Phillips

JOHN DAY — Three John Day city councilors facing simultaneous recall efforts are still members of the city’s governing body after a trio of decisive “no” votes in the city’s Sept. 17 special election.

Councilors Ron Phillips, Sherrie Rininger and Eric Bush all survived recall campaigns launched by the city’s public works director, Casey Myers, who accused the three of mismanaging city funds, lacking transparency, harassing city staff, behaving unethically and engaging in anti-democratic practices.

In unofficial results, votes were 161 in favor and 276 in opposition to the recall of Councillor Phillips, 159 in favor and 256 in opposition to the recall of Councilor Bush and 169 in favor of and 250 in opposition to the recall of Council President Sherrie Rininger.

The consensus among the councilors who beat back the recall effort was a desire to put the incident behind them and focus on running the city of John Day.

“I’m happy it turned out the way it did and we can get back to the business of the city,” Rininger said.

Phillips expressed similar sentiments, saying the council can now do the work it initially set out to do.

“I’m glad we get a chance to finish up what we started,” he said.

Bush said the lopsided result of the recall gives the council a “mandate” to execute its agenda.

“I think we have a mandate — I don’t know how else to put it,” he said. “I think we’ve got a mandate to lead and drive forward with the platform and the direction that we talked about during this entire recall process.”

Philips and Bush both said they hope the community will come together after the divisiveness of the recall election, but they aren’t sure that will come to pass.

“That would be wonderful if it would,” Phillips said. “I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”

Bush said the actions of a few community members make coming together a difficult task. Following the recall of Mayor Heather Rookstool by a margin of 32 votes in January, the John Day City Council agreed to put an advisory question on the November ballot seeking the public’s opinion about who the next mayor should be instead of simply appointing a replacement.

A March editorial in the Blue Mountain Eagle characterized the act as a peace offering or olive branch, a view Bush said he agreed with. Two months later, the recall effort was launched against Bush, Rininger and Phillips.

“That olive branch was summarily crushed under the feet of a very few disgruntled people that aren’t interested in coming together,” Bush said. “They’re not interested in anything but dividing this community to try to regain power. We’re not going to make that mistake again.”

Myers, the city employee who launched the recall campaign, said he accepted the outcome as the will of the voters, although he wished participation had been higher.

“It is what it is,” he said. “The people spoke.”

Myers said he couldn’t say if there were going to be further resignations of city staff in the wake of the recall but added those who remain will continue to do the city’s work.

“We’re going to continue to work as normal for the citizens of John Day with who I have left to work with and with the limited resources that we have,” he said.

Grant County Clerk Laurie Cates said turnout for the special election was just more than 37%. Votes continued to trickle in throughout the following week, with Sept. 24 being the final day to accept ballots for the election if they were postmarked no later than Election Day.

An updated tally showed all three councilors handily defeating the recall, Phillips 285 to 167, Bush 265 to 165 and Rininger 257 to 177.