Alice City Council Case Study

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The Alice City Council was supposed to decide on the date of the recall election Tuesday night. That was the purposed of their special meeting.

However, a discussion about the possible date of the election quickly turned into a debate between the deadlines on the Alice city charter and those offered on the state’s election code. That debate turned into an argument, which even included mayor Jolene B. Vanover asking police chief Rex Ramon to step in and restore order in the council chambers.

When it was over, the matter still hadn’t been settled. Instead, Yolanda Sosa Moran, Elida Garza and Cynthia Carrasco voted to table the matter and consider it at a future meeting. Moran and Carrasco argued that they had too many unanswered questions about the process to simply set a date Thursday night.

City attorney David Towler said according to the state’s election division, the city would have to include the recall referendum on the state’s Nov. 7 election day. He said only the governor has the authority to
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Sosa Moran and Garza are the subject of a recall effort led by Alice residents Cindy Loera and Randal Dickens. The two recently submitted to city hall recall petitions with signatures for the two recently-elected council members. The signatures which were validated were presented to the Alice City Council at Thursday night’s meeting. It was then that Towler said according to the city charter, the council should after five days set a date for the recall election.

After some questions by Moran, Towler said that while the city charter says the council should set a date for the recall five days after the presentation of the petitions, the state’s election code says the city has to call for an election at least 78 days prior to the election day. Under those guidelines, the council would actually have until Aug. 21 to call for a Nov. 7