Campaign to Oust Fiore Is Renewed : Thousand Oaks: Leader of a recall committee will scrutinize disputed signatures on petitions supporting a referendum.

Resuming a quixotic five-year campaign against Councilman Alex Fiore, the 1,000 Oaks Recall Committee on Tuesday announced a fresh effort to oust the veteran politician.

But several local leaders--including Fiore--dismissed the crusade as irrelevant.

“If they have nothing better to do than to waste their time in this exercise in futility, then let them at it,” said Fiore, who plans to retire when his eighth term ends in 1994. “Their main objective is to be divisive. It’s ludicrous.”

After her first crusade to remove Fiore from office fizzled in 1988, community activist Joan Gorner launched another recall petition almost two years ago. Her committee accused Fiore and Councilman Frank Schillo of ramming the $63.8-million Civic Arts Plaza development through the City Council without heeding citizens’ concerns about its price, design and location.

The group collected more than 10,000 signatures, but the county registrar invalidated several hundred, so the petition fell short of the number required to put a recall question on the ballot.

A Ventura County Superior Court judge overturned city objections in August and granted the recall committee 20 hours of access to the petitions. The group has spent the last eight months working out a plan with the city on how to conduct its review.

If they do find evidence of wrongly disqualified signatures, recall proponents may have to take the city or county to court to demand a recount.

On Tuesday, Gorner vowed to scrutinize the disputed signatures in hopes of proving them valid and initiating a recall referendum.

“We believe we qualified for a vote,” Gorner said.

The recall committee’s second target, Councilman Frank Schillo, gained immunity when he won reelection in November. None of the signatures obtained prior to that election can be used in a future recall effort.

But although Schillo is secure, Fiore plans to retire in 18 months and the Civic Arts Plaza is already half-built, recall proponents said they would not back down. Indeed, they promised to step up their efforts to oust Fiore and investigate possible abuses in the signature-validation process.

“I’m a history teacher, and I believe that government by the people, of the people and for the people shall not pass from this Earth without a struggle from me,” said Gorner, who teaches at Colina Intermediate School.

Another member of the recall committee, Richard Booker, added: “We believe strongly that we have an obligation to ensure that each voter who exercised his or her constitutional right should be counted and not be disenfranchised.”

Yet Assistant County Registrar Bruce Bradley, who has already spent more than 20 hours double-checking signatures, dismissed the committee’s renewed focus on the petitions as futile.

In the past year, Bradley has examined 300 signatures the group claimed had been unjustly disqualified. He has so far found the complaints invalid and stands by his original count.

“I’ve told them, ‘You’re more than 100 signatures short and we’re not finding anything (to merit a recount), so what’s the point of going on?’ ” Bradley said. “My initial report has not changed by one signature.”

So far, the drawn-out process has cost the city thousands of dollars in staff time, legal fees and signature-validation expenses. Recall proponents dug into their own pockets to cover $7,700 in legal fees as well.

The latest push to study the signatures will cost the city still more, since at least one staff member must watch over Gorner and her colleagues while they examine the petitions. City Clerk Nancy Dillon estimated that Thousand Oaks has already spent at least $5,000 simply to monitor signature checking.

“It takes an exceptional amount of staff time,” Dillon said. “They’ve been through all the petitions before, so I don’t know what they want to examine now.”