Mayor and town trustee recall, Firestone, Colorado (2021-2022)
| Firestone mayor and town trustee recall |
|---|
 |
| Officeholders |
Frank A. Jimenez |
| Recall status |
| Signature requirement |
379 (trustees) |
| See also |
| Recall overview Political recall efforts, 2022 Recalls in Colorado Colorado recall laws Mayoral recalls City council recalls Recall reports |
An effort to recall Mayor Bobbi Sindelar and all six additional members of the board of trustees did not qualify for the ballot in Firestone, Colorado. The board members subject to the recall were Mayor Pro Tem Frank A. Jimenez, Don Conyac, Sean Doherty, Samantha Meiring, Douglas Sharp, and David Whelan.[1]
Recall supporters opposed the use of CARES Act funding for bonuses for town employees and alleged that the town had offered excessively generous severance packages during recent hiring. Opponents denied wrongdoing and said that the town had offered generous severance packages in order to attract strong candidates during a period of high turnover.[1]
To read about other recall efforts related to the coronavirus and government responses to the pandemic, click here.
Recall supporters
The group Firestone Action Committee for Transparency (F.A.CT.) initiated the recall effort. Among the organizers were former Firestone Trustee Drew Peterson and residents Erin Warnecke, Lou Ann Matthews, and Linda Haney.[1]
Recall organizers cited a number of grounds for the recall campaign. F.A.C.T. opposed the use of CARES Act funding for bonuses for town employees.[2] Supporters also alleged that Town Manager AJ Krieger had engaged in nepotism by hiring four people he had previously worked with. They also said that Krieger had offered the new hires excessively generous severance packages and had failed to inform the board of trustees of the severance offers until after they were made. The offers would have allowed the new hires to have taken severance pay after resigning, if Krieger, who was then interim town manager, was not appointed as full town manager.[1]
Recall opponents
Town Manager Krieger, who was not subject to recall, denied wrongdoing, saying, "In every one of those cases, we advertised. ... We sought candidates and we went through a thorough, regimented interview and selection process. Did I want to hire people ... because I knew them and knew how good they were at what they do and because we shared several years of productive and successful experience together? … Did all those things factor into my decision? Of course."[1]
Krieger also defended the severance packages: “One, (the accommodations) were to provide a sense of security for anyone willing to take a job with an agency that had really struggled for a couple of years and then, the second was because the hiring was going to be done by an interim town manager and there was no guarantee that I was going to be here. ... I felt like we had to do some things that were a little unusual so that we could demonstrate to a group of candidates that we were serious about restoring the professional, productive environment.”[1]
Path to the ballot
- See also: Laws governing recall in Colorado
Organizers submitted almost 400 signatures for each officeholder subject to recall on August 23, 2021. Firestone Town Clerk Jessica Koenig later rejected the petitions on the grounds that they were paperclipped together when submitted and were "as a matter of law in a state of disassembly.” The town held a hearing on the recall petitions on September 20, after which Koenig upheld her previous determination.[1][3]
Ballotpedia covered 35 coronavirus-related recall efforts against 94 officials in 2022, accounting for 13% of recalls that year. This is a decrease from both 2020 and 2021. COVID-related recalls accounted for 37% of all recall efforts in both 2020 and 2021. In 2020, there were 87 COVID-related recalls against 89 officials, and in 2021, there were 131 against 214 officials.
The chart below compares coronavirus-related recalls to recalls for all other reasons in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
See also
- Recall campaigns in Colorado
- Political recall efforts, 2021
- Political recall efforts, 2022
- City council recalls
- Mayoral recalls
External links
Footnotes
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