Montrose City Council puts election questions to bed with statement of confidence; Mayor Badagliacco drops calls for investigation, says council looking out for 'sanity of community'by Jeremy Morrison
jeremy.morrison@montrosepress.com Last week, it seemed as if the Montrose City Council was slipping off the rails. Mayor Michael J. Badagliacco was pushing for an independent investigation into what he viewed as issues with the municipal election process in April and city staff was dug into a defensive posture, elbows out in a meltdown of a meeting.
But upon exiting from a closed-door executive session last Wednesday, council appears to have come to some form of consensus: the election process was square, but perhaps could be improved upon. In a statement released Monday, the city council made clear all members were confident in the results of the April elections and also outlined a number of items to be looked at going forward. Following the statement’s release, Badagliacco told the Montrose Daily Press that it was important that council reach such a resolution for “the sanity of the community.” “That’s where we landed for the sake of the community,” he said. “So we’re not ripping this community apart.” The mayor framed the council’s assessment of the municipal election as “an ongoing process” — “we don’t have all the answers” — but said, for now, there won’t be any investigation. “I won’t be calling for that at this point,” he said. “Unless there’s something that pops up that I haven’t seen.” City Councilor Dave Frank said Monday that this shift was a heavy lift. “I worked my ass off in that meeting to try to calm things down and try to steer things toward a rational line of thinking,” Frank said. The statement issued by city council, it seems, was the result of some aggressive negotiations. “I can’t really discuss what happened, but we had a lot of conversations in executive session,” he said. “It was fairly heated for a while.” Montrose City Council’s Aug. 26 huddle preceding its executive session was a real scorcher too. Badagliacco tried to kick city staff out of the meeting and Councilor Ed Ulibarri got into a ham-fisted tussle with City Attorney Chris Dowsey that had the attorney explaining the basics of legal ethics. City Manager Bill Bell put it bluntly to Badagliacco, telling him that having a discussion about the election process without city staff present would be “a really bad idea.” “You can disagree — you always disagree with me — but you are incorrect,” Bell said. “You need to have the city manager present when you’re talking to my employees about stuff that they did. It’s not allowable to kick me out of a meeting.” “Is it a violation of the law?” Ulibarri asked. “Yes,” Bell said. “What law is it in violation of?” Ulibarri asked. “My due process rights and that of my employees that I oversee,” Bell told him. This tension has been simmering for a while. In a series of articles in the online publication The Montrose Mirror, writer David White has made a case that the last municipal election was squirrelly, building his case on the fact that City Clerk Lisa DelPiccolo decided to hand count a number of ballots. Badagliacco — who also writes for The Mirror — was basing his call for an independent investigation on White’s writings. “Those articles unearthed a lot of things,” the mayor said Monday. Bell had a different take. “Right now, there’s nothing to investigate other than the rantings of a person that lies routinely in the media,” the city manager said prior to the executive session. Badagliacco distanced himself from White on Monday — “whatever David writes, David writes” — saying that while he and White hold similar positions at times, the two do not coordinate. “I don’t coordinate at all with David,” the mayor said. “I know David, but we don’t coordinate.” Still though, Badagliacco maintains that White’s articles bore out important information regarding the April election. “David White definitely had his opinions in there, but a majority of those articles were correspondence between entities,” the mayor said. In the articles, White lays out the behind-the-scenes discussion between DelPiccolo and Montrose County Clerk and Recorder Tressa Guynes. The discussions paint the picture of a city clerk who decided to count a small number of ballots offsite when two candidates — Badagliacco and City Councilor Adam Wooden — entered the clerk’s office. “Certain members of the public were allowed in the viewing area without the city clerk’s knowledge, which may or may not break state statutes,” Frank said Monday. Badagliacco said their presence in the viewing gallery wasn’t a big deal. “We were just watching,” he said, confirming that White was also present. City staff has consistently defended DelPiccolo’s actions, and following the executive session, Badagliacco said that he agreed he believed the election process had been sound. “I don’t think anybody was trying to skew the election,” he said. “If that were the case I don’t think I’d be on the council, because I don’t think they wanted me on the council.” Instead of investigating April’s municipal election, city council exited the Aug. 26 executive session with an awkward list of items members could agree upon. Among them, a clarification that the election process and results were square, and also that city staff would review the election process to see where improvements might be made. “I think there are always areas in any process that can be improved and strengthened,” Frank allowed. Badagliacco said that improvements made to the election process would result in improving the public’s confidence in the municipal election. “We want the people of Montrose to be very comfortable and feel their votes are fairly counted,” he said. The mayor noted that if a proposed amendment to the city charter which aims to shift municipal elections from April to November passes — thus, making the election a coordinated election with Montrose County — this entire discussion becomes moot. “The coordinated elections are different,” Badagliacco said, pointing out that if the amendment passes the election process will shift entirely to the county.
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