Last of petitions to recall 3 Cottage Grove city councilors fails to get enough signatures

Lane County on Monday rejected the last of three recall petitions against Cottage Grove city councilors.

A group of Cottage Grove residents calling themselves "Save the Grove" filed recall petitions in July against city councilors Chalice Savage, Jon Stinnett and Mike Fleck.

"All of (the councilors) are good people, I'm not saying they're not," Chief Petitioner Michael Borke told The Register-Guard. "The problem is they have been very supportive of the unhoused and not the residents of the city and they're putting the priorities of the unhoused over the residents."

Borke said he and others especially objected to the council's decision to designate and, in their view, underregulate overflow shelters in response to House Bill 3115.

The petitioners did not turn in enough signatures for Lane County to count them for Savage and Stinnett. After signature verification, Lane County confirmed 463 valid signatures against Fleck of 654 required.

Borke said he believes most Cottage Grove residents want to replace the trio of councilors, and his team did not turn in enough signatures because of printing errors.

"Over time, as they were photocopying, towards the end, some of those were not as crystal clear, or had something wrong, or we had a few where the back page didn't get printed," he said.

Borke said he personally collected about 200 signatures and in that time encountered four people who were opposed to the recall effort. "There is definitely very much interest in it."

The city councilors did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In September, Fleck responded to the recall and its arguments in a guest column in The Chronicle, saying the fact he and Savage were re-elected last year shows most Cottage Grove residents agree with their decision making and he defended the council's decision to open the overflow camping sites and make them 24-hour as opposed to only at night.

"The council has been making informed and measured decisions to address the current challenges," he wrote. "Drugs seem to be a symptom of homelessness, not a cause, most of the time. … Service providers also have an easier time working with the unhoused community if they can consistently find those individuals."

Borke told The Register-Guard he has filed four new initiative petitions with the city he will soon start gathering signatures for, including one to make the overflow camping sites operate only at night and one to make it so city council vacancies are filled by special elections instead of appointments.

He said he plans to file new recall petitions against city councilors who voted to open the sites, with the goal to time it so they are placed on the November 2024 ballot. Stinnett's term expires in 2024, so he will be on that ballot without a recall petition if he seeks re-election.

Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached over email at atorres@registerguard.com or on twitter @alanfryetorres.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Cottage Grove city councilor Mike Fleck latest to avoid recall election