Who is behind the recall?

Who is Mary Ann Mattecheck, the woman who started the recall on three city councilors, and what is her motivation?

By Kara Hansen

The West Linn Tidings, Nov 27, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

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Since a recall campaign began Oct. 30 against three city councilors, supporters and critics alike have wondered about the initiative’s leader.

City council members said they’d never met the woman aiming to oust council president Jody Carson and councilors John Kovash and Scott Burgess from their seats.

Valerie Baker, a former planning commissioner helping to gather the thousands of signatures needed to put the issue before voters, said she hadn’t met chief recall petitioner Mary Ann Mattecheck until recently, when she visited the retired nurse at her house on Greene Street.

But then again, Baker said, many of the campaign’s biggest supporters are relative newcomers at city hall.

“It’s not the usual suspects,” she said. “The bottom line is, this is truly a grassroots effort.”

She described Mattecheck as a “well-organized, put-together older lady.”

As for Mattecheck herself, during an interview at her house last week, she said she enjoys her privacy and plans to protect it.

A longtime West Linn resident and native Oregonian, Mattecheck is a trim woman with white hair. She just recently began using a cane to walk anything other than short distances.

She wouldn’t allow anyone to take her photo for a newspaper article. She’d rather not be identified by strangers at the grocery store, said Mattecheck, who gives her age as “the later part of three-quarters of a century.”

“I’d rather not risk it,” she said. “You have a certain fear at my age.”

But age wasn’t a factor when it came to taking on a recall effort, which has required her to file and refile paperwork at city hall, create political action committees to track campaign finances and organize a contingent of volunteers. Facing a 5 p.m. Jan. 28 deadline, they need 1,593 signatures on each of three recall petitions. Only valid West Linn voters’ autographs will count.

“I have to be accountable for everything,” Mattecheck said. “The thing is, it needed to be done. There are people out here who are very unhappy about things.”

Things like a proposed solar-generation site spread six football fields wide over a hillside below Barrington Heights homes. Or a trail planned to go with it, running from Imperial Drive to Salamo Road but charting an unclear course in between. Or a $5,600 city marketing effort whose product, a new logo, closely resembles an image found in common clip art.

For Mattecheck, the tipping point came when a split city council signed on to a regional wastewater committee. The group is charged with advising Clackamas County commissioners on long-term sewer capacity for a multi-city area.

Despite some councilors’ best efforts to persuade citizens that participation doesn’t tie them to higher charges on utility bills, Mattecheck isn’t buying it. She worries West Linn will end up paying for new infrastructure to support developing areas outside of the city.

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