John Dilibert, local schmuck

Leave it to the Burbank School Board to pick as their new colleague a top cop from a long-conflicted police department rather than a supposedly gay guy from the local community. And right after knuckling under to obvious anti-gay sentiment. The cop already had a shot on the same school board six years ago too, where he showed no distinction whatsoever except as a reliable “yes” man at best.

But never mind this old news – except that the same school board also has a history of discriminating against gays. Synchronicity! Remember how they fired that young drama coach at Burroughs for not putting on teen shows which somehow reflected “the community,” or however they phrased it? It wasn’t enough for the kids to put on a role reversal Romeo and Juliet that had the girls kissing other girls. No, the last straw was his encouraging them to subvert the school’s right-wing principal and take their Matthew Sheppard play to the Colony Theater, right after he’d banned it.

The recent news that this same school board has chosen to hold their hoped-for School Bond Rebond Election Re-Election™ in the spring rather than November is also going to be fun to watch. That’s because Burbank has this shady “all-mail ballot” scheme that they love so much, but state law prohibits local school bond votes from going onto all-mail ballots.

They have to have real polling places for school bond elections, just like the good old days. So watch Burbank try to slime out of it next February. They’ll think they’ve figured out a way, that’s for sure. Our prediction is that the new city clerk (Mike Flad) will set up a few voting booths down at the library and Joslyn and then call it “not an all-mail ballot.”

Just watch– there’s no way in hell we’re ever going back to real secret-ballot elections in the City of Burbank. Not when their new No Postage- No Way! ballot plan has been working out so well for the status-quo. So they’ve gotta cook up something.

Quick Dilibert story about what a sleazy operator he is:

When he was appointed to replace Paul Krekorian, the rule for the open slot was that this board appointee would NOT run for election when the time came. It was supposed to be a true interim appointment.

In fact, this was the big condition for the job, for everyone. Probably because Krekorian’s glow was still being felt around town, there was a sense of fair play about that weighed the unfair advantage of a quick and lucky non-voter incumbency. So all of the potential appointees went into the process knowing full well that it was a temp deal only — and which is why almost no one applied.

Those who were seriously interested in the job, and might have wanted to run for it in the future, simply did not want an interim-only role. Dilibert was about the only person who did. There may have been one or two other applicants, but not many.

So let’s flash forward about six months, to late 2006:

Dilibert is suddenly asked by the local newspaper if he’s going to run in the upcoming election. He tells them that he doesn’t know, but that he might. He’s not sure yet. Remember, this when the original condition for the job was that it was interim only. Of course, nobody in Burbank said anything about this sudden change of terms except maybe us and two or three others.

So Dilibert says nothing about his intentions until the last day of the filing period. And his answer was “no.” But because he had dangled the possibility that he might run, no one else wanted to campaign against him. They knew he’d probably get more votes as the natural, built-in advantage of being an incumbent.

So everyone stayed out of the race except the two old incumbents whose slots were up, Kemp and Bunch, and one challenger: Roberta Reynolds. She was the ONLY candidate who ran for the open slot, and of course she won. How could she not have– there were three open slots and only three candidates in the running!

This was a scam, naturally, because Reynolds was a desired quantity from the beginning. She was an easy pick who wasn’t going to ruffle any feathers. So even though Dilibert was appointed on the condition that he would not run during the next election, he later said that he might. Thus he threw the whole campaign into a tailspin when it came to finding real challengers.

The board and administration deliberately set it up this way. They didn’t want to appoint a reformer who might be interested in running for real later on, or even have them around as potential picks (like the popular Roland Armstorff, say, from Bret Harte). So they set up this phony “interim” rule to discourage any serious candidate. Then they let Dilibert — without comment — dick people around later on in order to keep a strong challenger out of the race.

So this is the kind of guy Dilibert is. He was appointed by the board as a temporary replacement-only for Krekorian, and then violated this strict condition by later considering a run. He never did, but he waited until the very last minute before he told anyone the news.

Now in Burbank, this is called being a “team player.” Collegiality reigns supreme here. And that’s why we get the kind of people we do.