Dawes County Clerk Cheryl Feist says she inadvertently gave the wrong number of signatures that would be needed to recall Crawford Mayor Tom Phillips and that the number is 137 and not 75. The signatures must be from registered Crawford voters.
When chief circulator Lori Palomares filed her initial recall petition last month, Feist believed the standard recall requirement of 75 votes – 35% of Phillips’ total in the 2022 election – applied.
After Palomares ended that recall effort and refiled, Feist says she learned from the secretary of state’s office that because of Crawford’s size and the fact that the mayor is elected in November, a different requirement with more signatures applies.
She was told the 35% applied to the total votes cast in the election – the 214 for Phillips and the 175 for Connie Shell – bringing the number needed to force either a resignation or recall election to 137.
Feist says the higher signature requirement apparently should also have applied to the recall effort against Shell that led to a recall election in January 2021, which she defeated with 57% of the vote.
The timetable for the refiled recall drive against Phillips is the same as the first. He has 20 days from the filing to choose to respond with a statement that would be attached along with Palomares’ filing to the initiative petition itself.
Palomares makes the same accusations in the new petition that she did in the first: Phillips doesn’t live in Crawford and has a potential conflict of interest from his wife doing the books for the city-owned Legend Buttes Golf Course.
After Feist releases petitions for signatures, Palomares will have 30 days to gather signatures, followed by 15 days for Feist to verify the collected signatures and determine if there are at least 137 valid one.
If there are enough, Phillips will choose between resigning or standing for a recall election with the city council having 21 days to set an election on the first available date at least 50 days in the future that complies with state rules for election dates.