BUHS trustee’s residency under review
BRAWLEY — An Imperial County District Attorney’s office investigator is actively looking into the residency of a Brawley Union High School board trustee.
At issue, according to multiple tips to this newspaper, is that Trustee Gabe Contreras is not presently living in Brawley, but used the address of a Brawley home he owns and rents out when seeking office.
On Dec. 7, “a complaint was forwarded by the Elections Department regarding the residency of Gabe Contreras and that has been assigned to an investigator for follow-up investigation,” said Imperial County Assistant District Attorney Deborah Owen.
Owen added the investigation is now in process.
When contacted about the issue by this newspaper, Contreras had no comment.
Contreras, an incumbent, won reelection to the Brawley Union High School District Board of Trustees by a mere 10 votes over challenger Joel Gonzalez. Contreras was up for one of two seats on the board.
Contreras and the other winner of the election, Karin Morgan, were to be sworn in to office Wednesday night.
Owen would not speak further on any details of the investigation, only that the results of any such investigation would next go to an attorney, who would then review the case to evaluate if any laws had been broken, which she says is normal for all cases.
This is not the first time Contreras has faced questions about his Brawley residency as it pertains to his place on the Brawley high school board. In March 2015 he was the subject of a Probe column.
Contreras was going through a personal issue in which his primary residence was involved, and the Brawley Union High School District administration and its legal counsel were well aware at the time.
Due to the private nature of the issue, Contreras deferred all comment to school officials at that time.
Former BUHSD Superintendent Hasmik Danielian, sent the newspaper a statement at that time:
“In consultation with our legal counsel, we understand that determining a person’s ‘residence’ for purposes of holding office on the governing board of a school district, the California Attorney General has opined that ‘residence’ for purposes of Education Code section 35107 means ‘domicile,’ a place of physical presence coupled with an intention to make that place one’s permanent home; a person may only have one domicile at any given time. We also learned that a person’s domicile is determined by a variety of factors.”
This seems to have been a roundabout way of saying that Contreras’ house was his house, and until it is determined otherwise by a court of law during whatever legal proceedings Contreras is in the midst of, he was in a protected legal gray area.
Current Brawley Union High School District Superintendent Simon Canalez had no comment on this latest residency issue with Contreras.