Recall in limbo until hearing

Recall in limbo until hearing

August 28, 2001

By Gail Binkly
Journal Managing Editor

Whether there will be a recall election in November for three members of the Cortez Sanitation District depends on the results of a hearing to take place Thursday.

Several protests were filed late last week challenging the validity of recall petitions submitted for the three: Sam Jarvis, Jim Bridgewater, and board chairman Stan Pierce.

A hearing to decide the validity of the protests has been set for Thursday at 1:30 p.m. in the municipal courtroom at the Justice Building. Kent Williamson, the designated election official for the recall, will preside.

Pierce, Jarvis and Bridgewater have been targeted for recall by a committee that alleges the sanitation district and its management have been heavy-handed and adversarial in their policies and practices. The board members deny those allegations.

More than 400 valid signatures were turned in Aug. 6 on recall petitions for each of the three, according to statements from Williamson, who is also attorney for the district.

A total of 427 signatures were confirmed seeking Pierce’s recall, 420 for Bridgewater, and 407 for Jarvis. Two other board members are not being targeted for recall.

Three hundred signatures was the minimum number needed to force an election.

Eight different persons, including the three board members targeted for recall and the district’s manager, Bill Smith, submitted identical protests to Williamson last week. The protest documents allege that the members of the recall committee aren’t actually registered electors in the sanitation district and that some of them improperly circulated petitions and gathered signatures.

The documents also challenge the validity of the recall petitions because the heading that states "Petition to recall" and the person’s name were not printed in bold-faced type, as required by state statute; and because the persons signing the petitions did not print "Montezuma County" along with their names.

On Monday, Fred Thomas, a member of the recall committee, said he did not believe he and his wife, Nancy, had improperly circulated petitions.

The Thomases live outside the sanitation district’s boundaries, but own a business, Thomas Engineering, within the city of Cortez. This theoretically makes them eligible to vote in the district and they have done so for years, Fred Thomas said Monday.

"Nancy and I have been voting in sanitation-board elections for a long time, so I thought it wasn’t any big deal — we’re electors," he said. "We’ve been voting with no problem."

However, Carol Tullis, deputy county clerk, said that in order to be eligible to vote in sanitation-district elections or to circulate petitions for recall, citizens must own property themselves or be married to someone owning property within the district. Thomas Engineering is owned by a corporation that is in turn owned by the couple.

"A corporation is not a person, it’s persons — more than one," Tullis said. "That’s how (state officials) explained it to me."

Thomas said that, during the committee’s initial effort to collect signatures to force a recall election, a number of petitions were rejected because he, his wife, and developer Don Etnier had circulated the petitions. The recall effort fell short, so the committee scrambled to collect more signatures within the time frame required to allow the election to take place on Nov. 6, the general election day.

The second time around, Thomas said, he and Nancy did not circulate petitions.

Instead, he said, they had an woman who was an eligible elector work out of their office, contacting signers whose petitions had been thrown out to see whether they wanted to sign again. If they did, she would take a petition to them or they could come to the office and sign there, Thomas said.

Etnier, owner of Residential Building Systems and another recall proponent, likewise was challenged for circulating petitions when he does not live in the district and his business is not located within it, either.

On Monday, Etnier said he had had one of his employees who lives in Cortez circulate petitions the second time around, with Etnier sometimes accompanying him.

However, he said he believes he is an eligible elector in the district anyway because he and his wife, Gaylene, own property within the district boundaries, although it is owned by Residential Building Systems, which is a Colorado partnership owned by them.

"I still own property in the city and I have paid for a sewer tap," Etnier said, "so why am I excluded because I choose to have that property in my wife’s and my name as a partnership?"

A total of seven persons submitted affidavits along with the protest documents saying they had been approached by Etnier to sign the petitions. Etnier said the number of persons was so small it should not affect the outcome of the recall effort.

Erin Johnson, attorney for the recall committee, said some of the reasons cited in the protests seemed trivial, such as concerns about the non-bold-faced type and whether the county was listed.

"The right to recall is a fundamental right of the people and because of that a lot of things are liberally interpreted (by the courts)," she said. "Kent (Williamson) okayed the form, so I think that (the absence of the county’s name) is not an issue."

She also said concerns about Etnier seeking signatures should not invalidate the recall.

"Anybody can help this cause happen, but only the circulators would sign the petitions and state that they made sure the names were valid," she said.

If the protests are dismissed Thursday, the committee can move forward with submitting petitions for replacement candidates Friday, Johnson said. If Williamson rules in favor of the protestors and invalidates the recall, the only option for the committee would be to sue him to say that he abused his discretion as an election official, Johnson said.