Pilara's recall effort - a wise idea?

For those who can't get enough of this, Chandler Connection has another article (sorry, no permalinks) on Ray Pilara's effort to recall Councilmen Sepulveda and Orlando:

[Pilara] said 147 people have indicated they would sign a petition to recall Orlando and Sepulveda and nine would help him circulate petitions.
... According to City Clerk Marla Paddock, it would take 3,501 valid signatures for a councilmember to be recalled. She said if the signatures are valid the council could call for a special election and that November could be a potential date to put the item on the ballot.

Pilara said he’s already formed a three-member committee that will comprise the recall effort and estimates in about a week the paperwork will be official.
He said he is looking at June 1 as his deadline to submit the required petition signatures to make the November election date. Councilmember Lowell Huggins witnessed a bitter recall election in 1979 that was led by Terry Irwin, a former officer with the Chandler Police Department. When the dust cleared, four of seven councilmembers were unseated. Huggins said it’s like déjà vu all over again.
“Everyone I bump into at the grocery stores, the gas stations and in phone calls are people asking me about the recall petition,” Huggins said. “What we’re seeing now is the swell of the ocean and they’re getting ready to ride the wave.”

The article also has a good summary of the reactions from the three candidates in the race, as well as the sitting council members. One reaction from another Chandler resident struck me as being pretty wise:

Chandler resident Michelle Hirsh believes a recall election is the wrong way to approach the situation. “It’s wrong to use a recall election because you have a disagreement with a majority vote on the council,” Hirsch said Tuesday. “These councilmembers were elected to make tough decisions and if they feel that this is the best decision to make, then we need to honor that. It would be an entire negative to the city if there’s a recall election.”

As I've said before, a disruptive "attack" recall doesn't sound to me like the best course of action for our city. It seems like the folks driving this are really upset, which I understand, but they're letting their anger get in the way of better judgment. With respect to Councilmember Huggins, whom I think is an honorable man, I think the closer aquatic metaphor is that now the blood is in the water, we can expect the feeding frenzy to start.

But beneath all of this froth, and recognizing that some people are honestly upset, I still keep trying to look to see the activists behind Pilara who are bankrolling his recall, and understand what they might have to gain by removing two more members of our City Council.

If this seems cynical to some, I prefer to think of it as realistic. Consider that our municipality controls a budget of three-quarters of a billion dollars, and has major decision-making on how and where business is conducted in our town. Don't think for a second that there aren't wealthy interests that are salivating at the chance to have more influence on the Council and this recall places 2/7 of the membership in play. You'd better believe that there are some in our community that are rubbing their hands in glee with what they see as a financial and political windfall for them in this upheaval.

Because special interests and highly charged emotions and money and other influence all conspire to turn elections into self-serving vehicles which do not always address the best interests of the community, I'm a conservative when it comes to our electoral systems. Stability, reliability and integrity are crucial principles for elections, in my view. Recall elections are a hundred-times more susceptible to abusing all three of those principles, too. Even when the short-term goal is achieved, the result can be very damaging in the long run.

So, while I truly appreciate the strong feelings that animate it, I nevertheless cannot support the recall and would urge folks not to join the feeding frenzy that's beginning to form around Ray Pilara and his supporters.