EDITORIAL – It is coming up on three months since the November elections and we still do not have a winner for the Madera Unified School District Area 5 seat. A seat that has been empty since July of last year when then board trustee Al Galvez resigned because of family issues. Yet the tax payers in that district are still paying taxes for their schools despite the fact that they no longer have any representation on the school board.
Wasn’t taxation without representation a big part of the founding of this country? Didn’t we dump tea into Boston Harbor and go to war with England over just that sort of thing? Why is it now acceptable some 245 year later in the little old town of Madera, California?
The Madera Unified School District contracted with the county of Madera to provide election services and because of the vendor the county used, the ballots for the entire 2016 General Election were tainted. Luckily the printing errors only affected the results in one race, the Madera Unified Area 5.That is because only the Madera Unified Area 5 was close enough that the margins for erred ballots were greater than the difference between the candidates. But slight errors existed in all of the other city council races in Madera as well as the other races throughout the county.
The county was to provide a service that in the end, by no fault of the Madera Unified School District, the county could not fulfill. So why isn’t it the responsibility of the county to fix the problem? Why doesn’t the county just go to the courts and explain to a judge that the Madera County Elections Department doesn’t need more time, they need to be ordered to set aside the November results and conduct a new election as soon as possible?
One reason is Madera County Clerk Rebecca Martinez says that she has been advised by contracted Madera County Council, the law firm of Lozano Smith, that the county clerk has no authority to call for an election, just conduct the elections other municipalities request her to conduct. Now on the other side of the coin MUSD attorney Kevin Dale of the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, advises the MUSD Board of Trustees that there are only certain circumstances the district can replace a board member and an invalid election is not one of them.
So the county and the school district are at an impasse and nothing is being done to fill the vacant spot that has two candidates from the November election waiting for a winner so that one of them can finally start to serve their elected terms. The school district isn’t going to move first and Mrs. Martinez isn’t going to move first. So who is going to do something to fix this?
Maybe it’s the candidates, Steve Duncan and Lucy Salazar, that needs to make the first move in suing the county and the district? Maybe it’s the voters of MUSD area 5 that needs to sue the county and district to do their jobs and call for a new election? Maybe it’s Judge James Oakley, who granted Mrs. Martinez six months to figure out which ballots had the improper votes?
Who knows who needs to make the first move. But after three months of waiting with no end in sight, someone needs to blink. There is an entire area of our community waiting for their votes to be counted. There are taxpayers in the district that have no voice on the board. They have no one to represent them and their unique area of town (urban, rural with a mix of country club estates).
It’s time for someone to step up and DO THEIR JOBS and be the leaders we elected them to be.
