Dec. 13 Recall Election In Banning: Latest Update

BANNING, CA — Ballot counting for Banning's Dec. 13 recall election, featuring two candidates vying for the City Council District 3 seat, will continue past election day. Mail-in ballots with a postmark of no later than Dec. 13 and received no later than Dec. 20 will be counted, according to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters.

The results are expected to be certified Dec. 29, according to the Registrar.

L. Michele Walter and Sheri Flynn were facing off for the council seat that was vacated earlier this year by Mary Hamlin after backlash over the contentious Banning Point project.

Flynn, a District 3 Sun Lakes Country Club resident, led the recall effort because of the city's Banning Point approval earlier this year. The project calls for more than 600,000 square feet of industrial warehouse space across from her retirement community.

"The entire city council, did a great disservice to the Sun Lakes community, by voting for the zone change that opened the door to a 620,000-square-foot industrial warehouse just feet from a memory care and hospice facility and directly across from a well established 6,000-plus senior residential community," Flynn wrote in an opinion piece that was published in August in the Record Gazette.

Flynn criticized the project's environmental review and zone change processes that were conducted "under the cover of COVID — a time when no one would leave their homes ...," she wrote.

She said the council "ridiculed and dismissed" residents' valid concerns "of harmful air and noise pollution, increased traffic and the overall lowering of our quality of life."

"Mary Hamlin claimed that it was only a few vengeful people who wanted her recalled," Flynn wrote. "All those who were eager to sign the recall proved that arrogant assumption wrong."

For more updates on the Dec. 13 election, visit https://www.voteinfo.net/Elect...