Petitioners seek recall provision in Orono charter

ORONO — A petition calling for a charter amendment to allow for the recall of elected officials here was presented to the Town Council Monday, with 85 of the 100 signatures being accepted Tuesday by town officials.

While Town Clerk Wanda Thomas said Tuesday that the petitioners neglected to take the proper route to reach their goal, one of them said that town officials are “trying to kill the thing real quick here.”

“We’re not going to back off,” Anthony Worster said. “We’re going to keep applying the pressure until they address this issue.”

At the top of each petition page is a demand that the town amend the charter and establish a recall procedure for elected officials. However, according to the ordinance on the matter, such petitions are supposed to include a specific proposal for the amendment.

But Worster said that petitioners feared that drafting their own proposal would diminish their chances of being heard, with town officials bickering over the language written by the petitioners.

Amendments to the charter can be proposed through four avenues: in a manner provided by law, by ordinance of the Town Council, by registered voters of the town, or by report of a charter commission created by ordinance. Such changes must then go through a lengthy process before adoption or rejection.

A direct-petition amendment to the charter must contain signatures equal to 20 percent of the registered voters who voted in the last election, in this case being some 1,068 signatures. Worster, however, said that petitioners wanted the council to review the issue, and hoped to have it appear on next month’s agenda.

“We want to get the council to sit up and listen,” he said. “I think the town’s being unfair, the town’s being unrealistic, and the town’s being irresponsible.”

Also, he said, petitioners probably would not be able to garner the more than 1,000 signatures needed for a direct change. It took them about three months, with limited resources, to obtain the 100 signatures they turned in Monday night, Worster said.