Arizona: Five Pine Strawberry Water Improvement District members resign

Five members of the Pine Strawberry Water Improvement District resigned, with four of them facing recall  petitions. The five members were Ray Pugel, Gary Lovetro, Ron Calderon, Richard Dickinson and Michael Claxton, and all but Claxton were facing recalls. The two remaining members of the board can't act without a quorum, though one of them, Sam Schwalm may also be facing petitions (Schwalm is associated with the pro-recall forces).

Because the board no longer has enough members to make appointments, it is unclear if they have to hold a special election or whether the county can run the district until the next election.

The issue was an increase in water rates, board spending decisions, an outage last year and turbidity in the water.

The petitioners are pushing to continue to get signatures as a show of force.r new elections.”