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Got to this story late, but it’s still worth knowing about.
Censure of Trustee Norm WestwellLast night, the Ocean View School District Board of Trustees voted to publicly punish,…
Posted by Gina Clayton-Tarvin, OVSD Board Member on Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Here’s the first two pages of resolution (the third is just for signatures of Briscoe and Souders):
Here’s some of the juice from the Daily Pilot story (from which I presume the photo illustrating Gina’s Facebook post came. If they want it taken down, Vern can figure out how to do it, but we’re only sending them readers here….)
During the meeting, Westwell repeatedly questioned Briscoe’s leadership of the board and unsuccessfully tried to delay the vote on the resolution.
He also pounded his hand on the dais, repeatedly interrupted Clayton-Tarvin and Briscoe and expressed frustration because Briscoe wouldn’t acknowledge him to speak unless he stood or raised his hand high.
“Lies, lies, lies and more lies,” Westwell said, asking for evidence of the allegations. “This board has become a circus. The beginning of this censure is the first step in trustee Tarvin’s attempt to silence my speech. Trustee Tarvin has established a pattern of doing this to people when they take a position contrary to hers.”
Westwell complains that he’s afraid that Tarvin will try to sue him over his speech, citing her having sought a restraining order against local web logger Chuck Johnson. Westwall is apparently stupid enough to think that flipping off members of a board in a meeting — and lying about it by claiming that a disability prevents him from raising his hands without extending his middle finger — is somehow protected from a motion of censure. This means that he is pretty dumb, and if he tries suing OJB for defamation, he will be asked whether his claim about his disability is true — and if it was a joke, why he raised it in his defense against harassment.
He’s right about the Ocean View School Board occasionally becoming a circus, but that’s a problem he could easily solve by depriving them of its clown — by resigning.
You’re too good, Huntington Beach, for a nutso trustee who smiles like his panties are bunching.
[Edited to add: By the way — it’s nice to see bipartisanship among the four members of the board who aren’t horror shows. Also, I apologize to clowns. — GAD]
Why only censure? He should be removed all together.
Because the School Board, like a City Council, does not have the right to undo the results of an election, Paul. But the people do, through recall.
Not anymore.
Recalls are nearly impossible to execute thanks to the Newman protection package passed by Democrats.
20% of registered voters in a jurisdiction just to get started, then about a full year for a recall election to even be held. Meanwhile the officer subject to a recall continues to govern– and in a case like this– expose the jurisdiction to continued liability associated with bad behavior.
We need to know this – mainly for Mayor Harry Sidhu.
I remember 20 years ago when Norm “Firecracker” Westwell was an eccentric, almost-lovable, perennial Libertarian candidate for council. A main plank of his platform was no curfew on the beach. I may have even voted for him once or twice, when there weren’t enough really good candidates.
I remember high-fiving him at council after he gave a good anti-Poseidon speech.
He first started pissing me off when he started calling liberal/environnentalists like Joe Shaw and Connie Boardman “communists.”
Now he’s signed on to Epting’s old jihad against Gina … a few months before Epting himself tired of it and made up with her (have I mentioned that?) Now it’s Norm and Chuckie against Gina. (Yes, sadly Chuck Johnson seems to be back out of retirement.)
What what what about Epting? Needs to be its own story!
Re Chuck Slaptop: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.