Judge makes ruling regarding school board recall

A lawsuit against county clerk Lindsay Oswald and the fate of a recall effort targeting three members of the Three Rivers Community Schools Board of Education appears to have come to a simultaneous end.
A conference hearing Friday before Kalamazoo County Circuit Court Judge Alexander Lipsey resulted in the conclusion that Oswald acted impartially when she dismissed signatures from the petitions to recall Waneta Truckey, Carl Barth and Mike Bosma.
The group TR Cares on Sept. 10 filed the suit, claiming Oswald failed to properly fulfill her duties in the signature-verification stage. Attorney Kelly Ward said Oswald was inconsistent in her actions that resulted in a number of signatures being thrown off each of the three petitions.
Ward said the judge decided that the action of Oswald had to rise to the level of malicious intent to keep the voters from deciding the issue Nov. 3.
Oswald last month said after a full review of the signatures on petitions seeking the recall, Truckey and Barth both wound up with 1,148 valid signatures, while Bosma’s petition featured 1,153 legitimate signatures.
A minimum of 1,165 valid signatures was needed for the matter to appear on the November ballot.