Palmer City Clerk Norma Alley has rejected an effort to recall Palmer City Council Member Richard Best on legal grounds.
In her Clerk’s Report for tonight’s Palmer City Council Meeting (May 12, 2020), Alley explains that the Recall Petition Application was rejected after a legal review.
The sponsors of the Recall Petition application alleged three grounds for a recall:
1. The Jan 10, 2020 incident when Best called the Palmer Police at 12:30 a.m. while he was driving home from Kenai and asked them to dispatch a police cruiser to his house to play music (the Peter Gabriel song “In Your Eyes” ala the movie “Say Anything”) for his wife over the vehicle’s PA system; 2. Feb 11, 2020, when Best went to Disneyland and didn’t notify the Council/Clerk that he would not be in attendance at a City Council meeting until the meeting was already underway; and 3. March 31, 2020, when Best failed to participate in or give notice that he would be unable to participate in the Special City Council meeting to interview the candidates for City Manager. (This summary is from the Legal Memo below.)
This recall effort seems political. More on the politics of this matter is explained later in this blog post.
The Richard Best Recall Petition Application was submitted to the City on April 20, 2020. The Palmer City Council meeting of April 28th was cancelled, so there is no meeting packet for that meeting and thus, the actual Petition Application is not posted on the COP’s website. I am trying to find out from the City Clerk who sponsored this Recall Petition. Also, there is no explanation as to why the City of Palmer’s regular attorney, Mike Gatti, did not do the legal analysis.
Here is the legal memo analyzing the legal grounds for the recall:
The politics of the recall effort:
More coming soon!
