WESTMINSTER : Recall Effort Faces Petition Deadline

Organizers have three days left to gather signatures to force Mayor Charles V. Smith and three other City Council members to face a recall election.

“We’ll be out there in the rain,” Rebecca Danna, one of the leaders of the recall drive, said Thursday.

After more than three months of circulating the recall petitions, Danna said, “we feel we have enough (signatures). But we will work until the deadline just to make sure.”

Recall proponents have until 5 p.m. Monday to gather 6,938 signatures to qualify for the ballot, according to City Clerk Mary Lou Morey. The original deadline, today, was changed because it falls on a Saturday, she said.

Morey said she will count the signatures once the petitions are submitted to ensure the required number was gathered, then turn them over to the county Registrar of Voters, for verification that the names are of registered voters.

If there is a sufficient number of verified signatures, a recall election will be held in 88 to 125 days, Morey said. Should a majority of the council members be recalled, there would be a special election to replace them in the next 114 to 129 days, she said.

City officials said the cost of an extra election to remove Smith and council members Craig Schweisinger, Charmayne S. Bohman and Tony Lam would be about $150,000.

The recall effort was prompted by last year’s $1-million cut in the Fire Department’s budget.

Officials of the firefighters union, who are supporting the recall, said the council put public safety in jeopardy.