So why would we now want to waste taxpayers dollars for not one, but two elections? A recall election and then an election to fill the empty seat? I think not, and hey Sierra Madre City Clerk (who openly supported Measure V) how much will those 2 elections cost us?
As reported by the SGVT
Mosca focuses on funds shortfall
Sierra Madre mayor ignores recall effort
Newly appointed Mayor pro tem Joe Mosca is turning his focus from a possible recall election against him to the long-term deficit the city is facing.
Mosca, who received more votes than any other candidate in the April 2006 election, sent an e-mail April 9, telling his supporters that the city clerk had approved the recall petition for circulation and asking them for their assistance in organizing a “Stop Recall” campaign.
He has since changed his mind.
“We started talking and meeting and putting some stuff together,” said Mosca, 34, a bankruptcy attorney. “Then I decided it would be better to focus energy and time on city business.”
Mosca noted that a Tuesday council budget discussion revealed that city staff was recommending all city employees’ salaries remain status quo.
“The city is facing a structural deficit,” he said.
Since Tuesday, he said, the Sierra Madre Police Officers Association has been gathering signatures, asking for a 20 percent raise for local police, who are currently the lowest-paid city police in the San Gabriel Valley.
He said the raise they are asking for would put them in line with other lowest-paid police departments.
“Police are not getting paid what they need to be paid,” Mosca said. “We know that, but we don’t have anything to pay for that. The \ paramedic program can’t be funded for more than two years. We need to fund these things.”
Mosca supporter Jan Reed said she has heard that the recall petition is circulating, adding, “They know better than to come here.”
“Here’s a fella that has done more in the short time he’s been on council than anybody I know,” Reed said.
Mosca said he and his supporters have heard little about the petition and are hoping the effort will blow over in light of the city’s major financial troubles.
“I haven’t heard of anybody being approached to sign anything,” he said of the recall campaign.
But some residents are pounding the pavement, working to gather the required 25 percent of signatures from the city’s roughly 7,000 registered voters that would force a recall election.
As of Sunday, resident John Crawford said he had almost 100 signatures from those disappointed in Mosca. Five more weeks remain until the signatures must be ready.
“A lot of people that I talk to are holding Joe responsible for a lot of what the town has been put through,” Crawford said. “They realize he was elected as an anti-development candidate, and he waffled.”
Recall supporters claim Mosca broke campaign promises to support a vote of the people to decide if they wanted to move forward with the city’s controversial Downtown Specific Plan, which some residents feared would cause overdevelopment in the downtown area.
Mosca has defended himself, saying the plan was only in rough draft form in June 2006 when Councilman Kurt Zimmerman asked that the plan be put in the form of a referendum on the ballot.
“What is the point of going to all the trouble of creating a downtown development plan just so that the town could turn it down?” Crawford countered. “The town is against development.”
Mosca has also vehemently denied being pro-development.
Reed said the accusations that Mosca lied to those voters who supported him in his run for office are “ridiculous” and “untrue.”
“All he wanted was for the plan to be completed, and then go forward on it,” Reed said. “You can’t vote on something that isn’t a complete project.”
But since the passage of Measure V – which requires a special election for any proposed developments of more than two stories, 30 feet in heights and 13 dwelling units per acre in the city’s downtown – Mosca said most of the plan is now moot.
“At this point, it’s pretty much non-existing,” he said. “Measure V is the law in downtown.”
molly.okeon@sgvn.com
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Well it looks as if that was accomplished last night. Sir Eric called it renovations. Either way the dust is gone!
Sierra Madre 