By Jennifer Karmarkar –
Fullerton Recall organizers filed signed recall petitions with the City Clerk’s office shortly after three p.m. today, taking the next steps toward recalling City Council members Pat McKinley, Don Bankhead and F. Richard Jones.
As promised, members of the Fullerton Recall, led by Fullerton School Board Trustee Chris Thompson and businessman Tony Bushala, turned in the petitions well ahead of the February 16 deadline set by the Orange County Registrar of Voters.
Thompson said that although signature gathering was “a ton of work”, the effort went pretty much as planned. “It started out super easy where people were throwing themselves at us and it got progressively harder.”
To meet the requirements for a recall, they were tasked with collecting 10,554 valid signatures – 15 percent of registered Fullerton voters – on each of three petitions. The unverified counts provided by recall organizers are Don Bankhead – 17488*; F. Richard Jones – 17876*; and Pat McKinley – 17,727*.
The estimated signature numbers changed several times during the in-office count as anti-recall postcards were factored in. In an attempt to thwart the signature drive, recall opponents Protect Fullerton – Recall No!, distributed postcards to Fullerton voters asking them to rescind their petition signature by signing the cards and mailing them in. Of the cards returned, 140 were for Bankhead, 137 for Jones and 145 for McKinley.
But Thompson isn’t worried. “We did our due diligence in advance, studied, and made sure we understood the law,” he said. “We tried to make sure there were no stones left unturned so we weren’t caught with any surprises.”
Fullerton resident Christine Walker has been manning petition tables five days a week in front of supermarkets and post offices since the effort began in early September. “We’re taking our city back and I’m just so happy I was able to be part of this. We all worked so hard to get it done,” Walker said as she waited Thursday evening for the signatures to be counted in the City Clerk’s office.
City Clerk Lucinda Williams and other city staffers will spend much of Thursday evening verifying that the minimum number of required signatures has been met at face value. “We’re going to have to pay overtime costs but I think they’ll be able to wrap it up in a couple hours,” said City Manager Joe Felz.
Because City Hall is closed Friday, the petitions will be locked up over the weekend and taken to the Orange County Registrar of Voters office Monday morning. There, signatures will be verified and the final count will be certified. The process must be complete within 30 days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
Larry Bennett, campaign manager for Protect Fullerton-Recall No, has said in the past that he won’t be surprised if recall organizers are successful in their petition gathering.
“We live in a free country and everyone has a right to voice their positions,” Bennett said Thursday. “(Recall organizers) are well within their rights to work for a recall. I see that they have quite a few (signatures) and, assuming those signatures are legitimate, we will have a recall.”
If the Registrar of Voters finds the petition counts to be insufficient, no action will be taken. But if the ROV determines the signature requirements have been met, they will certify the results and notify the city, which has 14 days to call an election.
Given the current timetable, if a recall election is called, it could be consolidated with the June 5 primary, saving the city the estimated $284,500 that a stand-alone election would cost.
The city still must pay for the cost of signature verification, which is $3.40 per signature.
The petition drive to recall McKinley, Bankhead and Jones was launched in response to the death of Kelly Thomas, the mentally ill, homeless man who died after a violent altercation with Fullerton police in July. The tragedy sparked outrage throughout the city and recall organizers say the three failed to provide leadership in the days and weeks following Thomas’ death.
On August 8, recall organizers served then-Mayor Jones and council members McKinley and Bankhead with Notice of Intent to Recall, charging them with putting the interests of the police union before those of the citizens and creating a culture of corruption within the police department, culminating in the death of Thomas.
Recall proponents also claim on their web site an illegal tax disguised as a “franchise fee” added to residents’ water bills, an illegal expansion of the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency, and a 2008 attempt by Bankhead and Jones to “secretly push through a multi-million dollar pension spike” as further evidence of the need for a recall.
But anti-recall organizers see the recall effort as an opportunity for Bushala to gain a majority on the City Council in order to push through his redevelopment projects.
“They are alleging there is tremendous malfeasance and I just don’t see it,” Bennett said. “I still see it as an attack by Tony Bushala on the three council members he has targeted for years. But we will make our case and they will make theirs, and the voters of Fullerton will have their say.”
But Walker disagreed and had a message for the embattled councilmen: “I know we are not going to have any problem recalling you once this goes on the ballot so don’t get too comfortable in those seats.”
Top photo: Merijoe Axe, top, Bunny Dew and Anne Marie Stack organize pertitions at the counter of the City Clerk’s office.
Middle photo: Chris Thompson sorts petitions before handing them off to CIy Clerk Lucinda Williams.
Bottom: Recall proponents Mark Powell, left, Chuck McGlawn, Tony Bushala and Laurel Laughlin, wait in the lobby area as the signatures are counted.
* Updated counts as of Saturday, January 21.
Story by Jennifer Karmarkar/FullertonStories.com
By way of an update, the official prima facie counts were as follows:
Don Bankhead 17,488 signatures (65.7% more than required)
Pat McKinley 17,727 signatures (67.9% more than required)
Dick Jones 17,856 signatures (69.1% more than required)
As we assumed, the total number of signature retraction cards submitted was inconsequential. The deadline for turning those cards passed on the date that we turned in signatures. The following totals, which have not been validated, were turned in:
Bankhead 140 written requests (Less than 1%)
McKinley 145 written requests (Less than 1%)
Jones 137 written requests (Less than 1%)
Chris, thank you for the update. Very much appreciated.