PUEBLO, Colorado — The Pueblo City Attorney is out. Mayor Nick Gradisar asked Dan Kogovsek to retire after he reportedly misinterpreted the law regarding petition requirements for a proposed charter amendment.
Members of the Pueblo City Council held a special closed-door meeting Thursday night to seek legal advice on the matter from the interim city attorney, Bob Jagger.
A citizens committee circulated petitions earlier this year seeking to reverse the city's strong-mayor charter amendment. The City Clerk's Office instructed that the committee collect about half the number of signatures legally required under state statute. The bad information came from the former city attorney.
The instructions set the signature threshold at 10 percent of the turnout from the most recent municipal election, or 3,678 voters. This threshold typically applies when petitioners want to amend a specific city ordinance.
However, Mayor Gradisar said state statute sets the petition threshold for charter amendments at 10 percent of all registered voters or 7,260 signatures.
Gradisar worked to create the current strong-mayor form of government where voters pick the executive who oversees city administration instead of a city manager.
"As it got towards the final end of the process I decided to take a harder look at (the reversal petition), and I discovered that this error had been made," Gradisar said.
He sought an outside legal opinion on the issue about a week and a half ago. Attorney Mark Grueskin confirmed Gradisar's analysis, and Gradisar said he asked Kogovsek to retire Wednesday.
"He's um chagrinned, I think, embarrassed by the error that was made, and you know those kinds of things happen from time to time," Gradisar said.
Committee volunteers Susan Carr and Judalon Smyth said they first learned about the error Wednesday from a city news release announcing that their petition failed to make the ballot.
According to that release, the committee submitted 3,830 signatures to the clerk's office on March 1. The clerk announced the petition was insufficient on March 14 after 2,814 names were verified.
The city granted the committee 15 days to cure their petition sheets and gather additional signatures. They submitted 4,877 signatures on March 29. But this second attempt also fell short by 68 signatures.
Carr said the clerk disqualified four signature packets because the notary page had become detached from the signature sheets.
"We were doing this in wind, snow, and rain," she said
Carr said one circulator who lost the notary page still had their packet accepted during the first attempt on March 1 because he copied the affidavit by hand and then had the document notarized before submission. Three additional packets were missing notary pages at the March 29 submission.
"They told us just do what he did and it will be fine," Carr said. "So, that's what we did and we submitted them and they threw all four out this time."
Carr expressed frustration at the turn of events.
"We've done everything that we were asked to do to make this happen, and we were successful. And it didn't matter," she said.
The committee is seeking the advice of an attorney.
"What they've done to this petition is not against me. It's against everybody who signed it, everybody who wanted to sign it," Smyth said.
Council President Heather Graham is one of the candidates challenging Gradisar in his bid for re-election this November. She expressed frustration at the announcement.
"This has been going on for months and I don't know how this mistake was not caught until the twelfth hour," Graham said.
She said she requested Thursday's special meeting to seek legal advice about what to do next. Graham wanted to know whether the city could extend the petition deadline again.
She also pointed out that council can also refer the measure to the November ballot.
"At this point, I think it's something that this council needs to seriously look at to be honorable to our community and to our citizens," she said. "People should have faith in city government."
Gradisar predicted a rapid legal challenge had the petition met the lower signature threshold and subsequently passed.
"It would've been chaos for the city had this moved forward an election was held and it passed," he said.
Council took no action at Thursday's meeting. Graham said she may call another special meeting soon to discuss these developments publicly.
____
Watch KOAA News5 on your time, anytime with our free streaming app available for your Roku, FireTV, AppleTV and Android TV. Just search KOAA News5, download and start watching.
