Recall Worries Backers of School Bond Issue

It is a quirk of timing that backers of a proposed $97-million school bond issue in Thousand Oaks hope won’t be fatal.

The bond measure, needed to upgrade and repair the school district’s decades-old schools, must share a ballot in November with one of the most bitter political issues in the city’s history: the effort to oust City Councilwoman Elois Zeanah.

After months of petition drives and rancorous public debate, the anti-Zeanah recall effort qualified for the November ballot 10 days ago.

The two issues--school bond and recall--have virtually nothing in common. And yet the bond’s backers wonder and worry about how the recall campaign could affect the vote.

With the recall drawing more people to the polls than would the bond issue alone, will the bond have a harder time winning the two-thirds majority it needs, or will the extra voters mean more support?

Will Zeanah foes, angry with at least one member of local government, vote down a request for more public spending on schools, or will recall voters latch onto the bond issue as a positive note in an otherwise ugly political season?

Pat Phelps, co-chair of a citizens’ committee backing the school bond, said it’s impossible to predict how voters drawn by the recall will view the bond measure.

“You try to figure out, ‘If I’m going to recall Zeanah, am I going to vote for or against the bond?’ ” she said. “And I just don’t know.”

No one does. Some argue that the issues won’t affect each other at all. But school district officials and bond proponents hope they can at least convince Thousand Oaks voters to keep the recall, and the charged emotions swirling around it, separate from the bond in their minds.

“Hopefully, our electorate is sophisticated enough that they can separate the two issues,” said district trustee Dolores Didio.

Right now, the two issues are the only ones Thousand Oaks voters will face in November. Those voting to recall Zeanah will also have a chance, on the same ballot, to pick her replacement.

In addition, there is still a chance that a recall drive against Mayor Judy Lazar and Councilman Andy Fox will be included in the election, but the deadline for those efforts to qualify for the ballot is fast approaching.

In comparison, Ventura and Oxnard residents pushing for school bond measures in their cities this spring had it easy. In both cases, the bond initiatives were the only items on the ballot.

Many election analysts say such single-issue elections tend to favor school bond measures. Relatively few voters turn out for such contests, so a well-organized bond campaign can have a big impact.

“In a special election, which this is, it’s all about voter turnout and who does the best job of getting their people out to vote,” said political consultant Debra Creadick, a veteran of several Ventura County political campaigns. “The recall really makes this a wild-card election.”

Of course, standing alone on a ballot does not guarantee a bond measure’s success. Supporters of a $57-million bond for the Oxnard Elementary School District first tried to get the measure passed in March, when no other issues cluttered the ballot. Although a clear majority of voters approved the measure, it failed to get the two-thirds vote required.

“If you’re running for office and you have a 60-40 split, it’s considered a landslide. We had 64%, and we lost,” said Armando Lopez, who chaired the bond campaign committee after that initial defeat. (The measure actually garnered 65.4% of the vote.)

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On the bond’s second try, in June, the measure passed by just 100 votes. Lopez said it probably helped that the bond again had the election to itself.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say we wouldn’t have won otherwise--I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m glad we didn’t have to find out.”

Complicating matters, the Zeanah recall drive in Thousand Oaks is not just another political issue. It has divided the community for months and provokes intense emotion on both sides, tapping into competing visions for the city’s future.

Conejo Valley schools Supt. Jerry Gross said that when district officials began seriously considering a bond issue, he knew there was a chance the bond and the recall would face voters at the same time.

But the district could not afford to wait for another election, he said. Local schools need repairs and renovations soon.

“We just decided we had to go ahead,” he said. “If we waited, would there be another recall?”

One of the key questions, analysts said, is whether and how the two different groups of voters drawn to the election--those interested in the bond and those interested in the recall--will overlap each other.

Certainly, there are people interested in both. Barbara Sponsler is a spokeswoman for Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah. She has also been active in local school-related issues for about 18 years, helping raise money for the new performing arts center at Newbury Park High School, she said.

Sponsler now wants to get involved in the bond campaign, which she sees as totally separate from the recall drive. She doesn’t believe having the support of people like her, who are involved in the recall efforts, will harm or politicize the bond issue.

“The Thousand Oaks community is really an educated community that can understand the separate issues,” she said.

Phelps said that any residents willing to work for the bond’s passage can join the campaign, regardless of how they feel about the recall. “We decided we couldn’t eliminate people based on which side of the recall they were on,” she said.

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Pete Turpel, another spokesman for the Zeanah recall drive, rejects the argument that the bond would fare better with a small voter turnout. The recall issue appeals to a core group of Thousand Oaks voters who follow local politics and who also understand the school district’s needs, he said. By bringing them to the polls, the recall may improve the bond’s chances.

“I don’t think you’re going to have people going to the polls for the recall who won’t know what the bond issue is about,” he said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Zeanah’s lone ally on the council, Linda Parks, disagreed. Both sides in the recall dispute, she said, could pose problems for the bond measure.

Zeanah foes, she said, may come to the polls with a “toss-the-bums-out” attitude, one that could spell trouble for any spending request. “It will be a different crowd, and they may come in with clenched fists,” she said.

Meanwhile, Zeanah’s supporters tend to be concerned about taxes and government spending, and may not view the school bond favorably, Parks said.

Gross holds out hope the recall may help the bond measure. People disgusted by the state of Thousand Oaks politics may see the bond measure as something positive they can support, he said. It can, in contrast to the recall, become a unifying point for the community.

“I may be Pollyanna on this, but I honestly think we may have that psychology working for us,” he said.

Creadick thinks the bond campaign should take that idea to heart. If the group pitches the bond measure as a constructive effort, something that will help build the community’s future, it could turn the potential problem into a selling point.

“They [bond backers] can’t ignore that the recall is happening,” she said. “But there could be some strategic ways to acknowledge it and encourage people to rise above it.”