ANTIOCH — Efforts are underway to oust Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe and school board President/City Clerk Ellie Householder, both of whom recall proponents accuse of violating the state’s open-meetings law, among other actions they say are questionable.
The petition of intent to recall Thorpe was certified on Thursday, so signature gathering can now begin.
On Tuesday, Householder was served her second intent to recall notice, this time in her role as Antioch’s city clerk. In early October, she received a notice that there was an official drive to recall her from her seat on the Antioch Unified School District board. Those advocating for her removal from the school board are already collecting signatures to try to qualify the measure for the June ballot.
The petition to oust her as city clerk has yet to be certified.
Thorpe was served with an intent notice in late September by lead recall proponent Kathy Cabrera. Since then, the city clerk has rejected the petition three times for technical reasons, but last week the authors resubmitted the paperwork for the fourth time with the necessary documentation, Cabrera said.
The intent to recall petition accuses the mayor of violating the state’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, by blocking some constituents and not allowing dissenters to comment on his Instagram account.
Cabrera said one of the group’s main gripes against the mayor is his role last year in the city turning down a federal grant that would have partially paid for several school resource officers. The city’s cost of adding the resource officers would have been more than $2 million over four years. At the time, Thorpe said he was concerned about cuts to other school resources such as the homeless coordinator and bilingual aides and thought school safety could be achieved in other ways.
Cabrera also cited her disagreement with the way the mayor has approached longtime crime problems in the Sycamore Drive corridor. At a news conference last summer, Thorpe blamed some business owners for allowing crime in the area and threatened eminent domain if they were uncooperative and not proactive in stopping drug activity, she said.
“I just don’t think that was appropriate to want to take away people’s livelihood; you take away their source of income for the family,” Cabrera said.
Thorpe said in an interview that he’s proud of his record, including what he called some of the “largest structural reforms in Antioch’s history,” such as police reform “that brought the city into the 21st century with police body cameras” and the banning of chokeholds. He also cited efforts to crack down on sideshows, install speed bumps, expand cannabis businesses and apologize to Chinese immigrants for past misdeeds.
Thorpe pointed out that he co-authored Measure W sales tax with Mayor Pro Tem Monica Wilson that helped the city hire more police officers, bringing the number to 115.
“I’m the one standing with the (police) chief,” he said. “And with no sideshows. I’m the one who was standing with the current interim chief when we were cracking down on drug dealers in Sycamore, and we’re continuing to make progress there. So the owners are meeting their end of the bargain, which is they’re cleaning up, they’re getting private security.”
“I’ve made it clear from Day 1, Antioch is a place for everyone, not just a few special interests. So, I wear this ‘recall effort’ as a badge of honor that symbolizes the unhappiness of this small group of special interests not happy with Antioch becoming more culturally inclusive and a city that cares for its most vulnerable residents.”
Recall proponents have until May 11 to collect 9,511 signatures from 15% of the total registered voters to qualify for the ballot.
The petition circulation against trustee Householder claims she has “committed Brown Act violations by blocking/deleting comments on social media (eliminating equal access),” and has violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act “by publicly posting an unauthorized video of students without permission and has committed numerous Robert’s Rules of Order violations during meetings.” Householder posted a video of an unidentified student being restrained by security.
Lindsey Amezcua, lead recall proponent, admits she voted for Householder in the school board election but now thinks she needs to go, saying the trustee is disrespectful of other board members, staff and residents who disagree with her. And, even though Householder is up for election next fall, Amezcua said it’s best to remove her as soon as possible.
“Yes, I understand, it only cuts her out by six months. But she can do a lot of damage in those six months, and we just feel that it’s in the best interest of the school district to get her out as soon as possible.”
Earlier, 97.5% of the Antioch Unified School District staff, including teachers, classified and management employees, approved a vote of no confidence in Householder.
The recall proponents have until April 5 to collect 9,913 signatures — 15% of registered voters in the school district — for the recall to be included on the June ballot.
Householder, in an email, said, “The small group of folks behind [the] recall will do anything to protect the status quo.”
“From Day 1 on the board, I’ve asked difficult questions, and unabashedly point out systemic inequities that hurt our students’ academic achievement,” she wrote. “My recall has nothing to do with procedural violations and has everything to do with the poor outcomes for our Black and Brown students. Rather than have an honest conversation about how we can better serve our students, they have initiated this recall to distract from the true problems.”
As for the clerk recall, the intent petition alleges that Householder violated the California Public Records Act by failing to include emails in a public records request and erroneously cited elections code on Thorpe’s recall petition. They also accused her of slowing down the recall by sending a petition response by certified mail rather than email as requested and failing to provide a copy of it to the records department so it could be viewed the next day.
Source: www.mercurynews.com