The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
60-day period starts again
The same three-person committee that submitted a petition to the County for a recall of all three Gunnison County Commissioners is at it again after withdrawing their first petition and replacing it with a new one last week.
While the grounds of the new recall petition are similar to the first, the language is more vague, saying “The people of Gunnison County Colorado of The United States of America bring this petition of the office holder who, they believe, has failed his/her oath to support The Constitution of the United States of America and the State of Colorado.”
While the first petition gave the proposal to build a new County jail as one reason for the attempted ousters by committee members Robert Allen, Betty Eberhardt and Alex Laird. But the new petition doesn’t mention the jail.
“The reason it was dropped is because we thought we needed to cover more of the political base in this county,” Allen says, adding that he hopes the petitions will start circulating Thursday, April 1.
But while the committee moves forward with the petition, commissioner Jim Starr isn’t sure they’ve looked at the big picture.
“I’m afraid these folks don’t know what is at stake here. We’ve needed these projects for years, the jail and the public works facility, and we’ve done it in a way that doesn’t raise taxes. I’m just really disappointed that this is continuing,” Starr said. He adds that he’s got an outpouring of support from the community, or those who believe the commissioners are doing the right thing.
The petition submission and subsequent approval by the County Monday, March 29, means the 60-day clock has started to get more than 2,100 signatures to have the elections of Hap Channell and Paula Swenson recalled and more than 1,500 signatures to bring Jim Starr’s seat to an early vote.
The petitions can be amended one time, but it has to happen before the 60-day period is over. Once the petitions are turned into the County Clerk, the staff will have 10 days to check the validity of the signatures against the current voter registration.
Gunnison County Clerk Stella Dominguez says if the signatures are approved there’s a time period for a protest and if there’s no protest then the county has 45-60 days to set up a recall election.
“It would just be a regular election. The Ballot might say, ‘do you want to recall so-and-so,’” Dominguez says. “And the parties would have to nominate some successors. Once they get the signatures then we’re going to call an election.”
Any candidates elected in the recall election would take their respective seats immediately after the election. The winning candidates would finish the current commission terms. That would mean a three-year term for anyone trying to replace Channell and Swenson and a term of less than a year in Starr’s seat.
