Saturday, January 24, 2015

SPECIAL: TOOTHINOV.ORG Files In Court Against The Town Of Oro Valley

Residents Shirl Lamonna and Debra Arret have filed suit to get the TOOTHINOV.ORG filed petitions approved. The goal of TOOTHINOV.ORG is to allow the residents of Oro Valley to vote on the town's purchase of the El Conquistador Country Club. Oro Valley Town Clerk Julie Bower rejected petitions  on the basis that they had a clerical error.  The suit asserts that this reason for rejection is merely "window dressing" and an excuse to deny a vote to the citizens.

More than 3,100 registered Oro Valley voters signed the petition. A number of residents attended this past Wednesday' council meeting to express their disgust with this rejection. They spoke at the "call to audience" portion the meeting.

The following are 3 videos of the resident's remarks:

The following is the status of this suit as posted on TOOTHINOV.ORG.

"On Fri, January 23rd, William R. Risner, Esq, filed a Statutory Special Action (Mandamus) against Defendant Julie K. Bower, Oro Valley Town Clerk, on behalf of Plaintiffs Debra Arrett and Shirl Lamonna in Pima County Superior Court.

The stated reasons for rejection (of the referendum petitions) by Julie K. Bower, are based on non-substantive window dressing that she used to deny the fundamental constitutional right of referendum.

To the extent that the "number (R)14-66" printed on the right hand corners of the petitions and not the "number REF14-01" is used to deny Oro Valley residents their right to referendum such denial is a denial of their constitutional right to referendum. Thus, that requirement is itself unconstitutional either on its face or as applied.

This action shall be advanced on the court's calendar and heard by the court as soon as possible by the Honorable Gus Aragon."
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5 comments:

Richard Furash, MBA said...

What about the other errors on the forms as noted from the Towns Media Release yesterday. There is a whole list of errors but those are not mentioned here or on the petition blogs?

Richard Furash, MBA said...

The law suit states that the petitions were rejected on the day received based on the fact that the town assigned serial number was not used. There may be other errors that will arise if the town is compelled to consider the petitions by a court.

Richard Furash, MBA said...

TOOTH submitted 3158 signatures. They only needed 1148. It is doubtful that the other errors mentioned will disqualify 2000 signatures.

Richard Furash, MBA said...

The other errors would have only invalidated SOME of the signatures. This happens with any petition drive. That's why you try to obtain many more signatures than what is actually required. But the missing serial number invalidated all 3000+ of them.

This would not have happened if the town clerk had simply told Shirl where to place the serial number. She clearly knows where it belongs since it was the FIRST THING she looked at when the petitions were handed in.

Richard Furash, MBA said...

Actually, the other errors found on some of the petitions WAS mentioned on this blog. If you scroll down on the first page, you'll see them. They were posted on January 21st.