BELLFLOWER : Recall Drive Begins to Oust Councilmen

A drive to recall Councilmen Ken Cleveland and Ray T. Smith was launched last week after nearly two months of haggling over the wording of the petitions.

The recall group, led by roofing contractor John Butts, must gather the signatures of at least 5,166 registered voters--20% of the city’s total--by the end of August to force a special election. Butts said the group hopes to gather 5,600 to 5,700 signatures to provide a cushion in case some signatures are ruled invalid.

The recall group originally submitted the petitions in February, but had to revise them four times before City Clerk Debra D. Bauchop approved them last week.

Butts said the city was trying to stifle the recall by repeatedly rejecting the petitions because of misspelled words, poor punctuation and lack of home addresses for Cleveland and Smith.

“They were hoping we’d drop it, but I told them we weren’t going to give up,” he said.

Bauchop denied the allegation. “I was just doing my job,” she said. “Until (the petition) complies with the code, I can’t accept it.”

The petitions say Cleveland and Smith should be recalled because they approved a 5% utility users tax, added 10 years to Calsan Inc.’s trash collection contract without soliciting other bids and extended their terms in office by almost a year by moving the next council election from April, 1996, to March, 1997.

Cleveland and Smith said the utility tax was necessary to pay for better law enforcement. They said the Calsan contract extension was the least expensive way to meet a state mandate to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills by 25% this year and 50% in 2000.

They said they favored changing city elections to odd-numbered years to avoid a conflict with the California presidential primary.