A Festus resident who collected signatures for recall elections has filed a writ of mandamus petition, hoping to reverse the Festus City Council’s vote to deny recall elections for the mayor and three council members..
The City Council on June 8 rejected motions calling for recall elections of Mayor Sam Richards and council members Kevin Dennis of Ward 3, Mike Cook of Ward 4 and Dave Boyer of Ward 1.
Festus resident Dennis McDonald, in a petition filed June 18, alleges the city failed to perform its mandatory, ministerial duty to put the question of recalling the elected officials on the ballot.
Steve Jeffrey with the Jeffrey Law Group in Chesterfield is representing McDonald in the petition. Jeffrey said the writ of mandamus, if approved by the circuit court, would mandate the Festus City Council to put the recall questions on a future ballot.
Jeffrey said McDonald went through the appropriate process under state statutes to collect signatures for the recall elections. Those signatures were then verified by County Clerk Jeannie Goff.
Each of the City Council votes on June 8 ended with 4-3 tallies against putting recall issues on the ballot. In the cases of Richards, Boyer and Dennis, council members voting for the recall elections to move forward were Karl Weekley of Ward 1, Dan Moore of Ward 3 and Rick Belleville of Ward 4, with “no” votes coming from Boyer, Dennis, Cook and Allen McCarthy of Ward 2.
In the motion for a recall election on himself, Cook abstained, leaving a 3-3 tie between the “yes” votes of Weekley, Moore and Belleville and the “no” votes of Boyer, Dennis and McCarthy. Richards broke the tie with a “no” vote to defeat the motion.
“If the clerk makes that determination, that the recall petitions are sufficient, the county clerk then, under the language of the statute, submits the recall petitions to the City Council,” Jeffrey said. “Under the applicable statutes, the statute is clear. If the petitions have been certified, which the county clerk has just done, the statute says the City Council shall submit the questions and the recall petitions to the qualified voters; the statute doesn't give any authority to the city council, whether it’s in Festus or anywhere else, to duplicate or get a second review process that the county clerk has already gone through.”
Brian Malone of Lashly & Baer, the city’s law firm, said on June 19 that he was out of the office and couldn’t comment on the petition until he had a chance to review it. He noted that the City Council voted to make his opinion on the recall petitions public at the June 8 meeting. He said at the meeting that he believes the petitions do not rise to the statute requirements for a recall election.
“I’ve determined that all four petitions are not sufficient because they do not state facts that constitute misconduct in office and (constitute) failure to perform duties prescribed by law,” he said at the meeting. “Courts have interpreted the phrase ‘misconduct in office’ to mean an unlawful act or act in an unlawful manner or failure to perform a duty required by law.”
Richards said on June 19 that he had not received or reviewed the petition yet, and said it’s an issue for the city attorney.
“(The petition) is a way citizens can do something,” he said. “If that’s what they’re doing, that’s up to them. Other than that, I have no comments.”
The recall efforts stem from the City Council’s votes on a CRG data center development project, announced in late 2025. CRG of St. Louis plans to develop a hyperscale data center on 361 acres north of Hwy. 67 and west of Hwy. CC. CRG, which is the St. Louis-based data center development arm for Clayco, has estimated the cost of developing the facility at $6 billion. In the Festus project, CRG would develop the property, and then a data center company would operate it, although no operator has yet been identified.
Four council members, who had supported the data center development project, lost their seats during the April 7 election.
The recall efforts targeted council members whose seats were not up for election on the April 7 ballot and who had supported the data center project. One other council member whose seat was not up for election, Staci Templeton of Ward 2, resigned from her seat April 13. Her seat remains open at this time.