An effort to recall Kyle Mayor Travis Mitchell and City Council member Rick Koch has failed.
Peter Parcher, who had launched the petition drive to oust the two, posted on Facebook Monday night that he had failed to received the required 3,403 signatures.
“After all the verification we ended up with 3,305 signatures to recall the mayor and 3,291 to recall Councilman Koch,” Parcher posted. The 3,403 number reflects 15 percent of Kyle’s registered voters.
Normally, signed petitions are turned over to the City Secetary’s Office for verification, but Parcher did not do that. Instead, he wrote, the count and verification were done at a private residence with City Council member Daphne Tenorio present. He said he asked Tenorio to attend in her capacity as an elected official as well as a notary.
Parcher also posted video of him shredding all the petitions he had gathered and an open letter to Mitchell and Koch in which he congratulated them but also said the outcome “would have been different” had he had more time. The legal window for petitions to be turned in was Monday.
“It is my fervent hope that you will understand and appreciate how close it actually was … and you will take the wishes of all the citizens of Kyle into consideration when you make your decisions.”
“This is not the first time I’ve witnessed Mr. Parcher trying to deceive people,” Mitchell said. “He knew he was supposed to submit those signatures to the city secretary so they could be verified. Instead, he posted the unverified results and then shredded the supposedly signed petitions six minutes later. I will not be taking his word for it.”
