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.