PARKERSBURG — As a committee seeking to repeal or place on the ballot an ordinance authorizing a trash service contract looks to gather more valid signatures, Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce announced a way folks who already signed the petition can remove theirs.

A committee pursuing a referendum on the ordinance passed in January to approve a five-year, $14.98 million contract with Waste Management needed 2,763 signatures of registered voters in the city to force council to reconsider the legislation. They turned in 2,953 signatures at the end of February, and the Wood County Clerk’s Office determined 862 of them were invalid.

The committee went to court to force the city and county to share the reasons those signatures were declared invalid, and the county is now compiling a list in accordance with an order from Wood County Circuit Judge J.D. Beane. Once the petitioners receive that list, the 10-day period to gather additional signatures officially begins.

Joyce issued a press release this week outlining how people who signed the petition can remove their names from it, saying he and other city officials have fielded questions from people wanting to do so.

“Others and I have been advised that many who signed the petition were informed that by doing so, trash pickup by city employees would be restored,” the release said.

Edward Escandon, a member of the committee pursuing the referendum, was skeptical when asked about that Wednesday.

“The post claims ‘a number’ of people who want city sanitation restored feel lied to because this petition alone will not do that,” he said. “Well, (zero) is a number, so I can’t say it’s completely false.

“We have been countering this narrative with the fact that people can remove their names; now the city is repeating that fact.”

Joyce said he was approached by multiple people in public who thought a successful referendum would restore city trash service. City Council members have gotten questions from about a dozen people asking how they could remove their names and the city offices have fielded several calls as well, he said.

“I wanted folks to … fully understand what a successful referendum meant,” Joyce said Wednesday. “The referendum, if successful, doesn’t restore City of Parkersburg employees and city-owned and operated sanitation service.”

What it would do, the mayor said, is invalidate the contract — which Waste Management has yet to sign due to the uncertainty surrounding the referendum effort. That would force city residents to obtain their own trash service, Joyce said.

“This may be acceptable to some residents; however, there are many residents who do not pay their fees, and in a private customer/contractor arrangement, failure to pay results in discontinued service, which would create unsightly and unsanitary conditions,” he said in the release.

Maintaining trash pickup even if a resident doesn’t pay was one of the arguments for the city continuing to collect sanitation fees. The city would pay Waste Management to pick up waste and pursue the unpaid fees itself, officials said.

Joyce’s release said anyone wanting their name removed from the petition may request it in a signed letter delivered to the city clerk’s office on the second floor of the Municipal Building during normal business hours or mailed to Parkersburg City Clerk, P.O. Box 1627, Parkersburg, WV 26102. It asks that letters be received by May 1 “prior to any final action taken on the referendum petition.”

Escandon questioned a letter being all that is required, considering signatures must be obtained in person.

“This is a dirty trick at best, flatly illegal or opening the door to mail-in signatures at worst,” he said.

City Attorney Blaine Myers said a West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals case from 1968 provides legal authority for people to withdraw their signatures from a petition. It does not go into specifics about how that is to be done.

The county clerk’s office provided the city with a spreadsheet of valid signatures, so they can check those against letters seeking signature removal.

Myers said May 1 was chosen as the date to receive removal requests due to uncertainty about the timing of the county clerk’s office providing the list of invalid signatures to the petitioners and the 10-day window for them to gather more signatures. If the petitions are declared valid, council would have to reconsider the ordinance. With this month’s meetings scheduled for April 7 and 21, it’s unlikely that could happen before the first meeting in May.

Myers last month issued a memo saying he did not believe the ordinance was subject to the referendum provision in the charter because it involves the allocation of money.

“That’s not been before the court as of yet, and I think (that) would be one of the matters that City Council considers,” he said.

If council does not repeal the ordinance, according to the charter, the question would be placed before the voters in a future election.

City officials began looking into contracted trash and recycling pickup last year, due to double-digit vacancies among the 27 budgeted positions in the Sanitation Department. As of Wednesday, with two separate contracts approved and the closure of the department imminent, just two employees remained.

A worker with nearly 30 years experience — who knew where all the houses with curb exemptions were, as well as residences that couldn’t be serviced by a standard packer truck – and one with about five years took the city’s severance package and moved on to other jobs, Joyce said.

The rest of the work is being done by employees from other Public Works departments, temporary employees and some work-release inmates from the Parkersburg Correctional Center, he said.

“Getting the trash collected is getting to be more difficult by the week,” Joyce said.