The Ventura County Star Editorial Board — the panel that considers positions of the newspaper regarding its expression of opinion — has 11 new public members.

Chaired by Opinion Page Editor Marianne Ratcliff, the board meets at least once a month to discuss issues of topical concern in the community. It often meets with proponents and opponents of particular initiatives and, in this campaign season, with candidates for a multitude of races.

Editorial Board members from the newspaper are Publisher Timothy J. Gallagher, Editor Joe R. Howry, Managing Editor John T. Moore, deputy opinion editors Mike Craft and Richard Larsen.

The Community Advisory Board members are:

Carlos Cabral, 41, of Camarillo, is an attorney. He was born and grew up in Oxnard, attending Ramona School in La Colonia, Sierra Linda, Blackstock Junior High and Santa Clara High School. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a double major in economics and history and is also a graduate of the UCLA School of Law. While at UCLA, he became involved in its official charity, UCLA UniCamp, which is for underprivileged children. He served that organization as a counselor and was on the board of directors from 1985 to 1997, also serving as interim director. He and his wife, Kari, have three children, two dogs and two cats.

Marion Erbe, 61, has lived in Simi Valley for 13 years, arriving just in time for the Northridge earthquake. She was born, raised and educated in Germany, and became a U.S. citizen in 1978. She has served as chairwoman of the Simi Valley Neighborhood Council No. 4 Executive Board and volunteered for numerous organizations, including an animal rescue group, Simi Valley Hospital, Arroyo cleanup and Simi Valley Street Fair. For the past eight years, she has been a docent at the Ronald Reagan Library.

Last year, she became a Master Gardener through a program sponsored by the University of California Cooperative Extension in Ventura. She coordinates the staffing of the Master Gardener help line and works at booths at the fair and Home and Garden Show. She is currently helping coordinate a six-week Master Gardener lecture program through the Rancho Simi Parks and Recreation Department. In 2000, she walked 60 miles from Santa Barbara to Malibu for the Avon Breast Cancer Walk.

She is retired from managing the support staff of a large engineering and construction company, where she worked for more than 20 years. She is married to Richard, a patent attorney, and has one grown, married son, who is also an attorney, and one granddaughter.

Alfonso A. Guilin, 68, of Santa Paula, owns AG Consultants, consulting mostly for agriculture-related businesses. He is retired from the Limoneira Co. in Santa Paula, where he was executive vice president and corporate secretary from 1985 to 1995 and personnel manager from 1966 to 1985. He was ordained a deacon by Cardinal Roger Mahony in 2001 and spends much of his time as deacon working at St. Sebastian and Our Lady of Guadalupe churches in Santa Paula. He also works on farm-worker issues and with the poor.

He received his bachelor of science degree in agricultural business management from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he was named 1990 Distinguished Alumnus of the university's College of Agriculture. He is a member of the Santa Rotary Club, serving as president in 1978-79. He is an avid reader and writer.

He and his wife, Jo Ann, have three children and eight grandchildren.

Robert Lombardi, 73, of Ventura, is an arbitrator for the New York Stock Exchange and National Association of Securities Dealers. He was raised in Burbank and lived in Ventura from 1963 to 1974. He moved back to Ventura in 2001.

He has had an extensive career in public education, first moving to Ventura to join the faculty at Ventura College, then transferring to Moorpark College, where he became president in 1971.

In 1974, he was president of Saddleback College. After leaving public education for eight years to join the private sector, he became president of the College of the Sequoias in Visalia. He later became chancellor of the South Orange County Community College District.

He has served on many nonprofit boards, including the United Way, Multiple Sclerosis and Cancer Society. He also served as chairman of the board of trustees of Mission Regional Hospital in Mission Viejo. He graduated from the University of Southern California. He enjoys biking, music, golf and reading. He and his wife, Linda, have two daughters and two sons and seven grandchildren.

Tom Montali, 71, a five-year resident of Fillmore, is a docent at the Ronald Reagan Library; a Ventura County election officer; works with the FOOD Share distribution group in Fillmore; and is a lector at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Fillmore. He was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay area.

He worked for 45 years in sales and sales management, including working with various distilleries, wineries and importers for 30 years. The next 15 years, he worked in the insurance industry, in both commercial and personal lines of coverage, in his own agency and with other brokers. He and his wife of 50 years, Pat, have five adult children and seven grandchildren.

Nashat Mshaiel, 47, is a three-year resident of Moorpark. He is a principal engineer at Amgen. He earned bachelor of science and master of science degrees in chemical engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Rebeca, have five children, ranging in age from 24 to 7.

Robb Quint, 60, of Thousand Oaks, is a retired foreign-language teacher. He taught German, Latin and Spanish at Agoura High School for 30 years, and also speaks Dutch. He was born in Lowell, Mass., and has lived in Thousand Oaks for 36 years.

He received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Southern California and his master's degree from Harvard University. Quint teaches Scottish country dancing and is director of Channel Coast Scottish Dancers, a countywide performance group.

He is an avid reader of fiction and loves to garden in his half-acre yard, which includes a forest of three California live oaks, scores of eucalyptus and many other trees. He is gay, and married for more than 20 years to Jerry Burns. They have two littermate cats, "The Brothers Katamazov," Alex and Ivan.

Don Treadwell, 78, of Camarillo, is retired from the U.S. Army with 30 years of service, including World War II, Korea and Vietnam, serving in the infantry in the latter two wars. After retiring from the Army, he became a deputy sheriff, retiring from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in 1986.

He is a wildlife artist, who does sandblast etching. He is also a writer, who has published articles in The Star, and he enjoys photography and golf.

His work can be viewed on his Web sites, http://www.dontreadwell.homestead.com/MUSINGS.html and http://www.dontreadwell.homestead.com/musingsartdecocorner.html.

He and his wife, Lora, have two grown daughters.

Bob Unruhe, 83, a 27-year resident of Ojai, is a retired high school history and government teacher. He taught in Ventura, Ojai and Los Angeles school districts and was the second president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. He was on the Ojai Unified School District board of trustees from

2001 to 2004. He served on the California Senior Legislature in the 1980s.

He has been gleaning the fields for FOOD Share, the county's food bank, since 1981 and is former president of HELP of Ojai and of the Ojai Business and Professional Men's Club. He served two terms on the Culver City Council in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He is a World War II veteran. He and his wife of 56 years, Virginia, have five children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Cynthia Yoshitomi, 59, of Port Hueneme, owns a business called Tea By The Sea. She has lived in Port Hueneme for two years, after moving from Los Angeles, where she was born and raised. She has a master's degree in education from Arizona State University. She is a recent graduate of Women's Economic Ventures, a small-business class in Ventura County.

She has been active in interfaith relations; PTA; educational committees for the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Unified School District; and cultural diversity training, serving as human relations trainer for the National Conference of Communities and Justice.

She recently retired from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where she worked for eight years as a campus minister at the University of California, Los Angeles, two years at Alverno High School and another eight years at Occidental College.

She served for three years on the board of the National Catholic Reporter.

She and her husband, Jerry, honeymooned in Ventura 38 years ago and visited Ventura County often, before moving here. They have two adult sons, David and Joseph. Her 93-year-old mother, Mary Driggs White, lives in Ventura.

Alfonso Yslas, 20, of Oxnard, is studying business at Oxnard College. The

2004 Rio Mesa High School graduate was a project leader for City Corps, recruiting teens to participate in community events.

Now, he is a Southwinds community organizer and is employed by the Community Awareness Resource Exchange of Ventura County. He is also a member of the Responsible Alcohol Policy Action Coalition. He is an Oxnard Police Explorer in Post 9286. He has helped coordinate youth forums at the Boys & Girls Club, Police Activities League and Adolescent Tobacco Awareness Youth Coalition.

He was named "Outstanding Young Man of the Year" by the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce in 2005 and, earlier this year, received the Youth Award from El Concilio del Condado de Ventura. The son of Rosario and Jesus Olguin he has one older brother and four younger sisters.