CUSD Update
Editorial staff

The removal of CUSD Trustees Sheila Benecke and Marlene Draper from office is shaping up, as voters will probably dump both of them in a few months. The board of trustees is meeting on Mon., March 24, to schedule the recall election on a date between June 20 and July 27.

Before anyone gets carried away about “The First 100 Days” of new trustees enacting change after the recall election, what about the old majority’s final acts of destruction? With the recall election several months away, what new havoc will they wreak during their Last 100 Days?

Mission Viejo parents have been appalled by the relentless push of the old majority (Benecke, Draper, Duane Stiff and Mike Darnold) to overspend on new projects instead of maintaining older facilities. When facing huge additional cuts because of the state budget crisis, the Fleming-era majority approved spending approximately $8 million on frills at the new high school in San Juan Capistrano. The old gang was in such a rush in December 2007 to add the amenities, they violated the Brown Act by failing to notify the public of several items they intended to vote on.

Parents who closely follow CUSD finances say the district has fallen below the minimum 2 percent reserve level. One parent said, “The reserve figures are pumped up by creative accounting, and I don’t know how much longer the district can deny it. Maybe the old trustees are delaying the bad news until they can blame everything on a new majority. At the last board meeting, Mike Darnold blamed the parents and the media for the district’s problems. The holdovers have a pattern of denial until they find someone else to blame.”

A few brave community members appear ready to put their names on the recall ballot to replace Benecke and Draper. Some of them participated in the recall efforts of 2005 and 2007, and others are well known in their communities. In the November 2006 election, the field of candidates for three seats was small, and it seemed almost no one wanted the job. Few were willing to run, and the winners became the minority, unable to bring about reform. New trustees who could win in the recall election will have bigger financial problems to address, but it would be the first opportunity for reform-minded winners to vote in the majority.

Some published accounts of the Registrar of Voters’ certification of the recall are likely incorrect. An insider says the parents group gathered a total of 66,088 signatures to put the recall on the ballot, and they had plenty of signatures to spare. When the RoV reached the minimum number to trigger a recall election (20,493 valid signatures per trustee), the count stopped. The insider said, “Counting signatures costs money, and there was no point in continuing to count after the number was reached. The newspapers didn’t understand that, and it has been incorrectly portrayed as a close call with only 10 or so signatures beyond the minimum. The parents had turned in another box of petitions that weren’t counted.”

Trustees Benecke and Draper could have resigned rather than face a recall election. If they had stepped down prior to the signatures being turned in to the Registrar of Voters, the cost of a special election would have been avoided. Instead, they’re hanging around and pointing to the $700,000-plus cost as an unnecessary expense.

The recall election is expensive but justified. A recall advocate said, “The expense is similar to lamenting the cost of water when your house is on fire.”