November 20, 2008
By SETH AUGENSTEIN
FRANKFORD -- The ongoing court battle surrounding the recall of Mayor Robert McDowell will be one-half of the Frankford Friday doubleheader in Morristown Superior Court.
Judge Theodore Bozonelis likely will decide whether or not McDowell will face voters in a recall referendum in the near future.
George Lista, a member of the recall committee, initially hoped the recall question would be on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.
The petitioners' difficulties was not in getting the signatures on their sheets, but some technical errors with the forms and the timing of when the petition was filed as compared to the Nov. 4 election date.
The original recall petition was submitted to Township Clerk Louanne Cular Aug. 13, but she rejected it two weeks later, citing a technical error for failing to sequentially number each of the document's sections.
On Sept. 10, the petitioners challenged Cular's decision, but the next day, Cular rejected the challenge, still citing the technical error.
On Sept. 13, petitioners filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order Cular to approve the recall petition and have Sussex County Clerk Erma Gormley place the question on the Nov. 4 ballot or arrange for a special election.
At a Sept. 24 hearing with Bozonelis, it was decided Cular would have to complete verifying the petition's signatures by Oct. 3, which she did, saying that of the 1,270 signatures, 1,181 were valid, more than the 947 needed to have a recall placed on the ballot.
Lista said the township's responses have been a series of tactics aimed at not allowing the voters of the township to have their say.
"Everything they're doing is a stalling tactic, all down the line," he said.
