Three Oro Valley Town Council members are defending their votes to buy a country club for a community center, saying itโs what town residents wanted.
Joe Hornat, Mary Snider and Lou Waters are the subjects of a recall election in November.
The incumbents filed brief statements of defense, which will appear on the ballot next to the wording from the recall petition.
Oro Valley Citizens for Open Government initiated the recall process after the Town Council voted 4-3 in December to buy El Conquistador Country Club and to increase the sales tax by a half-cent to raise money for renovation projects to turn it into a community center and recreation center.
The other majority vote, Mayor Satish Hiremath, faces a separate recall petition effort.
In his defense statement, Hornat says the $1 million purchase price for the club and its 45 holes of golf was โa bargain.โ
โI, alongside Lou Waters and Mary Snider, have fought hard for sound fiscal policy, including five consecutive years of balanced budgets with cash surpluses,โ he wrote.
Waters says the three were โinstrumentalโ in Oro Valleyโs success, โand now the community has what itโs been asking for since 1998 โ a community center โ our sense of place. We proudly voted for it.โ
Snider says she considered โour community needs as a wholeโ and โvoted to fulfill a long expressed desire by our residents for a community center.โ
So far three candidates have organized campaigns to run against the incumbents. They are Steve Didio, a retired Navy officer and businessman; Shirl Lamonna, a county government worker; and Ryan Hartung, a chemist at Sanofi. Hartung is chairman of the recall group and Lamonna organized an earlier petition project to force the real estate deal onto the ballot. That petition campaign failed due to paperwork errors.
There is still time for others to join the race. Candidates must file their nominating petitions by Sept. 4.
Each candidate must specify which council member he or she is running against. Any challenger who wins the Nov. 3 election fills the remainder of the incumbentโs term.
