Shelby's “Recall Zombies” Seek to Devour Democracy In Their Hunger For Power and Control

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
        - George Bernard Shaw

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When news that the recall attempts against Shelby Township Supervisor Rick Stathakis and Treasurer Paul Viar were declared dead, a majority of taxpayers were elated that we would not be forced to pay up to $60,000 (or more) of our scarce tax dollars to fund the political dirty tricks of a few special interests hungry for power.

Now, just when we all thought it was safe to venture out into the township once again, the recall addicts are coming at us for round two.  Yes, they are actually going to try and do their whole recall all over again!   

Inside Out readers know that was have previously referred to the recall group as “recall addicts.”  We gave them this title as a result of the HIGH they seemed to get from being featured in the newspapers talking about their recall.  This recall was their drug, and they couldn’t seem to get enough of the publicity that went with it.

Since these people are trying to bring a dead recall back to life so they can, allegedly, “save Shelby”, we have decided that these recall addicts deserve a new title: RECALL ZOMBIES.

Beware all Shelby residents.  The Recall Zombies may be on the prowl again soon in your neighborhood.  

“They’re coming to get you Shelby.  They’re coming for you Shelby!  They’re coming for you!” 

Going forward, we will forever refer to the individuals and special interests who keep pushing their selfish recall as Shelby’s RECALL ZOMBIES - rising up to protect their entitlements and devour our democracy.  And, as highlighted in the movies, what do zombies hunger for more than anything else?  BRAINS!!! 

If you see one of these recall zombies walking around you neighborhood, remember they’re coming coming to get you (or at least get your signature).  The best way to protect yourself and your family from the Shelby recall zombies is to DECLINE TO SIGN.

In our May 17th Inside Out we wrote that if the recall attack against Mr. Stathakis and Mr. Viar failed, the group would go ahead and file new petitions.  We predicted it, so this either means:
(1) We can predict the future;
(2) We are a terrific judge of character; or
(3) The political motivations of the recall zombies outweigh common sense.

As reported by the Shelby-Utica Patch, a couple of days after the recall was officially dead and buried, resident Tom Delise decided to go ahead and refile new petitions.  Delise actually took the lazy way out, refiling the same petitions that he already filed - petitions that already failed.  His targets this time include Treasurer Paul Viar, Supervisor Rick Stathakis and Trustee Mike Flynn.

Responding to the latest recall, Supervisor Stathakis said that it is time to put this distraction to rest and get back to the business of running the township during tough financial times.

“It’s time to move on,” Stathakis said.  “There’s another election for township offices next year, and there’s no point in wasting any more time or money on this.  It just distracts us from doing our jobs,” Stathakis said.

Trustee Mike Flynn was a more direct in his comments about the new recall threat, as reported in the Source Newspaper.  Mr. Flynn called out Trustee Lisa Manzella as the person behind the recall — the person primarily responsible for convincing Delise to file new petitions.  Actually, Delise took the lazy way out and refiled petitions that were already circulated — and failed.

“Unfortunately Mr. Delise continues to act as a pawn of Mrs. Manzella (Trustee Lisa Manzella), who wants her liberal tax-and-spend polices to go unchecked,” Flynn said.  “I however, will not be intimidated into ignoring the rights of the taxpayers.  As long as I have the pleasure of serving I will continue to represent them, not government unions or other special interests.”

On the June 25th edition of Shelby This Week, anchor Phil Nye reported that after the recalls failed, Delise told the press that he would not file again.  As Delise said, this recall was only supposed to serve as a “warning” to the Board.  However, now that new petitions have been filed by Mr. Delise, Shelby TV’s Phil Nye put it bluntly:  “Either Mr. Delise had a major change of mind or his arm was twisted.”

Other residents are asking different questions: Did someone offer Delise something in exchange for him agreeing to do the recall over again?  Did a township Trustee twist his arm for some kind of personal vendetta?  What is this recall really all about?

Treasurer Viar Recall Fails for Lack of Support

As readers already know, the recall campaign against Mr. Viar ended in defeat.  Just as it did with the attempt against Supervisor Stathakis (also a failure), the Save Shelby recall came to a screeching halt when a large number of signatures were disqualified for numerous reasons.

Treasurer Paul Viar has not said much about the recall at Board meetings.  However, he has been vocal about the high-cost of police pensions.  He has spoken about how taxpayers are on the hook for millions in pension liabilities for decades to come.  His attention to this touchy issue has sparked concern from the union about too much information being given to taxpayers.  Did this spark the union’s interest in trying to get rid of Mr. Viar?

We commend Treasurer Viar for speaking out about pensions.  His information is long overdue as Shelby taxpayers struggle to pay their bills while others face foreclosure.  We also thank Mr. Viar for his editorial in the June 25th issue of the Source

To clarify, we all believe police officers should be compensated well for the work they do.  They should be given the best equipment and training possible to perform their duties.  This includes a new police station.  Supervisor Stathakis, Treasurer Viar and the Board of Trustees have done all that, and more.  They have also reduced the costs for those services without cutting services.  A truly remarkable achievement given Michigan’s lousy economy.

However, when taxpayers are forced to pay MILLIONS in pension benefits for police retirees, this not only threatens the public safety budget of our township, it jeopardizes our township’s long-term fiscal stability as well as the taxes we all pay for these services.

We first received notice of the recall defeat against Mr. Viar from the Shelby-Utica Patch.  The Viar recall defeat comes on the heels of a similar result in the recall against Supervisor Rick Stathakis.  The Stathakis recall ended when the County Clerk ruled the recall addicts had not collected enough signatures to force a recall on their terms.

After months of self-righteous rhetoric about how the recall was a clear indication that residents wanted Stathakis and Viar out, the end result proves that more residents support Mr. Stathakis and Mr. Viar than want an expensive recall election paid for by all — for the benefit of a few.

Fraud Allegations Against Save Shelby Recall Petitioners

Not only did Mr. Viar’s recall come up short in signatures, it also included accusations of fraud by those who circulated the petitions.  Mr. Viar first raised this issue at the Tuesday, June 7th Board of Trustees meeting.  You can read about this discussion on the Shelby-Utica Patch. Viar pointed out a signature that was PRINTED instead of signed, as required by law.  He read a letter from the alleged signer who said that she never signed the petition.

If, as this lady admitted in writing, she never signed the petition — then who did?  It  makes you wonder how many other residents who didn’t sign a recall petition had their name on one?

Treasurer Viar’s accusations of fraud by may have been the first mention of that word, but it was not the last.  The possibility of fraud was raised during the petition review by Supervisor Stathakis.  Practical Political Consulting, a Lansing-based consulting firm, helped Mr. Stathakis analyze his petitions.  In their petition report, the company said the following:

We counted 7277 raw signatures.  For our purposes, I define this as lines on which there is an entry that has not been clearly crossed out.  There are always a handful of ambiguities.

If we had filed a formal challenge, we would have challenged 1866 signatures for various reasons.  A few would have been challenged for two different reasons.  The vast majority would have been challenged because the signers were not registered to vote in Shelby Township.

In making a formal challenge, it is our practice to challenge invalid signatures even if the township or city clerk has already disqualified the signature for the same reason or for a different reason.  This is done because the clerk's findings are often not available to us in a form that allows us to easily compare results and also to preserve your legal standing if a dispute ends up in court.  That said, I suspect that the vast majority of our findings duplicate what has already been found.

Of the 1866 challenges we would have submitted:

*122 were for signer or circulator errors in dates and/or addresses.  This is not unusual and nearly all of these cases are unambiguous.

*307 were because the signer had signed the petition more than once.  This is a larger number than found by the township clerk.  The last time we had a similar situation, in Flint, the county clerk ended up accepting our findings in nearly every case.

*57 were because of similarities in handwriting between two or more lines in the address column.  These are judgment calls and there is no way to predict how a clerk will handle them.  Typically, clerks look at other issues first to see if the petition can be disqualified without getting into these.

*1380 would be challenged because the signer is not a registered voter in Shelby Township.  In 124 of these cases, the signer is clearly registered, or has provided an address, in another jurisdiction.  Another 1256 lines, however, involve signers who appear to have provided  Shelby Township addresses but who are not registered to vote at that address or at any other address in the township.

All of the other numbers are typical of Michigan petitions.  This last finding, however, that over one of every six signatures simply cannot be matched to the voter list in any way, is worth further investigation.  As a start, I have attached a spreadsheet detailing the problems on 48 pages with significant numbers of problems.  Some of the pages raise questions but do not indicate widespread problems.  One circulator, for example, submitted two pages collected on the same day with exactly the same names.

Another submitted a sheet on which two individuals clearly signed on behalf of all the names on the sheet.  In another case, two different circulators appear to have collected signatures from the same people on the same day.

One circulator, however, appears to have submitted page after page of unregistered signers.  I think it is ambiguous what was going on, but further investigation could turn up explanations for these findings.

If you want to read the full report, you can go to www.rickstathakis.com and click on the “news” tab at the top of the home page.  All residents are encouraged to go to the website and read the report for themselves.

The information in this report counters what Nick Nightingale said at the June 21st Board of Trustees meeting.  During his most recent tirade, Nightingale lashed out at Practical Political Consulting, implying that they were wrong in their analysis because, as Mr. Nightingale said, he went through “all of the petitions” and all the signatures were good.  As this report shows, “all of the petitions” were NOT good — and the recall was declared dead.

The comment that Practical Political Consulting discovered more duplicate signatures than Clerk Terri Kowal is disturbing.  Was this an honest mistake on Mrs. Kowal’s part?  Or was their something more politically devious going on?  Remember, Mrs. Kowal supported the recall and had her son and daughter in-law circulating petitions.  Did Clerk Kowal overlook these duplicates hoping that no one else would notice (she obviously didn’t know an independent consultant was involved)?

We learned a long time ago (much longer than we want to admit) that there are no coincidences in politics.  That is why when we assemble all the pieces of this recall campaign, and actually see the faces and listen to the voices behind it, the puzzle become clear.  There is no coincidence that the groups involved decided to launch their recall.  They have personal, political or financial goals at stake, and likely see recall as a way to protect their agenda.

Is Trustee Lisa Manzella behind the newest recall attack?  Take a look at this Facebook conversation:

As you can see from this Facebook exchange, Trustee Manzella logged onto her computer and began the discussion about puking at 7:56 p.m. on Tuesday, June 21st.  Mrs. Manzella certainly has the right to use Facebook - that’s not the point.  The point is that she felt the need to smear Mr. Stathakis on Facebook following his factual explanation that the recall, which she proudly supported, fell flat due to a lack of public support. 

What do you think was happening at 7:56 p.m. on Tuesday, June 21st?  There was a televised Shelby Township Board of Trustees meeting taking place that evening and, as television records prove, Mrs. Manzella was in attendance at that meeting.  The Board was discussing a $50,000 expense for a fence around the parking lot of the new police building.  Resident Dub Hearon was giving the Board his insights into the parking lot fence.  So while the rest of the Board was listening to public comments and taking their duties seriously, Mrs. Manzella felt she had more important things to do — like typing on Facebook about wanting to puke.

So what we have is a Trustee, being paid by taxpayers, using a taxpayer-funded computer to log on Facebook during a televised local government meeting.  Shelby taxpayers purchased Mrs. Manzella’s computer which she uses to participate in social media chatting, and we are paying her township salary so that she can blab on Facebook during a township Board meeting.  Is this appropriate and professional conduct for a public official during a public meeting?

Now, getting back to the failed recall.  Nick Nightingale and Trustee Manzella both criticized Supervisor Stathakis and Treasurer Viar for what they considered inappropriate efforts to fight the recall at the Board meetings.  They called this campaigning and said it was wrong.  Just more political nonsense from the uninformed.

If you go back and watch past Board meetings, you will plainly see that the only campaigning, if you want to call it that, about the recall came from the floor by the Save Shelby recall zombies themselves.

“Sign our petition at Nightingale towing,” one recall zombie said.
“Go to the Save Shelby website for information about our recall,” another chimed in.
“Come to our spaghetti dinner and support the recall of Stathakis and Viar,” Mr. Delise announced during a televised Board meeting.

Perhaps Mr. Nightingale, Mrs. Manzella and others who are offended about recall “campaigning during Board meetings” should look in the mirror and condemn the man or women they see staring back.

Even while all this mud, and more, was being thrown at them, Mr. Stathakis and Mr. Viar stayed quiet about the recall.  Mr. Viar discussed financial issues, including the high cost of police pensions, while Mr. Stathakis outlined what the Board has done to improve the township’s budget, create two years of surpluses, and reduce overall spending without cutting essential fire, ems, police and other services.  While our Supervisor and Treasurer have been doing the job we elected them to do, Mrs. Manzella has been spending her time on Facebook and Internet blogs smearing our township and desperately trying to ram a special interest recall down our throats.

So with the first recalls dead and buried, and now more recalls rising up from the dead, Shelby residents will spend our summer under a cloud of embarrassment brought about by this barrage of recalls.  Residents who understand the issues didn’t fall for their tricks the first time, and won’t this time either.  In fact, rest assured that we will expand our circle of influence and reach out to expose the truth about the recall zombies and their actual vision for our township.

As proud supporters of Supervisor Stathakis, Treasurer Viar and Trustee Flynn (as well as Trustees Wozniak and Filar) we want you all to know that we have your back.  Don’t worry about the recall zombies and their horror movie.  Keep doing your job, fighting for taxpayers, pushing back against the special interests and remember that a majority of residents reject these dirty political tricks.

Until next time...