Trevor Phipps
In a sweeping move started at the end of February and that has accelerated in the last week, three Woodland Park citizens have orchestrated an official ouster effort to recall five out of seven current city council members.
The political chess move occurred days before a public hearing aimed at deciding the fate of the 1.09 percent voter-approved sales tax increase, with the extra money going to the school district.
While other reasons were mentioned on the recall petition, the fact that some city council members have voiced their desire to end the school sales tax due to transparency issues has been at the forefront of the recall debate. Since the issue has risen over the last year (after the April 2024 city election) council meetings have been packed with passionate community members arguing on both sides of the political debate.
On February 28, Woodland Park residents Richard Caviness, Jeffrey Cole and Warren Dickenson formed a recall committee to pull a petition to recall city council members Jeffrey Geer, Teri Baldwin, Steve “Smitty” Smith and Carrol Harvey. On March 4, a petition was then submitted to recall Mayor Pro Tem Catherine Nakai.
Mayor Kellie Case and Councilman George Jones, though, have not been targeted from the ouster effort, as they have vocally supported keeping the school tax.
This is the first attempted recall of the majority members of a Woodland Park City Council launched in several decades.
According to Woodland Park City Clerk Suzanne Leclercq , the number of signatures needed to recall council members varies based how many people voted in the election when their particular seat was filled. Colorado law states that a successful recall can occur when 25 percent of the number of people who voted for the council members sign the recall petition.
To recall council members Geer, Baldwin and Smith, petitioners need 721 signatures to force a recall vote since they were elected in 2024. Petitioners only need 577 signatures to recall Mayor Pro Tem Nakai and Councilwoman Harvey because Nakai was elected in 2022. Meanwhile Harvey was appointed to fill Mayor Case’s council seat, which she was elected to in 2022.
The petitioners have until 5 p.m. on April 29 to collect the needed amount of signatures from registered voters that reside in the city limits of Woodland Park to recall the council members. If the recall petition is successful, applications will open up for new city council candidates for a special election to remove current members and possible elect new ones.
More Transparency from the School District
According to Councilman Jeffrey Geer, the sales tax is listed on the recall petitions along with a few other reasons. “This group that is attempting to recall us seems to be upset with the fact that we still haven’t received the answers that we have been asking for and we remain committed to getting that level of accountability and transparency that the community is desperately asking us to get,” Geer said. “They seem to be bothered by the fact that we are continuing down that path.”
Geer said he believes the proposed recall will just stoke more division in the community that has already been split nearly down the middle surrounding the school sales tax debate. “I fully appreciate the emotionally-charged nature of it, but they are trying to recall the majority of the city council,” Geer said. “Recalls are divisive. They don’t bring the community together; they rip the community apart.”
Councilman Smith agreed with Geer and said that the city wouldn’t be in this position if the school district had furnished the reports the city council has asked for over the last year. “We don’t want to take the money away from the kids, the teachers or the school district. We don’t,” Smith said. “What we want is the transparency and the accountability of the school district for our community. That’s the bottom line.”
Councilwoman Baldwin agreed that recalls aren’t good for any city and recalling over half of the city’s leadership will not help bring the community together. “The citizens decided to keep the tax, but the first report sent to city council at the end of January was inaccurate and incomplete,” Baldwin said. “And then when it was corrected, it still showed that money was spent on things that weren’t passed in the original ordinance back in 2016. And it also demonstrated sort of a continued lack of integrity and honesty about where the money is being spent.”
Going Against the Will of the People
The petitioners have said that the city council needs to be replaced because their actions clash will the will of the people, regarding a sales tax increase that has been approved by the voters twice. “At this point, they’re using their powers to say, ‘We don’t care what the voters said, you know, we’re just going to repeal it on our own,'” recall committee member Warren Dickenson told KOAA News 5. “It seems like a personal attack on the school board itself, and the children and the teachers are the ones that are going to really pay the repercussions for that.”
Teller County resident Jameson Dion has spoken at several city council meetings and has voiced concern about the city council wanting to take away the school tax. “I’m not taking an active call on the recall yet, I’m going to wait and see how they (the city council members) vote on Thursday (March 6),” Dion said. “The new intergovernmental agreement (IGA) (proposed by the city council) really put a higher ask of transparency. Definitely a lot more work was required in terms of producing financials on a regular basis than any other tax we have in this county or town. You can’t go on the city council website or the county commissioners’ website and find a breakdown of how your taxes are being spent. It doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Dion agreed that the first report submitted to the city council from the school district was insufficient, but he argues that the second 140-page financial report was compliant with the new IGA. “Technically the school district did not violate the contract that they had,” Dion said. “But, the city did. The city violated that contract in two ways. One, they didn’t provide written notice. Instead, they just proceeded to draft a resolution to kill the tax. That’s not allowed in the contract. That would be allowed if 30 days had past and the district hadn’t cured, but they did cure.”
One question still up in the air is how the council’s eventual decision on the sales tax matter will impact the recall effort. Some proponents of the ouster effort say the campaign will still proceed regardless, as they are afraid the council may try another anti-school district maneuver down the road. They contend that kids of the RE-2 District are emerging as the real loser of this political fight.
Most Woodland Park Council leaders, though, stress that the issue comes down to transparency. Another side issue is the lack of any sunset clause associated with the sales tax.
