BREAKING NEWS! Taxpayers Cheer as the Nightingale/Police Union Recall Attempt Against Supervisor Rick Stathakis Fails!

We have just been advised, by a friend at the Detroit Free Press, that the recall attempt against Shelby Township Supervisor Rick Stathakis has officially ended.   Here is a link to the Detroit Free Press article.

What does this major development mean for our township and for those who organized and carried out this recall attempt?

(1) The Save Shelby people who boasted about having all the signatures they needed ... FAILED.

(2) Trustee Lisa Manzella is the BIG LOSER.  She put herself squarely in the center of this recall campaign.  She got emotionally drawn into this recall out of her hatred for Supervisor Stathakis.  She blogged about it on Facebook, bragged about it to friends, and congratulated the Save Shelby group for a “job well done.”  She still has not accepted the fact that Shelby Township voters elected Mr. Stathakis by historic numbers in 2008 when we voted Skip Maccarone out of office.

(3) The Nightingale family, including their rude and disrespectful leader Nick Nightingale, who demanded (after filing the petitions) that Supervisor Stathakis resign ... LOST.  So much for his demands upon our township!

(4) The special interests, including the Shelby Township police union, that went door-to-door spreading their wealth of misinformation about the recall got kicked in the a$$. 

(5) Those outsiders (people from Detroit, Flint, Garden City, East Lansing, Monroe County, Sterling Heights, Troy, Warren, etc.) who were paid to circulate recall petitions got the money ... but not the signatures.

(6) Some township residents, like Tom Delise (the guy who filed the petitions) were left hanging when the Nightingales and the police union saw the recall as a way of pushing their own agenda.  The Nighingales and the police union took over the whole thing - because they knew they could do a better job.  Mr. Delise and others who believe what they did was right should be justifiably embarrassed by this defeat.

Interestingly, even though the Nightingales bragged that they had collected 7,600 signatures, the facts show that they obviously couldn’t add either.  They actually collected 7,275 signatures - according to the Free Press.  Of those, only 5,817 were deemed valid signatures — far below the 6,300 minimum required by law to force a recall election.

During one of her numerous Internet rants, Trustee Lisa Manzella bragged about how successful the recall campaign was.  In fact, during a May 28, 2011 written post on the Shelby-Utica Patch internet newsletter, Manzella said the following about Supervisor Stathakis:
“6400 votes to get in office and 7600 signatures to get out.”  Her point was that more people seemed to want Supervisor Stathakis removed than voted for him in 2008.

Taking Manzella’s logic, and using actual facts, we offer the following:
6,400 Shelby residents voted to elect Supervisor Rick Stathakis in 2008 and 5,800 people signed a petition to call for a recall election in 2011.  The majority of people still support Supervisor Stathakis.  We wonder how many of those who signed did so without fully understanding what the petition said?  Were they mislead into signing?  Did they sign under false pretenses?  Stay tuned!

As we discussed in our June 8th Inside Out post, Lisa Manzella made a point of saying that the group had 20 talking points that their paid circulators used when going door-to-door begging for signatures.  Why so many different talking points?  Does this indicate that the so-called zoning issue was not strong enough to stand the test of a recall and so the Save Shelby recall addicts needed a bunch of half-truths and outright lies to prop up their selfish recall?

This is VERY GOOD NEWS for Shelby Township taxpayers.  We will now be spared the unnecessary burden of spending $30,000 for a recall election to promote the interests of the Nightingales and the police union.  They were the chief architects of this recall.  They put themselves out on a limb, and the limb broke with them standing on it.

The Inside Out will have more to say about this dramatic development soon.  We will also report on Treasurer Viar’s recall once that information is released.  However, given the end result of the Stathakis recall failure, we expect Treasurer Viar’s recall will also be thrown in the trash can.

Until next time...