By Jim Crews, Stevensville
The Mayor will not resign. That means a special election. Probably around the first week in August, I suspect. Recalls generally go very badly for elected officials. That is why most resign. It is embarrassing to have that many people in the community lose faith in you as an elected official. For it to be up to a small group of citizens to be able to mount a recall with little to no trouble, I truly love living in a republic.
The reasons for the recall are very clear.
The Town of Stevensville is a weak mayoral system, Executive-Commission form of government, where the council has all the power. The mayor is not much more than the part time supervisor of the town employees. His duties are defined in 7-3-203 MCA. The first being to enforce laws, ordinances and resolutions.
As enforcement of a law, ordinance or resolution is a duty prescribed by the state legislature, the mayor is compelled to comply. As such is the case, the mayor must enforce and obey the town council resolutions, one of which is the purchasing policy.
In the purchasing policy for the town, section 7.b) clearly states in the first sentence, “Contracts for services are awarded to the lowest most-responsible vendor or bidder.”
To the most casual reader, that means, if you want to contract services you have to request bids or request quotes for the service. In the town of Stevensville, in the Stevensville Municipal Code, all bids must be opened by law, by the Town Clerk in front of the Town Council so that Town Council can evaluate the bids or quotes and award the job to the lowest most responsible bidder or vendor.
If you do not go out for bids or quotes, then you deny the citizens the Right to Participate in the process, Article II Part II Section 8 and the Right to Know of the process Article II, Part II Section 9, which are rights guaranteed to every citizen of the state of Montana by the Constitution for the State of Montana.
Every elected official in Montana takes the following oath.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, protect and defend the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Montana, and that I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity (so help me God).”
If you deny a citizen their rights under the Constitution for the State of Montana, then you are violating your oath of office.
That is the simple version of what happened. If you read the recall, you can see additional protections for the citizenry and the authority of the Town Council that were breached.
When you take a look at these virtual meetings, you will see an additional number of rights violations. Like the recent Board of Adjustment meeting that took place in Stevensville. Fact is some of the citizens supplied public comment to the Board, the Clerk failed to bring them forward and the Council did not bring them forward either. Who is there to protect our rights?
The Mayor does not seem to want to go the extra step to do it, the Clerk does not check to see what is there, the Council did not read the comments, so again, the Right of Participation was denied to at least one citizen.
Why? Why cannot someone just follow the Town’s own instructions to the citizenry to make sure that our rights are not violated?
We need someone as Mayor in our Town who has the ability to pay attention to the details, to be cognizant of the processes. What we have right now is not working.