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November 7, 2001 By Gail Binkly
Voters swept three members of the Cortez Sanitation District board out of office Tuesday, recalling them by decisive margins. In an election prompted in part by anger over the board’s treatment of a woman who sold her wedding rings to pay a sewer bill, voters recalled board chairman Stan Pierce, who had served on the board 33 years, and members Jim Bridgewater and Sam Jarvis, who had served 15 and nine years respectively. Pierce had 2 1/2 years remaining on his term; Bridgewater and Jarvis had just six months. Two other board members, Bob Diederich and G.W. McCutcheon, were elected in May 2000 and were not targeted for recall. "This is wonderful," said Maxine Carton, Cortez coordinator for the Southwest Center for Independent Living. Carton had argued the woman’s case before the board, which rejected her request to refund the $500 fee charged the woman to have her sewer reconnected after it had been severed by the district. The woman, whose husband had had a stroke, had been delinquent in her payments for some time. She had made a partial payment and still owed the district $63 when her sewer was disconnected in March. The case drew statewide attention after Denver Post columnist Diane Carman wrote about it. "This is way overdue," Carton said late Tuesday. "I think the community has spoken." After the incident, critics of the district — who said the disconnection policy was draconian and the district was unnecessarily adversarial towards builders — mounted a recall effort that was plagued by problems and accusations of improper signature-gathering. Eventually, however, they managed to garner enough signatures to force the historic election, the only special-district recall that officials say they can remember in Montezuma County. In July, the district board voted 4-1 to change the disconnection policy and try using liens to squeeze money out of non-paying clients; however, the number of delinquencies soon jumped tenfold, and the board began talking about perhaps turning to disconnections again. Pierce, who was the lone holdout on the vote to stop disconnections, was recalled by the widest margin, 1047 votes to 600, or 64 to 36 percent. Bridgewater had 929 votes for his recall, 710 against, or 57 to 43 percent. Jarvis was recalled by 876 to 770 votes, or 53 to 47 percent. Replacing them will be — apparently — Fred Blackburn, a local historian, author and guide; Ted Stearman, owner of Dolores River Builders; and Norm Hall, co-owner of La Plata View Homes and a former manager of the Illinois Power Company. "I’m very happy," Hall said Tuesday night. "That’s unbelievable. I said, if the recall went through and I was chosen, I’d be glad to serve." The other two could not be reached for comment. The complicated recall ballot required voters to choose replacement candidates separately for each person to be recalled. In other words, the same five replacement candidates appeared under each of the three board members’ names, so it was possible for one replacement candidate to "win" more than one slot. That was indeed what happened, as Blackburn topped the list of replacements for both Pierce and Jarvis. He garnered 316 votes, or 30 percent of the total, under Jarvis’ name; and 378, or 33 percent of the total, under Pierce’s name. According to Deputy Clerk Carol Tullis, that should mean that Blackburn will take Pierce’s seat. "Fred Blackburn should take Pierce’s seat because it’s the longest. He still has 2 1/2 years remaining on his term," she said. "And when you get to Jarvis, Fred Blackburn was the winner there, but he can’t have two slots, so you go to the next highest, who was Ted Stearman." Stearman had 241 votes under Jarvis’ name. Hall was the No. 1 vote-getter to replace Bridgewater, with 281 votes, or 26.5 percent of the total. Kent Williamson, attorney for the district and the appointed recall official, could not be reached late Tuesday night to confirm the winners among the replacement candidates. The two other candidates were Robert Knoll, a retired postal worker and teacher; and Harold Foster, a member of the Cortez City Council.
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Copyright © 2001 the Cortez
Journal. All rights reserved. |
