By Adam Allington, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – Voters in the St. Louis suburb of Overland will vote Tuesday on whether to remove their mayor. Ann Purzner has come under fire for trying to remove the city's Police Chief without the City Council's approval.
A citizens group started the recall petition last fall. They easily exceeded the 25% of registered voter signatures needed to put the question to voters.
Mark Giroux, with the group Citizens of Overland for Good Government, claims Purzner routinely violated procedure by unilaterally appointing unqualified individuals to key city jobs.
"The city ordinances for senior appointed officials are very specific, there is a process that must be followed to appoint them and to remove them," Giroux said.
"The mayor simply ignored the process completely that's the beginning and the end of the story."
Giroux also says Purzner purposely held council meetings in rooms that were too small to allow attendance and also tried to circumvent the recall effort.
But Purzner says that citizens gave here a vote of confidence when they elected her a year ago and she's confident that same mandate will see her past the recall.
"When a mayor's elected they should be able to come and appoint a new board, new chief, new whatever," Purzner said. "these few people that are causing all this disruption, a lot of them don't even live in Overland and so I'm hoping that I will win this one and I'm confident that I will."