Crawford voters will go to the polls on a Tuesday in January for a recall election against Mayor Connie Shell, who has 2 years left in her term.

The Crawford City Council will pick the date at its regular meeting tonight.

      Dawes County Clerk Cheryl Feist says Crawford resident Carl Burrous submitted the affidavit to begin circulating recall petitions on July 9th and filed the completed petitions on August 31st.

       Burrous needed valid signatures from 133 registered Crawford voters and submitted 160. Feist ended the confirmation process after clearing 138 signatures. Mayor Shell then had 5 days to resign or go to an election, and she chose the election. 

       Normally, the city council is required to pick an election date that’s no more than 30 days after the mayor’s response is filed with the county clerk, but no special elections can be held less than 2 months before or after a general or primary election.

      Feist says Burrous missed the deadline for the general election by one day, pushing the special election to January.

      The recall petition circulated by Burrous and others offers no specific incidents involving Mayor Shell, but it does have general general complaints including that “she is self-serving.”

       It also says Shell doesn’t have the community in her best interest, has accused “lucrative businesses in town as not being valuable,” and has threatened members of the Chamber of Commerce with personal lawsuits.

        Shell, who was a city council member when she ran a successful write-in campaign against incumbent Mayor Dave Nixon, has emphatically denied all the allegations and says she will fight the recall campaign just as strongly as she can.