Organizers of a petition calling for a state audit into Neosho’s finances said enough signatures have now been collected.
Dave Holley, spokesman for a group of citizens collecting signatures, said the group has collected 69 additional signatures after it was disclosed last week the drive was 58 signatures short.
On Jan. 22, petition organizers turned in nearly 750 signatures for the audit. Originally, organizers were told they needed 686 signatures for the state audit. The number was based on the number of Neosho voters who cast ballots in the last gubernatorial election.
Last Friday, Newton County Clerk Kay Baum said while 692 of these signatures were certified as valid, absentee votes from the four Neosho precincts were not included. When these were included, the petition drive was about 58 signatures short.
Neosho city councilmember Heather Bowers initially obtained petition paperwork from the state auditor’s office this past November, and she and about 19 other residents began gathering signatures in early December.
“Heather was out Monday working on it, and Les [Bond] and I worked the north end of town,” said Holley. “It didn’t take any time at all to get the 30 or so we were working on. People are pretty upset about what is going on.”
Holley said if fewer than 58 of the additional signatures are certified, the group will renew efforts to collect more.
“We don’t have to start over or anything like that,” he said. “If that happens, we will hit the streets again.”
The group has until November to collect the required number of signatures, as audit petition requests are good for one year from the time the request was made.
