City prepares for arrival of large petition to recall Mayor Gondek

Calgary's city clerk is making plans for dealing with the pending arrival of a large petition that aims to recall Mayor Jyoti Gondek.

A local business owner, Landon Johnston, has been collecting signatures to recall Gondek since early February.

Under the terms of the provincial legislation that created the recall process, Johnston must collect more than 514,000 signatures by April 4 in order to force the mayor from office.

That number is higher than the number of Calgarians who voted in the last municipal election.

When that petition lands at the city's election office on or before April 4, the city has to validate whether he reached his goal.

45 days to verify

City clerk Kate Martin has the job of coming up with a plan to verify the signatures.

"As part of that plan, we looked at the resources that would be required in order to manage a petition, a recall petition. So the city clerk's office is looking to recruit up to 10 election clerks, to support the mayoral recall petition verification process," she said.

And there's a reason why she has to get on that. Again, that relates to the recall rules set out by the provincial government's legislation.

"We have to verify that petition within 45 days of the day that it was submitted. So we certainly have a time clock that we will be watching."

From her vantage point, this is about being ready for any contingencies. 

"That is why you're seeing us recruiting. It's a step to be prepared. But the scope and the nature of what we may receive in April is a very large amount."

City pays bill

Martin said it is unknown how much it will cost the city to hire the additional workers.

In the city's job advertisement, it stated it was looking for as many as 10 clerks who will be paid between $24.96 and $33.38 per hour for the four-month positions.

After the validation process is complete, Martin will report the results — on how many signatures were gathered and if the recall threshold was reached — to the next scheduled city council meeting.

Under the province's legislation, a politician can face only one recall petition per term.

While the recall process was created by provincial legislation, municipalities are responsible for paying the costs associated with that procedure for any of their local elected officials.