California:
Council member required to resign
Calimesa official admits voter fraud
By ALAN SCHNEPF, Staff Writer
Calimesa Councilman Jon Taylor pleaded guilty Friday to a misdemeanor count of voter fraud and will have to step down from the City Council as part of a plea bargain, said City Manager Harry Jensen.
Taylor, 61, had faced four felony Election Code offenses related to allegations that he fraudulently voted and ran for office as a Calimesa resident when he lived in Yucaipa.
The plea bargain calls for three years of probation during which Taylor cannot hold or run for public office.
Taylor's listing in an October 2000 Yucaipa phone book gives his address as being on Sidana Road, a Yucaipa address a few blocks north of the Calimesa-Yucaipa border. He was first elected to the Calisa council in 1996.
Taylor, however, contended he had an established residency in Calimesa in an upstairs apartment in the Crown Village shopping center, which he owns.
He also had a Calimesa address through an apartment by the Calimesa Country Club he leased for $1 per year. He used that address to vote in 2001, according to testimony from Riverside County elections officials.
Taylor testified that he never physically lived in the apartment, according to court documents.
The apartment normally rents for $550. Country club employees testified before a grand jury that they did not know why the apartment was leased for such a low price.
"You'll have to ask my boss about that,' said Bill Bracy, the club's general manager.
Bracy's boss is country club owner Art Braswell, who also owns Pharaoh's Lost Kingdom theme park in Redlands and several other businesses.
Jensen said the Calimesa council will now decide how it wants to replace Taylor, although it can function as a four-member body if it chooses to do so.
A special election could be held but would be expensive, Jensen said.
The council may also choose to appoint someone to serve out the rest of Taylor's term.
"It's a good thing for the city that this is over,' Jensen said. "It's a bad thing for Jon Taylor. He was a pretty good councilman and he's a pretty good person. He exercised some judgment that in retrospect wasn't correct.'
Jensen said Taylor will be ordered to pay $5,000 in fines at his sentencing, scheduled for Feb.18.
The city will receive $3,000 of that money because it is considered the victim in the case, Jensen said.
The matter cost the city money because it had to pay its contracted city attorney to handle civil litigation it filed against Taylor over questions about his residency.
That matter will be dropped because Taylor is leaving the council.
The state will receive $1,000 of the fine. The other $1,000 will go to Riverside County.
When Taylor filed for re-election in 2000, he listed a Fourth Street address in Calimesa. He also listed that address for voting in the November 2000 election.
But a woman interested in buying the house testified that it was empty and full of cobwebs when she toured it in November 2000.
http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~12588~1119540,00.html