Sanitation district recall offers new candidates

Sanitation district recall offers new candidates

Oct 6, 2001

By Gail Binkly
Journal Managing Editor

Five candidates are vying for the chance to replace three members of the Cortez Sanitation District board who are facing a recall question in the upcoming election.

Fred Blackburn, Harold Foster, Norman Hall, Robert Knoll, and Theodore Stearman have successfully petitioned to be placed on the ballot, according to Kent Williamson, attorney for the sanitation district and the appointed election official in the recall.

Two forums planned on local election issues

The League of Women Voters is having two public forums to talk about issues in the upcoming election.

One forum will focus on the proposed recreation center in Cortez. Voters are being asked to approve a 0.55-cent sales-tax increase to fund an $8.9 million bond for the rec center. This forum will be at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Calvin Denton Room at Empire Electric.

A second forum will provide voters in District Re-1 a chance to hear school-board candidates vying for three open seats on the board. It will take place at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15, also in the Calvin Denton Room at Empire Electric.

The recall vote will be conducted by mail and is one of three separate ballots Cortez-area voters will face in the Nov. 6 election, which is one of the most complicated in recent years in the city.

Voters in the sanitation district will first decide whether or not to remove from office board chairman Stan Pierce and board members Sam Jarvis, or Jim Bridgewater, Williamson explained.

Then each voter can vote for up to three replacement candidates from among the five on the ballot. This is true whether or not the voter said yes to recalling any of the three current board members.

If voters overall reject recalling the three members, then votes for the five replacement candidates won’t matter. "It may very well mean your choice never counts because if the individuals are not recalled, then those votes (for replacements) are not going to count," Williamson said.

But if one, two or three of the current members are recalled, the same number of new candidates will take their places on the board, according to which ones received the most votes.

The recall effort was launched this summer after controversy erupted over the sanitation district’s policy — now changed — of cutting sewer lines for long-delinquent customers and then charging a fee of $500 or more to have the line reconnected. Critics also have charged the district with being unnecessarily adversarial.

Montezuma County Deputy Clerk Carol Tullis said mail ballots for the recall election should be sent out by Oct. 22. They are being sent to active registered voters within the sanitation district and also to owners of property within the district who live in the state of Colorado but outside Montezuma County.

The sanitation district has cut from its rolls of eligible voters anyone who owns property in the district under the name of a business or corporation. Eligible property-owners must have title to their property in their own or their spouse’s name.

Cortez-area voters will also receive a separate mail ballot for the Re-1 school-district election. That also should be mailed by Oct. 22, according to Tullis. Two statewide questions will be included in that ballot, she said.

There are no absentee ballots available for either of the mail-ballot elections because they aren’t necessary, she said.

In addition, Cortez voters will have go to the polls Nov. 6 to decide whether to approve a 0.55-cent city sales tax to fund a recreation center through an $8.9 million bond.

There will be no early voting in the rec-center election, Tullis said, but absentee ballots will be available.

Tuesday is the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 6 election. Anyone who wants to register, obtain an absentee ballot, or report a change of address should contact the clerk’s office, 565-3728, ext. 4.