“He ought to resign. That’s what I think,” longtime resident Michelle Griggs said.

Many Mandeville residents are fed up with the unscrupulous activities unfolding within their city government, and several have initiated the process to have Mayor Eddie Price recalled.

Jacques Berry, press secretary with Secretary of State Jay Dardenne’s office, said Friday the office has received three requests for blank recall forms from Mandeville residents looking to recall Price.

Richard Haydel was one of the attendees at Thursday night'€™s Mandeville City Council meeting that sported a sign calling for Mayor Eddie Price to resign. (Staff Photo by Chad Ruiz)

Not everyone is convinced.

“I don’t think he’s that bad of a guy,” Mandeville resident Michael Ganon said of his mayor. Ganon was the only resident out of a handful of people interviewed to have mixed feelings. “A lot more has to surface before I develop an opinion of him.”

New resident Donna Roberts, however, is convinced.

“He was caught drunk driving, so he should pay the consequences,” Roberts said.

“He has filtered more taxpayer money away than I care to think about,” Michelle Griggs added. “It gives St. Tammany Parish a really bad name.”

After 10 months of probing, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor released its 30-page report on the shortcomings of many of the city’s policies and procedures.

The report alleges Price and Finance Director Milton Stiebing made thousands of dollars of transactions using taxpayer money on items like meals, more than $60,000 combined in a five-year period, vacations and other outings on their city-issued credit cards.

The report also names Police Chief Tom Buell for squandering more than $100,000 of the police’s benevolent fund, which received money donated by area residents, on non-charitable activities like city employee Christmas parties and crawfish boils.

The report also lists several other incidents that may violate state law, including city vehicle and Fuelman card misuse, acceptance of improper gifts, public bid law violations and weak business practices.

On top of the auditor’s report, several months earlier, Price was involved with an incident on the Causeway where four police officers lost their jobs for the preferential treatment they gave Price.

Price was pulled over after smashing through a tollgate with his city vehicle and driving without his lights on at night.

The officers failed to issue a sobriety test and allowed Price to be driven home by a relative.

“It’s an abuse of power, and he shouldn’t be in office,” resident Coleen Giebe said. “He should suffer the consequences any other person would suffer.”

In addition to people on the street expressing their views, Thursday night’s City Council meeting was standing room only with several attendees displaying “resign Mayor Price” signs in large print on paper or, like in one gentleman’s case, scrolling across his cell phone’s screen.

The recall forms, Berry explained, are simply the beginning of the recall process and are used to document who the chairman and vice chairman of the recall effort will be.

“They have to live in the district,” Berry said. “Then they submit it back to us where it becomes official, and then the clock starts ticking.”

The applicants have 180 days to acquire hand-written signatures from 33.3 percent of the registered voters in the city, in Mandeville’s case, about 2,365 people.

“They can solicit signatures however they want, including over the Internet,” Berry said.

Once the chairman thinks he has enough signatures from residents, the list is then submitted to the St. Tammany Parish Registrar’s office, where the signatures and addresses will be individually counted and checked for accuracy.

“If he determines there’s enough on there, he sends it to us and the governor, who will then call a recall election,” Berry said.

The special election will be for the voters to determine if they want to recall the mayor, and if the majority votes yes, another election will be held to fill the vacant seat.

The latest recall election to occur ironically took place in St. Tammany Parish a few years ago when the village of Folsom voted to recall its Board of Aldermen.

All three of the aldermen ran again, with one winning his seat back, Berry said.

The other more recent recall effort to take place was that of Slidell’s police chief in 1976.

It’s a lengthy process, Berry said, but if the voters’ opinion of Price continues to spiral downward, it’s possible.