Small files recall petitions
If verified, removal of three council members could be on November ballot
Community activist Duanne Small today filed recall petitions with city clerk Steve Kay seeking to remove three members of the city council from office.
Small filed recall petitions against Mayor Ed Johnson, Councilman John Loffredo and Councilwoman Susan Henderson. The petitions, he said, contained approximately 2,644 signatures each. The group organizing the recall was unable to obtain enough signatures to recall council members James Bruno and Kevin Sanders, although an attempt was made, Small said.
If Kay verifies that the recall petitions contain at least 1,865 valid signatures — 25 percent of the city’s registered voters at the last election — then Johnson, Loffredo and Henderson will face a recall election in November.
“We have a city that’s divided right now,” Small said today of his reasons for pursuing the recall. “It seems as though the present council people have no concern about the city as a whole. They’re only concerned about one side.”
Mayor Ed Johnson disputed these claims in a phone interview today.
The city has spent more on improvements to the west side of town than the east side, he said, as the boardwalk and waterfront redevelopment are funded by private redevelopers. The city also has hired Small for some contracting jobs, he said.
“We’ve accomplished a lot,” Johnson said. “Does that mean everything is done? No. But in just my short [term] of 13 years, you can’t erase 50 or 60 or 70 years of blight, corruption and neglect … I think we did the city proud and the proof is tangible.”
The first section of a recall ballot would ask voters to make a decision on recalling each of the three individual members of council. A second section of the ballot would display the names of candidates to take council members’ places, should any be recalled, according to Kay. Candidates are required to collect signatures of 75 registered voters in order to run.
Johnson, Loffredo and Henderson are free to run as recall candidates, although Johnson was unaware of any council member collecting signatures.
No one has officially declared their candidacy in the recall election yet, Kay said. The deadline for candidates to hand in candidate petitions is Aug. 31 for a recall election on the November general election ballot, he said.
Meanwhile, officials are reluctant to name a deadline for submitting recall petitions to get the recall questions on the November ballot. The recall petitions specify that the election will be held in November, Kay said.
There are “too many variables set forth” in state statute 19:27A-11, which governs municipal recall elections, said city attorney Fred Raffetto in reference to the filing deadline. The statute gives five- or ten-day windows for “events which may or may not come to pass once the petitions are filed,” Raffetto said. “If and when the petitions are filed, a determination will be made at that point.”
The county board of elections has a Sept. 13 deadline for matters to be included on the Nov. 6 ballot, meaning Kay must verify the petitions before Sept. 13.
Council members are up for regular re-election in May. Small pursued the recall despite the upcoming election due to his fear that the current governing body “would try to push the election back to November to prolong their stay in office.”
According to Mayor Ed Johnson, though, such a move is not legally possible. The current members of the governing body have terms ending June 30, 2013, he said.
Asbury Park’s form of government consists of five nonpartisan council members who are elected on the second Tuesday in May every four years. After the election, the five council members select the mayor among themselves.
Johnson has already announced he does not plan to run again.
(Correction: A prior version of this story stated that if it’s determined the recall organizers missed the deadline to get on the November ballot, then a special election will be scheduled at a later date. City clerk Steve Kay says that the recall petitions specifically state the the recall will be held at the November general election, so if the city attorney determines that those now-filed petitions don’t meet the deadline, no recall election will be held.)
