Recalled Avenal City Council members deny election results, vote to stay in office

Tensions arose during the Avenal City Council meeting on Thursday when three of the four recalled council members voted to stay in office, refused to accept the April 28 special recall election results and community members served city leaders with a civil restraining order.

Thursday’s meeting took place a week after the Kings County District Attorney’s Office notified Avenal to cease and desist from spending any public funds without legal authorization after voters recalled four council members in April. Only one council member lawfully sits on the City Council.

Community members, both in favor and against the recall, packed the meeting. Many felt the meeting was not legitimate.

“We legally voted you out with more votes than voted you in,” one of the recall leaders, Kelly Guzman, said during the public comment period of the meeting.

The meeting agenda included an item for the City Council to review the recall results and documents related to the the election certification and then to accept or reject the results.

The recall ballot included Councilmembers Leticia Gamez, David Reynosa and Pablo Hernandez and Mayor Alvaro Preciado. The city has 2,346 registered voters, and voter turnout was 30.43%. City Council members are elected at large for four-year terms.

The recall election, which was certified by the county’s registrar of voters on May 28, had more than 73% voter approval.

On Thursday, Gamez, Hernandez and Preciado voted to adopt Resolution 2026-38, declining to recognize the recall election results. Reynosa, who also was recalled, was absent from the meeting. Preciado’s and Hernandez’s terms expire in November. Gamez’s and Reynosa’s terms expire in 2028.

Preciado said that while the recalled council members have received many threats, the city didn’t want to postpone or cancel Thursday’s meeting.

As a precaution, four police officers were assigned to be at the meeting, said Avenal Police Chief Cecilio Velasco who regularly attends.

The city maintains that the recall process was conducted unlawfully; that municipal elections must be conducted only by authorized city officials.

“This is a due process, and the process has to continue. The DA’s Office and the Sheriff Department do not have jurisdiction. This is a civil case, not a criminal case” Preciado said about the cease-and-desist notice.

“We’re disputing since the beginning that this is an illegal recall election,” Preciado added.

Ricardo Verdugo, who was the only council member not recalled and whose term expires in 2028, was at the Thursday meeting in protest. He did not take part in the council’s closed session or any voting action of the meeting.

“Because it’s not a legitimate closed session,” Verdugo said when asked why he was not taking part in it. “Those individuals there are not elected officials. They cannot be holding a closed-session meeting.”

Voters behind the recall of the four council members filed an injunction against them and served them and other city officials with civil restraining orders on Thursday.

“They don’t want to step down; they don’t want to follow the laws,” said Ginger Wallis, a lifelong Avenal resident who also worked on the recall. “The city manager, (city) lawyer and the mayor and the three council members that have been recalled think they’re above the law, so we served them a civil restraint in order for them to vacate their seats. What they are doing is wrong.”

The voters filed a quo warranto application with the California Attorney General’s Office, which has been aware of the Avenal situation. A quo warranto proceeding is a legal action used to challenge an individual’s right to hold a public or corporate office.

The AG’s Office sent a letter on June 4 to the Kings County DA’s office and Avenal city officials saying that it wouldn’t step in and that the dispute over the legality of the April 28 recall election “is best resolved by interested local officials or residents through the quo warranto process.”

Under California law, the exclusive way to challenge an official’s legal right to hold public office is ordinarily through a quo warranto lawsuit. Before filing a quo warranto suit against a public official, a party must receive approval from the attorney general.

“This is a step to where we need to go next. We are getting closer and closer,” said recall proponent Dalila Barajas.

How the Avenal council recall effort got rolling

Barajas and Guzman initiated the recall of the four council members last summer, citing perceived disrespect toward constituents, lack of transparency and Brown Act violations.

The county received requests in July from two groups of Avenal residents for the recall of all five City Council members. Four of five recall petitions were certified in January. One of the groups failed to gather the required 526 signatures to recall Verdugo. Barajas and Guzman did not seek to recall Verdugo.

According to the Kings County Superior Court’s rulings, Avenal directed recall proponents to the county twice to initiate the process and remained in communication with the county for about six months regarding the recall election.

Judge Robert Burns said recall elections are rare, and having four out of five City Council members recalled is extremely rare.

In his April 23 ruling, Burns said granting the preliminary injunction to stop the recall election would undermine the democratic process and harm “the voting public who would have their votes invalidated.”

Avenal filed an appeal the day before the special election, requesting its cancellation. The city’s action was taken after the Kings County Superior Court denied Avenal’s request for a preliminary injunction, allowing the election to continue.

On April 27, the Court of Appeal denied Avenal’s request to stop the election and directed the county to refrain from counting the ballots or certifying the results while it considered the city’s arguments that the election was unlawful.

Avenal voters cast their votes April 28. Their ballots were sequestered for 17 days pending an appeal, pausing the count while the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno reviewed the election’s legality.

On May 13, the appeals court ordered Kings County registrar to process the ballots and move toward certification. The county processed and tabulated the last 160 ballots on May 18 in front of public observers including proponents and opponents of the recall.

The city had argued that the county has been conducting a recall election without lawful authority to do so. The county said there is an established practice of the county running recall elections.

Burns’ ruling also indicates that there was a prior informal agreement between Avenal and the county to administer elections and that the city has used the county to administer city elections since 2008.

In November, the city posted on social media that it was disappointed that the county’s election office validated the recall petitions.

The city cancelled the Dec. 11 council meeting after the four members facing recall did not attend, leaving the city without a quorum. At that meeting, the county’s registrar of voters was going to present the “certificates of sufficiency” for the recall to the council. The certificate would require the city to select a date for a recall election within 14 days.

On Christmas Day, the city faxed a cease-and-desist letter to the county, saying for the first time that the county didn’t have authority to administer the recall election. The city’s refusal to act triggered a mandatory duty for the county in January to set an election date.

María G. Ortiz-Briones

The Fresno Bee

559-441-6782

María G. Ortiz-Briones is a reporter and photographer for McClatchy’s Vida en el Valle publication and the Fresno Bee. She covers issues that impact the Latino community in the Central Valley. She is a regular contributor to La Abeja, The Bee’s free weekly newsletter on Latino issues. | María G. Ortiz-Briones es reportera y fotógrafa de la publicación Vida en el Valle de McClatchy y el Fresno Bee. Ella cubre temas que impactan a la comunidad latina en el Valle Central. Es colaboradora habitual de La Abeja, el boletín semanal gratuito de The Bee sobre temas latinos. Support my work with a digital subscription