WEST NEW YORK — After more than a year of gathering signatures for a petition to recall Mayor Felix Roque, West New York Commissioner Count Wiley and his allies brought petitions to Town Hall on Sept. 18, asking to recall Roque, Fior D’Aliza Frias, Caridad Rodriguez, and Ruben Vargas. Wiley and the four others make up the town’s five-member board of commissioners. (In the mayor/commissioner form of government, Roque is a mayor and commissioner at once.)
This comes at a time when Mayor Roque is on trial for his alleged role in hacking into an anti-Roque website. If found guilty, Roque could be forced to resign his seat.
Wiley, who was elected on Roque’s ticket in 2011, broke with the mayor in early 2012, resulting in a continued power struggle and continued conflicts at commissioners meetings over policy, hiring practices, and contracts.
Wiley called for a recall in August, 2012, after Roque and the commissioners voted to remove him as commissioner of public safety and other issues.
Wiley said his team of workers had to overcome a number of obstacles and alleged intimidation of his team members to come up with the required number of signatures, he said.
Based on the last election, which saw 21,030 voters come to the polls, Wiley needed to collect 25 percent or about 5,257 signatures of registered voters. He brought 6,500 to the city clerk to be processed.
The city has 15 days to review these signatures for validity, and then Wiley will have another 15 days to correct any deficiencies in the process.
At that point, the clerk would set a date for the recall election, which could be in December, but most likely not occur until after the New Year in January or February.
Wiley said his team actually collected signatures twice and had to seek out voter lists that went back several presidential elections to make certain that the signatures were valid.
“The list the county supplies is full of mistakes,” he said. “We
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