CITY OF BUCHANAN COMMISSION RECALL UPDATE

By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent 

        ST. JOSEPH – Buchanan city residents could be asked as soon as next May to vote on whether

to recall Mayor Sean Denison and City Commissioner Dan Vigansky. Wording for recalls against both men was approved by the Berrien County Election Commission at a clarity hearing Monday. 

The recalls are expected to move forward pending an appeal by either man of the election commission decision. They both have 10 days to appeal the decision to Circuit Court which would delay when people can start gathering signatures on petitions. 

Berrien County Elections Administrator Kathryn Kiemesrud said the number of petition signatures needed to force a recall election with the Denison and Vigansky recalls is 380. That number represents 25 percent of the number of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.   

If the required 380 signatures are gathered against each in the requisite time period, the recall elections could happen in May or November next year. If the recall elections occur next November, four of five city commissioners would be on the ballot, two for re-election and two with the recalls. 

After the wording is approved and any appeal has been decided, recall petitions are valid for 180 days. Signatures must be gathered within a 60 day period inside the 180 days. Once submitted, the local clerk has 15 days to compare signatures to the voter registration records and the person subject to recall can challenge petition signatures. 

Once the recall petition is found to have the sufficient number of valid signatures, the county clerk shall call a special election for the next regular May or November election date. The call for a special election has to be made no later than 35 days after the petition has been submitted. 

Residents Carla Johnson and Monroe Lemay filed the Denison wording which said he should be recalled for suspending then City Manager Benjamin Eldridge in November. Resident Jacob Brown had recall wording approved against Vigansky that quoted Vigansky as saying he always refers to “Blacks, Mexicans and Indians as ‘you people’.” 

County Clerk Sharon Tyler said the recall process can be a costly one for both the city and the county, estimating that it could cost up to $40,000 from start to finish. She did say that the cost would likely be less if it’s a November rather than May election since November is the general election. 

“It concerns me that it’s another cost to the city if they’re already having financial problems,” she said. 

Lemay and Johnson both said Monday that they aren’t taking the cost lightly and noted that they had asked Denison to resign prior to submitting the recall wording.  

“The truth is that there have been many regular and fiduciary decisions very badly made over the last five years,” Lemay said. “Nothing has gotten better, it’s only gotten worse. It will be money well spent to save the city from three more years of bad decision making.” 

“They can spend $40,000 on a picnic table,” Johnson said. “This group won’t stop spending money. We had no recourse but to recall. It’s not a political issue, it’s a matter of fiscal conservatism.” 

Denison could not be reached for comment, but Vigansky said Monday that he’s not going to back down. “I’ve done more to raise Cain about spending money and to finding money for the city than other city commissioners past and present,” he said. 

He said he’s not going to have his First Amendment rights violated by people claiming he violated their civil rights by using phrases like “you people” and “those people”. “I’ve said that everyone is basically racist and if you’re white, you’re automatically racist,” he said. “People are trying to keep us divided by race.” 

Vigansky filed an affidavit last week with county and state officials stating that the charges against him were exaggerated and “trumped up”. He also filed a complaint that the city has violated the Open Meetings Act. “The allegations against me are grossly exaggerated and based entirely on improper and imagined inferences and speculations,” he wrote. 

Vigansky said that Denison’s suspension of Eldridge without a vote of the city commission violated the City Charter and the Open Meetings Act. Further, he said Denison violated the Bullard-Piawecki Employee Right to Know Act by not giving Eldridge a copy of the grievances against him. 

Besides being the subject of now approved recall wording, Vigansky is also being pressured by the other four City Commissioners to resign or be removed from office. They voted last week to censure him on four charges and start the process of asking the governor to remove him from office.  

Three charges were related to the suspension of Eldridge in November and one related to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights complaint brought by resident James Busby in July and referred to by Brown in his recall. 

A September letter from City Attorney Matthew Derby to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights on the Busby matter appeared to show that the city had been trying to find a way to censure Vigansky for some time and had enlisted a local resident to file a complaint in June. When that complaint was withdrawn, Derby said City Clerk Kalla Langston tried to get the man to change his mind.