Sep. 23—An effort to recall Firestone trustees and the town's mayor has hit a snag — a paper clip snag.

A group of residents leading the recall effort collected nearly 400 signatures to recall Firestone leaders, but received a letter of insufficiency on Aug. 30 from the Firestone Town Clerk Jessica Koenig stating that there was a "defect of assembly, in that all the petitions are bound merely by a paper clip, all petitions are as a matter of law in a state of disassembly."

Koenig approved the format for the unsigned petitions on June 24, with the group turning in the signed petitions on Aug. 23 in the same paper-clipped format.

In response, to the certificate of insufficiency, the group of residents asking for the recall emailed Koenig a letter of protest on Sept. 1, stating that: "The Clerk has failed to uphold the oath of office as Firestone Clerk by not providing clear expectations or requirements for the submission of approved packets."

The protest letter also asked that the Weld County clerk designate an impartial hearing officer, with no ties to Firestone.

In response to the protest letters, Koenig called for a recall petition protest hearing on Monday to determine if the group can move forward with the recall process.

The administrative hearing included an opportunity for both the town and residents asking for the recall to present testimony, cross examine witnesses and share exhibits as evidence. The meeting was open to the public, with Koenig serving as the hearing officer. Firestone Town Attorney William Hayashi was also present during the proceeding.

Following the nearly three-hour long hearing at the Firestone Police Department and Municipal Court Building, Koenig said she will "take it under a matter of deliberation and will issue my finding no later than five days from today."

Who is asking for a recall and why?

Driving the effort for a recall is the Firestone Action Committee for Transparency, or FACT. The grassroots group, which felt residents' voices weren't being heard, is composed of core members Drew Peterson, a former Firestone trustee who left the role in 2020; and concerned residents Erin Warnecke, Lou Ann Matthews and Linda Haney. A recall committee formed out of that effort and is being led by Haney.

The petitions were filed to recall Mayor Bobbi Sindelar, Mayor Pro Tem Frank Jimenez and Trustees Douglas Sharp, David Whelan, Don Conyac, Sean Doherty and Samantha Meiring. The group collected roughly 395 signatures for each petition, falling roughly 10 signatures short on the petition to recall the mayor. According to Peterson, the residents were told they needed to collect 402 recall signatures for the mayor and 379 for trustees. The lack of signatures on the mayor's petition was not addressed during the hearing.

Peterson said the committee wants to recall of the trustees in the hopes that a new board would reconsider Town Manager AJ Krieger's employment contract.

In an email Wednesday, Jimenez shared a comment from trustees that read: "The Board of Trustees will withhold any statement about the recall effort or protest hearing until after the Hearing Officer has rendered a decision."

FACT outlines several transparency concerns on its website, including an issue that dates back to October 2018, when then-interim town manager Krieger sent five people job offer letters. Krieger today is Firestone's town manager, following his hiring in April 2019.

The letters were sent to Katie Hansen, who is now Firestone director of marketing and communications; Todd Bjerkaas, now Firestone planning and development director; Jan Sloat, now Firestone human resources director; Paula Mehle, now Firestone director of economic development and Firestone Urban Renewal Authority; and Jessica Clanton, who isnow Firestone director of finance.

The letters outlined that if the town appointed someone other than Krieger to the town manager position and the person offered the position resigned, that person could be eligible for between four months and two years of severance, depending on the offer letter. The offer letters, which FACT shared online, all mention conditions of Krieger's employment, except for Hansen's letter.

"The board was not aware of the letters when they were sent," Peterson said in a phone interview. "They were made aware by the attorney after they were hired. They were not sent out with full knowledge of the board."

But Kreiger said that he had been in communication with town trustees and then town attorney Kathleen Kelly throughout the process to fill the job roles in October 2018.

Krieger referenced an Oct. 9, 2018, email, when he was serving as interim town manager. In the email, which was shared with the Times-Call, he told trustee board members:

"As you may recall, when we previously discussed hiring for the vacant department director positions the Board authorized me as Interim Town Manager to make some potentially unorthodox accommodations. As contemplated those accommodations take the form of a severance payment or a certain minimum duration of employment. The minimum duration of employment will be specifically if the Board appoints someone other than me to fill the permanent Town Manager position."

When asked about the offer letters, Kathleen Kelly, who served as the Firestone town attorney until she resigned in December 2018, said she couldn't provide comment on town legal matters, because they are "protected by attorney-client privilege."

Recall committee members have vocalized their concerns about transparency issues. During a July 28 trustee meeting, Peterson brought up the job offer letters.

"That could have cost the town hundreds of thousands of dollars," Peterson said. "Do you really think that two years' severance on day one for an employee, because we don't hire this guy, is a good thing? Is that in the best interest of our town?"

FACT has also raised concerns about Krieger employing people he had worked with in the past. They said that the new hires, who were extended the offer letters in October 2018, were people Krieger had worked with as the former Erie town administrator, a role Krieger was ousted from in May of 2018, and as former city manager in Northglenn, a role Krieger resigned from in 2008. Krieger said that of the five people extended the offer letters in question, he has worked with all of them in the past, except Clanton, the director of finance.

"In every one of those cases, we advertised," Krieger said. "We sought candidates and we went through a thorough, regimented interview and selection process. Did I want to hire people like Paula and Jan and Katie and Todd, because I knew them and knew how good they were at what they do and because we shared several years of productive and successful experience together? ... Did all those things factor into my decision? Of course."

What went on during the hearing?

The hearing on Monday allowed both Koenig and residents leading the recall the chance to present an opening statement.

Haney said Koenig should have provided clear expectations of how the petitions should be assembled, especially given Koenig approved the format of the unsigned petitions and that the sign petitions were returned in the same format.

"In good faith, circulators worked for 60 days to gather signatures, believing we had been given the right information," Haney said during Monday's hearing. "Approximately 400 citizens of Firestone made the effort to exercise their rights and sign their names to the petitions. Their voices should not be silenced over paper clips."

Peterson added: "It is therefore incumbent on you as a municipal clerk to provide guidance on what you will accept as proper."

Koenig said instructions were provided to the recall committee.

"The petition format was disproved by me three times: on June 11, June 16 and June 21," Koenig said. "On May 19, 2021, Miss Haney was provided a petition circulator's guide in addition to a petition format example to assist in the process. On Aug. 30, after my review of the petitions, I determined that the petitions were invalid and with no force in effect, because there was compelling evidence that the petitions had been disassembled."

Koenig's letter of insufficiency stated: "As one then cannot ensure that the signatures and circulator's affidavit for each petition were securely bound together and remained as one document, it raises issues concerning the veracity of each circulator's affidavit."

Koenig called Peterson and Haney to testify. She also had a notary speak to wrong dates that were mistakenly put on a circulator's affidavit. After a petition section has been circulated, the person who collected the signatures must sign a circulator affidavit in front of a notary. A notary who testified said she didn't catch that Peterson had mistakenly put Aug. 22 on the affidavits instead of the correct date, Aug. 23. The notary approximated Peterson had submitted roughly 14 affidavits. The notary said this would make the notarizations with the wrong date "incorrect."

The residents countered, though, that such a mistake is curable and can easily be fixed by re-notarizing the affidavits. For their part, residents also asked several witnesses to testify during the hearing, including Koenig and Hayashi.

The town's response to the recall

In an email Tuesday, Krieger responded to residents' efforts to recall trustees.

"While I don't have any specific role in the recall process, I have been continually disappointed by the petitioners' efforts to mislead Firestone residents," Krieger wrote.

Krieger said that between 2016 and 2018, the town faced internal turmoil and high turnaround in leadership positions. From May of 2016 to April of 2018, he said, there were at least nine human resource-related complaints made alleging a town hall culture of harassment, discrimination and/or gender discrimination. In that same time frame, Krieger said two town managers left the role.

The Times-Call in 2018 reported that Firestone paid $237K in separation agreements with former employees.

Given that history, Krieger said he felt it necessary in 2018 to take "unorthodox accommodations."

"One, (the accommodations) were to provide a sense of security for anyone willing to take a job with an agency that had really struggled for a couple of years and then, the second was because the hiring was going to be done by an interim town manager and there was no guarantee that I was going to be here," Krieger said. "I felt like we had to do some things that were a little unusual so that we could demonstrate to a group of candidates that we were serious about restoring the professional, productive environment."

Krieger said that the job offer letters "absolutely" were conditional with his hiring.

"I didn't hide that," Krieger said.

Krieger added that the security conditions offered in the letter "never cost the town anything."