FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. — Neighbors in Fernandina Beach are not backing down from the fight against a plan to make people pay for parking.
We told you on Wednesday when city commissioners decided to move forward with the company that will enforce the plan.
Now, people are creating a petition to remove some of their city commissioners.
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Mark Swope is one of the organizers of this initiative. He told Action News Jax that the honorable thing would be for the commissioners they are targeting to step down and not put the citizens through the recall process.
“The community was screaming for a recall,” said Mark Swope, one of the organizers of the city commissioner recall petition.
Mark Swope and other Fernandina Beach residents are coming together to create a recall committee to try to get Commissioners Mike Poynter and Genece Minshew recalled. Swope says there are several reasons for this, including the commissioner’s stance on paid parking downtown.
“They have screamed loud and clear about not wanting no paid parking, they’ve done a petition, they keep pulling through with it,” said Swope. “Now they are doing an injunction, and they’re still going forward with it.
Florida Law has a procedure for the removal of elected officials. The law states:
“Any member of the governing body of a municipality or charter county….may be removed from office by the electors of the municipality. When the official represents a district and is elected only by electors residing in that district, only electors from that district are eligible to sign the petition to recall that official and are entitled to vote in the recall election.”
As for the number of signatures needed, Florida law states that if the district has between 10,000 to 25,000 people, 10% of the number of registered voters would be required to sign the petition.
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The 2020 U.S. Census has Fernandina Beach’s population at just over 13,000 people. Meaning they would need a little over 1300 signatures to move forward.
I asked Swope how long he thinks it will take to get the petition drawn up.
“I think it’s going to go pretty quick,” said Swope.
People from the community are meeting at Shuckers on Saturday, November 8th, at noon. When they arrive, they are going to be handed a sign-up card, which they will fill out if they want to serve on the recall committee. Once the recall committee is selected, it will then draft the recall petition.
Action News Jax reached out to all of the Fernandina Beach City Commissioners and asked them for a statement on this. We have not yet heard back.
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