Citizens submit over 2,000 signatures to recall Eugene city councilor
3 min read
They collected hundreds of signatures opposing the bus project called MovingAhead. When those were ignored, they collected another 2,000 signatures to recall the city council president. EmX opponent Mark Osterloh:
[00:00:12] Mark Osterloh: You should take note of this. Doing a recall is an extraordinary thing. What we want you to do is reverse that vote on the EmX bus line and the whole MovingAhead, and let’s go back to square one. Let’s get citizen input. Let’s see what the people want, and not just the people that are pushing this, which are the bus manufacturers / road construction people. This is about us. This is not about them. So we want you to reverse that vote and let’s go back and look at what people really want, not what the powers to be are trying to ram down our throats.
[00:00:45] John Q: Explaining his opposition to more EmX routes, Mark Osterloh.
[00:00:49] Mark Osterloh: There’s like five corridors in town. They want to do a lot of destruction to a lot of properties, take away business footage in the front of their property for parking and stuff. That’s going to seriously damage their businesses.
[00:01:02] We went around. And we actually had to get the plans and force ’em to show ’em to us. And we showed ’em to people all up and down these corridors, especially on River Road. When I went up and down River Road getting petition signatures, 95% of the people, at least, haven’t heard a thing about it.
[00:01:18] LTD is saying they’re having all of these great meetings. It’s actually a scam. They’re trying to sneak this through. and basically make EmX-only bus lines for—if you look at the buses out there, they’re running basically empty.
[00:01:32] They also want to take away up to 132 trees on that road, tear up all the sidewalks and everything, put in a lot of concrete, which releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide.
[00:01:42] So this is about making money for the bus manufacturers and for the road construction people. This is not what’s going to be good for this city. Small buses going to many more routes is a much better option.
[00:01:56] John Q: But the council adopted the plan benefitting what he calls, the Transit Industrial Complex. Mark Osterloh.
[00:02:03] Mark Osterloh: We gave petition signatures to Claire Syrett, and she ignored them. And then she lied about receiving opposition and then she ignored us and insulted us.
[00:02:13] So we feel it’s time that we make this known to the public and we get some people on the city council that’ll actually do a job that represents us and our needs.
[00:02:24] And when the city government doesn’t listen to you, it’s time to do something drastic. And that’s why we’re doing a recall.
[00:02:31] John Q: Elections officials have ten days to determine whether the citizens submitted enough valid signatures.
[00:02:37] If they did, the council president gets five days to either resign or submit a statement for the recall ballot.
[00:02:43] After those five days, the recall election must be held within 35 days.
[00:02:48] That would set up a recall election in September. Mark Osterloh.
[00:02:52] Mark Osterloh: We have over 2,000 signatures, well over the minimum needed. Now recall is an extraordinary thing to do, but we have an extraordinary problem in this city. City Councilor Claire Syrett has ignored us. And when the city government doesn’t listen to you, it’s time to do something drastic. And that’s why we’re doing a recall.
[00:03:12] John Q: A history of Eugene elections shows that voters recalled EWEB commissioner Rob Willis in 1990. If the signatures are valid, this could be the first council recall election in Eugene’s history.
