Bonita Schools : Recall Costs Estimated

The effort to recall Bonita school board member Robert Green will eventually cost the school district more than $46,000, according to estimates from the county registrar-recorder’s office.

Voters in the district will decide Feb. 23 whether Green, who was first elected to the school board in 1977, will continue to serve. The ballot will also include the names of candidates seeking to succeed Green if he is recalled.

A committee of teachers and parents advocating Green’s recall collected 5,663 signatures--representing 20% of the registered voters in the district--to qualify the measure for the ballot. The registrar-recorder’s office has billed the district $9,200 for the cost of verifying the signatures, said Mitchell Gilbert, the district’s acting superintendent.

The election itself is expected to cost $37,000, said Doris Barbee, an accounting officer with the registrar-recorder’s office.

Gilbert said he has asked the district to make the election as economical as possible by consolidating precincts.

“I wrote them a letter and told them of our financial problems and asked them to economize through whatever means that were legally possible,” Gilbert said.

Opponents of Green said that he, along with other incumbent board members, had mishandled the district’s budget problems and contract negotiations with teachers. On Nov. 3, incumbents Roger Campbell and Sue Moran were voted out of office and replaced by three challengers who were critical of the school board and supportive of the effort to recall Green.