City Council election is proceeding along a patently predictable path: candidates issuing contracts, platforms and pledges lacking specific details and plenty of charges and counter-charges about personal attacks and campaign sign tampering.
I’ve tried to focus attention on key issues the six contenders for two positions on the Nov. 2 ballot have ignored or glossed over with generalities. Many of these columns are posted at www.ocregister.com/yorbalinda (scroll down to “columns” and click on “more”).
Unfortunately, I haven’t written about the important and unusually competitive contests for three trustee seats available on each of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified and North Orange County Community College boards, which are well worth close voter scrutiny.
But I want to devote my last campaign-related column to this year’s historically different contest for three director positions on the five-member Yorba Linda Water District board.
This is the 19th director election—six others were canceled when only incumbents filed to run—for the 21.3-square-mile district with 47,891 voters, since the public agency was organized in 1960. The prior mutual company stockholders selected directors 1909-1959.
Only two incumbents have lost re-election races in the past 50 years—Mark Abramowitz replaced Carl Scanlin in 1998, and Abramowitz lost to a past director, Bill Mills, in 2002. Just 20 men have served as directors since 1960, and nine originally were appointed.
At election time the usual practice has been for incumbents to endorse each other and run as a team, with Mike Beverage, a single-term councilman in the 1980s and water director since 1992, managing the winning campaigns.
But this year, only two incumbents—Mills and John Summerfield—are running together, and a third, appointed incumbent Phil Hawkins, a former member of the district Citizens’ Advisory Committee, is seeking election, as he told me, “independent of everybody.”
And Beverage, the current board’s longest serving director, is supporting Hawkins and advisory group members Bob Kiley, husband of former council member Barbara Kiley, and Gary Melton. Beverage told me the district needs “new blood” and “new direction.”
Hawkins, Kiley and Melton each told me they’re not running as a team but cut costs by ordering signs from the same vendor. Kiley said he supports Hawkins and Melton, Melton supports Hawkins and Kiley and Mills supports Hawkins and Summerfield.
Summerfield wants to “preserve the present direction of the board,” while Beverage is trying to “upset that continuity” and “make major changes,” according to Summerfield.
In addition to benefits, directors earn $150 per meeting. For the 2009-10 fiscal year, they attended 323 meetings (Mills 77; Beverage 74; Summerfield 69; Ric Collett 52; Hawkins, appointed Feb. 26 to replace the late Paul Armstrong, 27; and Armstrong 24).
I’ve tried to focus attention on key issues the six contenders for two positions on the Nov. 2 ballot have ignored or glossed over with generalities. Many of these columns are posted at www.ocregister.com/yorbalinda (scroll down to “columns” and click on “more”).
Unfortunately, I haven’t written about the important and unusually competitive contests for three trustee seats available on each of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified and North Orange County Community College boards, which are well worth close voter scrutiny.
But I want to devote my last campaign-related column to this year’s historically different contest for three director positions on the five-member Yorba Linda Water District board.
This is the 19th director election—six others were canceled when only incumbents filed to run—for the 21.3-square-mile district with 47,891 voters, since the public agency was organized in 1960. The prior mutual company stockholders selected directors 1909-1959.
Only two incumbents have lost re-election races in the past 50 years—Mark Abramowitz replaced Carl Scanlin in 1998, and Abramowitz lost to a past director, Bill Mills, in 2002. Just 20 men have served as directors since 1960, and nine originally were appointed.
At election time the usual practice has been for incumbents to endorse each other and run as a team, with Mike Beverage, a single-term councilman in the 1980s and water director since 1992, managing the winning campaigns.
But this year, only two incumbents—Mills and John Summerfield—are running together, and a third, appointed incumbent Phil Hawkins, a former member of the district Citizens’ Advisory Committee, is seeking election, as he told me, “independent of everybody.”
And Beverage, the current board’s longest serving director, is supporting Hawkins and advisory group members Bob Kiley, husband of former council member Barbara Kiley, and Gary Melton. Beverage told me the district needs “new blood” and “new direction.”
Hawkins, Kiley and Melton each told me they’re not running as a team but cut costs by ordering signs from the same vendor. Kiley said he supports Hawkins and Melton, Melton supports Hawkins and Kiley and Mills supports Hawkins and Summerfield.
Summerfield wants to “preserve the present direction of the board,” while Beverage is trying to “upset that continuity” and “make major changes,” according to Summerfield.
In addition to benefits, directors earn $150 per meeting. For the 2009-10 fiscal year, they attended 323 meetings (Mills 77; Beverage 74; Summerfield 69; Ric Collett 52; Hawkins, appointed Feb. 26 to replace the late Paul Armstrong, 27; and Armstrong 24).
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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