Drive Under Way to Nullify Naming of Trustee

A Garden Grove man has begun circulating petitions to keep a recent appointee from taking a seat on the Orange County Board of Education, in a dispute over a seat he had sought himself.

Sheila Meyers, a board member until she resigned last year to live in her home state of Washington, took voting residence in Orange County again on April 6--just days before she was selected by her former colleagues to serve again on the county Board of Education.

“People in the district are not happy about the way she made her residency in the district,” said Thomas Murphy, who had sought to be appointed to the board himself.

The timing of Meyers’ new residency in Huntington Beach and the way the board acted in appointing her are the reasons he’s circulating petitions to block her appointment, Murphy said. “The way she was appointed looks like something they’d do in Chicago, not on a board of education,” he said.

At issue in the dispute is a county Board of Education vacancy created by the Feb. 13 death of Murphy’s wife, Frances.

The petitions Thomas Murphy is circulating seek 3,149 voter signatures to force a special election to fill the vacancy. He has until May 11 to file the signatures with the Orange County registrar of voters. The petitions also would terminate the board’s appointment of Meyers, pending the outcome of the special election.

Meyers, 52, was a member of the county Board of Education for six years before leaving in February, 1986. In a telephone interview from Washington, Meyers said Monday that she decided to move back to California for many reasons, including the birth in Orange County of her first grandchild. “I didn’t come back just to be on the board again,” she said.

The remaining four trustees on the county board voted 3 to 1 last Thursday to put Meyers on the board. Board member Francis Hoffman voted against the appointment, saying he doubted that Meyers was a permanent resident of Trustee District No. 2, the north coastal area of Orange County.

Other board members have said that they think Hoffman was mainly irked because Thomas Murphy wasn’t appointed on Thursday. “The record shows that Tom Murphy was very active in Frank Hoffman’s (state Senate) campaign last fall,” board member Dean McCormick said.