HUNTINGTON BEACH / WESTMINSTER : Filing Mishap Snags Trustee Recall Drive

An effort to recall 19 trustees from four school districts may be dead before it officially begins because the group organizing the drive missed a key filing deadline.

The group, Citizens for Accountability in Education, failed to submit corrected versions of three of the petitions by deadlines required by the Orange County registrar of voters.

By missing the deadlines between Oct. 21 and Oct. 26, the group must restart the process if it still seeks to recall every trustee from the Huntington Beach City, Huntington Beach Union High and Ocean View school districts, assistant registrar Donald Taylor said.

Group members have not yet decided whether to revive the recall effort, co-director Bryan Bridges said Thursday.

The group’s effort to oust four of the five trustees in the Westminster School District, however, is still alive. Because of a postal delay, the deadline for the Westminster petition is a month later than it was for the other three districts.

The group is angered that trustees from the four districts in July adopted a $50-per-year property fee to help raise money for schools. Although trustees later repealed that levy under public pressure, the group remained incensed and launched a recall campaign against all but one of the trustees in the four districts.

Westminster School District Trustee Margie L. Rice, who opposed the property fee from the beginning, is the only board member the group has not sought to oust.

The group’s latest filing mishap is the second time it has failed to meet a registrar deadline during the fledging recall attempt. Because it allowed an initial filing deadline to lapse, the group in September was forced to restart the process and serve recall notices to trustees a second time.

Bridges said he has been frustrated by the process and charged that the registrar’s office has acted arbitrarily and inconsistently. He said he believes that the registrar should have notified him of the corrections that needed to be made in the three petitions, since he is the campaign’s leading organizer.

Taylor, however, said the registrar’s office was not obliged to notify Bridges because he is not officially designated as a proponent on the petitions. The three official proponents were all notified by certified mail, which is all the law requires, Taylor said.