Just before 5 p.m. Friday, the Concerned Taxpayers of El Paso filed notice with the city that they will go forward with a petition to force an election to recall Mayor John Cook.

And this morning, the man who signed that application, Gary Hoff, said he arrived at his restaurant, The Blimp on Texas Street, to find an apparent warning spray painted in red on the side of his building.

The scrawled words read, “Mr. Blimp, back off or,” leaving off what Hoff figured the last word of the incomplete thought would be: else.

“When it goes this far, it’s pretty bad. Ridiculous, in fact,” Hoff said. “My biggest concern is whether this is threatening my family or my customers. You don’t want to get something started that makes them afraid to come by.

“It’s hard to think someone from the city would do something like this,” Hoff said. “I’ve always enjoyed talking politics, but I’ve never gotten involved in politics before.”

Hoff said he also received a telephone call at his home Sunday.

“It was real quick, he just said, ‘Watch out,’ ” he said.

A new provision in the City Charter prohibits recall elections in the last year of a city official’s term, and in Cook’s case, that year begins June 23.

That means those behind the petition will three weeks to gather 7,967 signatures, representing 20 percent of the number of people who voted in the mayor’s race in 2005.

Hoff said the city’s new stormwater utility rates are the reason he signed the application to initiate the recall drive.

“It’s just the stormwater issue, there’s nothing else out there for me,” Hoff said.

He said he and others in the recently formed group aren’t opposed to the formation of the stormwater utility, but they want to see the rates sharply reduced and control of the utility, now in the hands of the Public Service Board, returned to City Council.

Cook, who has said he intends to run for a second, four-year term next spring, learned of the recall application just after it was filed Friday. He wishes the group had come to him first.

“The group hasn’t come to me with any suggestions about what they think would be more fair and equitable,” he said. “I don’t really think that a disagreement over one issue was the legislative intent of having recall. But it’s their right under the charter to start a recall petition.”

The mayor could not be reached for comment about the words sprayed on the side of The Blimp.

As a member of the five-person, Public Service Board, Cook supported an across-the-board reduction in stormwater utility rates that takes effect this month. The reduction reduces rates by an additional 75 percent for schools, churches and nonprofit organizations.

Cook has said he would support further reductions.

But that is not enough, says Lee Urias, an insurance agency owner and one of the leaders of the Concerned Taxpayers organization.

He said the stormwater utility isn’t the only reason he and others are interested in ousting Cook before the regular elections.

“Our reason for this is our mayor has not represented his constituents in an orderly fashion,” Urias said. “We feel let down. The people of El Paso feel let down.

“The stormwater utility was the last straw.”

He conceded that gathering nearly 8,000 signatures on recall petitions in three weeks will be difficult. No recall petition drive has ever been successful in El Paso.

“It’s going to be a tough push,” Urias said. “We’re just wanting the council to listen to us. People are barely surviving out there.”

The organization, he said, has already gathered the 2,500 signatures it needs for a citizens’ initiative to put an ordinance before City Council to take control of the stormwater utility from the Public Service Board and put it under the council.

If the petition is certified by the city and the council then defeats the proposed ordinance, Urias said, the Concerned Taxpayers will mount a second petition drive to put the issue before voters in an election, as set out in the City Charter.

Like a recall election, the initiative would go on the November ballot.

The organization is also backing a lawsuit filed by Ray Gilbert challenging the legality of the stormwater utility.

Gilbert contends that state law does not allow the city to give PBS the power to run that utility.

David Crowder can be reached at dcrowder@elpasomediagroup.com and 351-0605