Bariou Lashes Out at City as Recall Petition Effort Wanes

SAN ANGELO, TX — John Bariou, the former vice chair of the City of San Angelo Development Corporation, wants to recall the entire San Angelo City Council. Bariou wasn’t asked to return to the COSA-DC board in early 2023 and has been plotting his revenge ever since. Late last week, he accused City Attorney Theresa James and the city clerk of sabotaging his efforts.

To understand the recall effort, one must admit that Bariou’s complaint is complex. He claimed late last year that Mayor Brenda Gunter rules the City with an iron fist and that the rest of the council is complicit in allowing her to do it. San Angelo’s City Charter requires a city manager-led operation, not a “strong mayor” arrangement like Houston’s city charter mandates. He views Gunter’s rule as akin to a strong mayor government, which is contrary to the city charter’s mandate. Therefore, all of the city’s elected officials, sans the police chief, must be recalled.

Opponents of Bariou’s recall scheme argue that his complaints are best addressed by running for office himself. The mayor’s term is up in May 2025. Bariou can run to replace her and, should he win, hand the reins of City operations back to City Manager Daniel Valenzuela. Others in opposition don’t really understand what Bariou is up to but deem it too confusing and creepy to consider and don’t care. The rest, which is probably most of you, have never heard of the recall effort.

In order to recall an elected member of the council, including the mayor, he must collect around 1800 signatures to recall the mayor. SMD 3 Councilman Harry Thomas is most in jeopardy; only about 50 signatures are required to recall him as there were not many ballots cast in his district.

Getting those signatures has been tough. We recall the effort to collect around 2,000 valid signatures to place the referendum for the Sanctuary City of the Unborn. Project Destiny San Angelo was able to enlist the help of churches across the city. That effort still failed the first time and the pro-life group had to submit the petitions a second time.

Bariou doesn’t have a dozen churches helping him. Instead, he apparently is relying upon infrequent visits to the food court at Sunset Mall announced on his group’s Facebook Page, “San Angelo Citizens for a Law Abiding City Council” or “SACLACC.” On Facebook, Bariou’s page has only attracted 146 followers. If social media engagement is a barometer of how well San Angelo voters are accepting his recall effort, 146 followers fall far short of the 2,000 or so signatories he needs to obtain in person on City-supplied forms. If he cannot attract anyone to click the “like” button on his Facebook page, how does he expect 2,000 to perform the arduous task of signing an official petition in person? The tepid response on social media indicates the effort has failed to gather much steam.

Part of Bariou’s problem is explaining exactly why a recall is necessary. When launching the campaign, he outlined 12 points, akin to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses nailed to the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church in an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike Martin Luther, Bariou failed to connect his 12 complaints to real-world grievances like tax rates, poor customer service, increasing crime, or any other kitchen table issue. Nor did Bariou provide examples of how each of the 12 violations occurred, leaving the registered voter asking the question (for example), “I suspect all city politicians are dirty, but what specifically did he or she do to violate Bariou’s 7th point?”

This left Bariou with two options. Either he could abandon his fledgling petition effort or blame someone else for its shortfalls. Always the fighter, Bariou chose to attack the City petition process by issuing a lengthy press release late last week. It began with, “[T]he entire petition process has been effectively voided by illegal actions of City Hall, and necessarily terminated by the petitioners.”

Bariou’s complaint was that the actual names of the petitioners would be revealed to the City staff as “proponents” of recalling each respective city council member instead of only asking for a recall election to take place. Bariou is quibbling around the edges before lashing out at City staffers as being corrupt.

Maybe it’s time for Bariou to call a truce and instead run for office himself.

Friday afternoon, the City of San Angelo responded to Bariou’s broadside.

“The City of San Angelo has received a copy of John Bariou’s press release. We disagree with his assessment of the process and his assertions of any wrongdoing by City staff. Mr. Bariou did question the language on a petition document early in the process and the City Clerk worked with him on a solution to address that concern. Had he mentioned his concerns with the language that he refers to in his press release, we would have worked with him to find language that we all could agree upon,” stated Brian Groves, spokesman for the City. “The City Clerk and City Attorney's offices remain committed to providing assistance to the citizens of San Angelo and advancing the business of the City.”