Foes faced deadline to get recall of Eagle mayor, council on ballot. Here’s what happened
Tuesday was the deadline for a citizens group to turn in over 4,000 signatures to recall all four Eagle City Council members and Mayor Jason Pierce.
But the group, Eagle Citizens for Open Government, did not get enough signatures after launching the petition for a recall in October.
One of the group’s leaders, Jay Combs, said there is “a huge number of dissatisfied people” but would not disclose how many signatures the group collected.
The group needed to get 4,315 signatures from registered voters within 75 days from when the petition was accepted, according to the Ada County Elections Office.
“A large group of people that are committed to the same thing we are, which is basically stopping the annexation of Avimor and the lack of transparency (of the city),” Combs said by phone.
Eagle Citizens for Open Government announced the recall effort citing three issues: the potential annexation of Avimor, the Eagle Foothills community that plans to host 10,000 homes on nearly 36 square miles; the unexpected change in trash providers as the city plans to switch from using Republic Services to Hardin Sanitation in 2023; and the city’s decision to settle a lawsuit and not buy Eagle Water Co. Veolia then bought Eagle Water.
If the signatures were obtained and verified by the election office, the recall election would have been held on Tuesday, May 16.
“As mayor and council members, we are grateful to know that the recall will not continue due to the lack of required signatures,” said Pierce in an email to the Idaho Statesman.
Pierce said he and the City Council make residents the focus of every decision they make.
“To accomplish this purpose, we thoroughly evaluate a tremendous amount of research and input from professionals and residents before making informed decisions to benefit 33,000 residents in Eagle,” Pierce said.
Eagle recall group said it faced opposition
There was an effort on the opposite side of the Eagle Citizens’ effort, Combs said. He said someone posted signs that looked similar to the recall effort’s signs that said the recall group were Democrats trying to oust conservatives from the council.
“We are a combined group of Democrats and Republicans who care about Eagle and don’t see any benefit to Eagle annexing Avimor,” Combs said in an email.
Combs also said women who were in the recall group had pickup trucks follow them to their homes at night after taking shifts working on obtaining signatures. He said the group filed police reports about these instances.
In a text message, Pierce said he and the City Council members had “nothing to do with” protests against the recall signature gatherers.
Eagle Citizens for Open Government is now setting its sights on upcoming meetings about the annexation of Avimor and on the November city election.
“We’re going to have a couple of get-togethers to mount an effort to encourage people to become candidates,” Combs said, “and let them know that there’s a lot of people that support a change.”
This story was originally published December 28, 2022 at 5:37 PM.
