Voters to cast up to six votes to settle Yorba Linda Water District issues on November election ballot

Registered voters in the Yorba Linda Water District will be casting up to six votes on district-related matters on the Nov. 8 general election ballot as they sort through two issues and the names of eight candidates seeking positions on the agency's five-member board of directors.

Two votes can be cast in the district's regularly scheduled election for two directors to serve four-year terms. In the race are 12-year incumbent Ric Collett, Andrew Hall, John Miller and Benjamin Parker. Mike Beverage, a 24-year director, isn't seeking a seventh term.

Collett and Hall are teaming up in what is expected to be the most contentious election in the district's 57-year history as a public agency, while Miller and Parker will receive support from the Yorba Linda Taxpayers Association.

The two issues involve a “yes” or “no” vote on the separate recalls of two directors who are at the mid-point of their terms, Robert Kiley and Gary Melton. The taxpayers group led a petition drive to qualify the district's first-ever recall vote for the November ballot.

Two more votes can be cast for replacement candidates, Eileen Barme or Brooke Jones for Kiley and Albert Nederhood or Robert Wren for Melton. All voters can select replacements, whether they vote “yes” or “no” on the recalls or leave the lines blank.

If one or both of the recalls succeed, the winning replacement candidate would take office in December and serve the remaining two years of the term of a recalled director. Only director Phil Hawkins, initially appointed in 2010 to replace the late Paul Armstrong, isn't on the ballot.

Interestingly, Barme, who was a member of the City Council-appointed advisory committee dealing with landscape maintenance issues, and Wren, a retired Sheriff's lieutenant who headed the city's police services during the transition from Brea, both oppose the recalls.

Jones is a retired engineer and educator, and Nederhood is an educator and businessman. They are expected to be supported by the taxpayers association. All eight candidates paid $947 to have 200-word statements mailed to registered voters with sample ballots.

The two recalls made the ballot after petitioners collected more than the required 9,520 signatures. The Kiley petition had 11,900 signers, and the Registrar of Voters validated 9,570. The Melton petition had 11,888 signers, and again, 9,570 were approved.

A total 11,457 signatures were checked for Kiley and 11,484 for Melton. Top five reasons for invalidating signatures: not registered to vote, registered at a different address, signed more than once, registered out of the district and signatures didn't match.

At last count, 85.6 percent of the district's registered voters reside in Yorba Linda, 40,515 of the total 47,346. The remaining 14.4 percent, 6,831, live in Placentia, Anaheim and Brea and three county islands, East Placentia, Country Club and Fairlynn, the latter two in Yorba Linda.