Parkersburg resident Kim van Rijn, left, signs a petition to recall Mayor Tom Joyce outside Parkersburg City Council chambers before a May 5 council meeting as city resident Karen Riel holds the paper steady. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

PARKERSBURG – Some people behind a referendum petition challenging approval of a proposed municipal sanitation contract are also working to remove officials who supported the measure from office.

A committee was formed over the last month-and-a-half to develop recall petitions, starting with Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce and City Council President Andrew Borkowski.

“Ultimately, it really comes down to transparency,” said Caci Petrehn, a Parkersburg resident and member of the committee, as well as a Democratic candidate for the West Virginia Senate.

Under the municipal charter, voters can recall the mayor or any member of council, by filing a petition with the city clerk’s office signed by a number of qualified voters equal to at least 20% of those registered at the last regular municipal election. That would require approximately 3,684 signatures, although there’s a question as to whether that number applies to the full city or just residents of the district in the case of council members.

Petrehn said there has been public outcry over a variety of issues, most notably the efforts to shift sanitation to a contracted service after decades of the city’s own department doing the work.

“Yet they completely ignore the people they were elected to represent,” Petrehn said.

Numerous people have spoken against the effort at council meetings, culminating in the referendum petition to get council to repeal its January ordinance authorizing a contract with Waste Management. If the petition is certified and council does not repeal the ordinance, it would go before the voters at an upcoming election.

Joyce and other officials supporting the change have said the city could not hire and retain enough workers to keep the department functioning. Employees from other departments have been doing the job, along with temporary workers.

Mayor, council president targeted

Volunteers were collecting signatures for the recall petitions outside council chambers at the May 5 meeting.

“We started with Tom because we feel as though his leadership has been the most abhorrent,” Petrehn said.

Asked about the recall effort, Joyce responded by saying the divisive nature of politics at the national level was reaching the city.

“This recall is an overt effort to undo the results of the 2024 election,” he said. “I welcome the opportunity to debate the organizers of this effort or their designee to get the facts out and correct what has been several months of misinformation and false accusations.”

As for Borkowski, Petrehn said he’s been “complicit in pushing agendas through by the mayor.”

Borkowski said the recall process creates a slippery slope.

“Today it’s me, but … do we want to go and start recalls any time there’s a decision made that we don’t like?” he said.

Borkowski also said the recall process undoes the will of the voters.

Procedural question

If a recall petition is certified as sufficient, the charter says council would schedule a special election within 30-90 days, unless a general municipal election is set to occur within 120 days. A majority vote would remove the official from office.

Such a vacancy would be filled in accordance with the provisions of the charter. If the mayor was recalled, the executive committee of the party to which they belong – in Joyce’s case Republican – would submit a list of three candidates and council would select one. For a council member, the party executive committee would submit three nominees and the mayor would choose one.

So while voters would determine if an official remains in office, removing the mayor “would allow nine members of council to handpick the mayor,” Borkowski said, noting the mayor would select the replacement for a recalled council member.

Parkersburg resident LaDonna Reid, who is also involved with the referendum effort, filed a petition with Wood County Circuit Court asking for a ruling on whether the number of signatures required for a council member’s recall petition was 20% of those registered to vote in the city or the specific council district.

City Attorney Blaine Myers said the way the charter reads, the requirement is citywide. Reid argues in her petition to the court that voters outside the district “do not elect the council member and may have limited familiarity with that official’s performance.

“As a result, they may be hesitant to support removal of an official they did not elect and who does not directly represent them,” the petition says. “This dynamic diminishes the ability of district voters to exercise the right of recall in a meaningful way.”

Online to in-person

While most discussion about potential recall efforts had appeared online, it entered the city’s official record at the April 21 City Council meeting. Petrehn said during the public forum that recall petitions would begin circulating once the court provided clarity on requirements under the city charter.

“Until that ruling is issued, each of you has a choice: You can acknowledge what the people of our city already know and step down, or you can wait for those same people to make that decision for you,” she said. “If anyone here chooses to resign tonight, those recall petitions will never see the light of day.”

Joyce said during the message from the executive that night that he has no plans to resign and stands by his record. He took issue with multiple rumors and accusations made about him, including that he had benefited financially from city actions such as the sale of the Memorial Bridge and the planned trash collection contract.

“Yet the city recently received its seventh consecutive unmodified audit opinion with no finding of any misappropriation of funds or improper payments to me or any other party,” Joyce said.

He also acknowledged that he got a part-time job and obtained a commercial driver’s license in an effort to “make more money” and “challenge myself.” He denied accusations he’d gotten the city to pay for his CDL and gave City Clerk Connie Shaffer a copy of the canceled check with which he said he paid the fee.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.