A battle of words

Marissa Espino

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- While backers and opponents of a $123 million school

repair bond battle over semantics, Huntington Beach Union High School

District students will spend another year in their classrooms waiting on

repairs.

“The truth is there are a lot of problems that need repair,” said Amanda

Crater, a 17-year-old Huntington Beach High School student. “They

shouldn’t let politics get in the way of something like this. It’s about

time they have a bond.”

The battle is over the wording of a statement planned for the Nov. 9

ballot.

Steve Bone, who supports the bond, filed two suits in August against the

Orange County Registrar of Voters over the school bond that is scheduled

to be on the ballot.

Bone said misleading statements were made in the opposing and rebuttal

statements written by bond opponent William Fitzgerald.

On election ballots, supporters and non-supporters are allowed to write

their opinion about a particular item and then a second statement to

rebut the other group’s views.

“I was outraged. When you are trying to have a fair election and the

statements aren’t fact, then you won’t have a fair election,” said Bone,

who is co-chairman of Repair Our Neighborhood Schools and chief executive

officer of the Waterfront Hilton Beach Resort. “Fortunately we have a

responsive judicial system that could stop incorrect information from

coming to voters.”

Bone won the first lawsuit Aug. 17 when a superior court judge agreed to

strike a part of the opposing statement that said passing the bond would

allow millions of dollars “to be diverted to administrative salaries or

other perks.”

A second suit was filed to eliminate four portion of the rebuttal

statement against the bond. The court hearing for that suit was scheduled

for Wednesday.

The rebuttal alleges the district “foolishly gave away our school land to

Home Depot and wanted ‘racial quotas for student transfers.”’

Other statements in the rebuttal claim that bond supporters are scaring

parents into supporting a tax increase; that supporters are attempting to

confuse voters by scheduling the bond during a special election; and that

opponents should never reelect the politicians who support the measure.

Fitzgerald, who is a board member of the Newman Terrace Homeowners

Association, said he felt all rebuttal statements were accurate.

“The solution is for the school board to learn how to manage their money

better, not to give them more money to grossly mismanage it,” he said.