El Paso residents submit intent letter to recall City Rep. Chris Canales

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- Residents of the City of El Paso's eighth district delivered a letter to City Hall Tuesday morning, displaying an intent to petition a recall to remove Chris Canales as their representative.

This is just the first step in the process to try and gather support for a recall election.

According to the city's charter, those who want to recall Canales have 60 days to gather authentic signatures from at least 20% of the number of votes cast in Canales' election.

Three citizens of District 8 -- Jose Nunez, Linda Peacock and Debbie Welch -- delivered the letter of intent to City Hall and signed their names in person before delivering the letter to the City Clerk.

ABC-7 received a copy of the letter, which reads as follows:

Representative Canales spoke with ABC-7, saying that over his 19 months in office, he has been very engaged with residents of District 8.

"I am very proud of the work I do for community engagement. We do, at minimum, two community meetings every month. I have a regular email newsletter and we do lots of updates on social media," Canales said. "I think this shows the importance of being engaged in local government and trying to keep up with what's happening because I can put out a ton of effort to engage people, but it takes a reciprocal effort on the other side."

Canales added that he would participate in a special election to retain his seat if the group collected the necessary signatures, also noting that the election would cost taxpayers about $275,000.