Waukesha - A Waukesha man who helped organize a recall campaign against Ald. Peggy Bull defended himself Tuesday against her charges that his signature had been forged on some pages of a petition.
He also defended five signatures she'd challenged on the petition.
Bull on Thursday filed a challenge to the petitions, collected by Concerned Citizens of District 7 and signed by 474 people, 78 more than the number required to force a recall election.
Bull accompanied her challenge with a report by a handwriting expert that concluded seven of 20 petition pages submitted by recall organizer Frank Greuel had Greuel signatures on them written by somebody else. The analysis of one other page with his signature was inconclusive, said the expert, Bonnie L. Schwid.
In his response to Bull's challenge Tuesday, Greuel filed affidavits from himself and his wife, Janet Greuel, asserting that he did personally circulate and sign all of the petition pages where his name appears.
He also responded to Bull's challenges of five individual signatures on the petitions, saying for example that one signer didn't need to give his address, as Bull asserted, because he'd written 'same' under the address of another signer.
Bull now has two days to respond to Greuel's rebuttal, and the city clerk then has 14 days to determine whether the signatures are sufficient. Recall petition circulators can have a chance to correct some insufficiencies, according to state law.
In starting the recall, organizers Greuel and Wayne Dahnke cited as their reason: 'Alderwoman Bull is not adequately or appropriately representing the interest or view of her constituents.'
Behind the complaint are constituent objections to the placement of six sex offenders in a duplex in the district and the belief by some that Bull has not done enough to fight the placement, an allegation she rejects.