Hearing on Loveland recall protest canceled; ruling soon

LOVELAND — After fielding a flurry of legal motions and responses, an attorney appointed by the Loveland City Council has canceled a public hearing scheduled for Thursday morning to consider a council member’s protest of a recall petition that seeks to oust him, and will rule on the issue without a hearing.

The City Council — with member Troy Krenning absent — voted 8-0 on Aug. 27 to appoint Denver-based attorney Mark Grueskin to hear Krenning’s protest of a recall petition against him that was circulated by former City Council member Dave Clark and two other Loveland residents who had formed an entity called “Silent Majority Speaks.”

That petition was certified Aug. 13 for the Nov. 5 ballot. The office of Interim City Clerk Angie Sprang said last week that the hearing on Krenning’s protest would be held in council chambers beginning at 9 a.m. Thursday and could be continued to the next day if needed. However, Grueskin, a shareholder at the Recht Kornfeld PC law firm, agreed Wednesday with requests from attorneys on both sides to waive the Thursday hearing and simply issue a ruling.

That ruling must come before next Tuesday, the last day that the City of Loveland must certify all issues it wishes to place on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Krenning had initially demanded a hearing on his protest, led by an officer who would have the authority to issue subpoenas and compel witnesses to testify. He contended that the verbiage on the circulated petitions was in error because it stated that those signing it must be “eligible electors” instead of the “registered electors” required by state law.

Grueskin received two motions for summary judgment on Tuesday, one from each side, and each supporting their position by citing Colorado case law.

Krenning, the only attorney on the current council, filed a motion outlining his four reasons for protesting the legality of the petition verbiage, and Loveland attorney Russell Sinnett, representing the petitioners, filed a motion defending the petitions’ legality.

Then, within an hour on Wednesday morning, Grueskin received three more motions. In the first, Krenning withdrew three of his four complaints and concentrated on one. In the second, Krenning reiterated his initial protest and requested that Grueskin “vacate” the hearing and simply rule. In the third, Sinnett consented to Krenning’s withdrawal of three of the four claims and to his request for Grueskin to vacate the hearing.

In that motion, Krenning wrote that, “the petitioners confess that the petition in this matter does not comply with the required language,” and that “the argument then becomes, is close good enough. Indeed, this is the issue to be decided. Protestor argues that close is not good enough and that a simple reading of the statute is clear and compliance is simple. The Petitioners wrongly equate the recall process with either the initiative process or the referendum process. These actions may be of the same species but are each entirely different breeds of animal.”

Krenning wrote that “the Petitioners suggest that the hearing officer look the other way, nothing to see here, as the term ‘registered elector,’ ‘eligible elector’ and ‘qualified elector’ all mean the same thing, and all arrive at the same final resting spot. If this were true, which of course it is not, then why has the Legislature given different definitions to each of these terms, and varied their use throughout the statutes?

“If the Legislature merely sought substantial compliance with the laws they have written, they would have not used the word ‘shall’ in the statute but would have used the word ‘suggested’ or as more commonly found the word ‘may.’”

In upholding or rejecting Krenning’s protest, Sinnett agreed that a main issue Grueskin will decide is whether strict or merely substantial compliance with state laws about petition verbiage is needed for a valid recall election. 

“Did their petition satisfy the statute or not? They say it did, and our protest says it didn’t,” Krenning told BizWest on Wednesday. “It’s not an evidentiary issue. Does it meet the statute or not?”

Sinnett said Wednesday that Grueskin’s ruling “could come today or in five days,” and noted that the hearing officer “could still deny both motions and call for a hearing.”

Sinnett’s Tuesday motion agreeing to vacate the hearing requested that “summary judgment be entered against Protestor as regards the validity of the petition, that the protest be denied, and for such other and further relief as the Court deems appropriate.”

Even the attorneys continued to reflect the deep divisions that have emerged in Loveland city government.

Krenning wrote to Grueskin that, “as confessed by the Petitioners, the process of this recall began within months of Krenning being duly elected to office in what can be described as nothing other than sore losers hoping to regain the majority on the Loveland City Council. In fact, Mr. Sinnett, lawyer for the Silent Majority Speaks group, himself aspired to sit in the seat now occupied by Krenning as a candidate for the Ward 1 seat in November 2023 but only garnered 897 votes to Krenning’s 2,762.”

In a telephone call to BizWest, Sinnett responded that “I thought this one portion of Mr. Irenning’s response was inappropriate as well as being completely irrelevant. This kind of conduct is, in part, an example of why he’s being recalled. In a public pleading, Mr. Krenning is leveling nothing more than a personal attack against me, and it is not persuasive in any way to his protest. It’s mean-spirited.”

Reached by telephone for a response on Wednesday, Krenning said Sinnett “just wants to get his name in the paper.”

If Krenning’s protest of the recall petition is upheld, Loveland city attorney Vincent Junglas has said the recall sponsors would have to restart their effort “from square one.”

Sinnett also is representing plaintiffs in two other lawsuits against the city.

In one of them, eight plaintiffs, including recall organizer Clark as well as former Loveland City Council members Richard Ball, John Fogle, Don Overcash and Chauncey Taylor, sued the current City Council, seeking the ouster of Mayor Jacki Marsh, Mayor Pro Tem Jon Mallo, and council members Krenning, Erin Black and Laura Light-Kovacs, alleging that they violated the city charter last Nov. 21 by not calling for a public vote on its rescission of the urban-renewal and financing agreements for the proposed Centerra South development that the previous council had approved in April and May 2023.

That lawsuit said a public vote should have been called because Loveland voters in the same Nov. 7 election that propelled Krenning and other council members less amenable to the Centerra South plan into office had also approved the citizen-initiated Ballot Issue 301, which gave voters the final say on urban-renewal plans.

In the other case, Ward 1 resident Peter Gazlay claimed unequal treatment under the law because the city failed to conduct a background investigation of Krenning, the winning candidate in Ward 1, and then after he was elected, applied a background test that was different from all other candidates prior to seating him.

The recall case is Troy D. Krenning, Protestor, v. Silent Majority Speaks, a political committee by and through its founders and representatives, Dave Clark, Earl Sethre, and Marvin Childers, M.D., registered electors in the City of Loveland, Ward I, Petitioners, in the Office of the City Clerk, City of Loveland.