Waldport: Recall Election Petitioner Submits the Needed Number of Signatures to Recall Six City Council Members

By Brian Bahouth

Today was the final day to collect signatures for the effort to recall six Waldport City Council members. Lead petitioner Tony Thimakis needed 192 validated signatures per council seat to initiate the recall election(s), and today he submitted over 250 signatures for each council seat to the City of Waldport Recorder. 

Lincoln County Clerk Amy Southwell told me she encourages petitioners to gather many more signatures than needed because not all are likely to meet the criteria.

Once a sufficient number of signatures are submitted to the Waldport City Recorder by the deadline, the Lincoln County Clerk will then verify that the signatories are valid Waldport voters.

If the County Clerk certifies the requisite number of signatures, the Waldport City Recorder will then notify the councilmembers being recalled that they have five days to either resign or submit a letter of justification. Either way, a special election will then be scheduled to take place within 35 days.

The councilors subject to the recall effort are Greg Dunn, Susan Woodruff, Jayme Morris, Rick Booth, Michelle Severson, and Jerry Townsend. Waldport Mayor Heide Lambert is also a member of the city council but is not an object of the recall effort.

The special election ballot would not present opposing candidates but would pose the question of whether to retain or remove the councilmember. The recall process and associated paperwork must be completed for each councilmember to be recalled.

If the recall election results in the loss of a quorum on the Waldport City Council (three plus the mayor), then the Lincoln County Commissioners would appoint only enough councilmembers to create a quorum. For example, if all six recalls were successful, commissioners would make three appointments. If only three or fewer are successful, no appointments will be necessary.

We spoke with Thimakis after he submitted the signatures.

“I feel good about what we’ve done,” Thimakis said by phone. “The citizens we’ve run into have all been extremely cooperative, very nice. They ask a lot of good, insightful questions. Everybody who [signed] is committed to see change happen. They’re excited to have it happen. 

“Very few people were negative. We only hit three out of 250 signatures that had people that were rude. And even the councilors whose neighborhoods we were in were very polite, and they encouraged their neighbors to be polite. It was a good experience meeting everybody in Waldport. I can say that it’s a town full of beautiful, wonderful people, and I’m sorry we had to come to this to make a change, to make things happen.”