The days of electric scooters zipping around downtown Pomona are gone — maybe.

A Pomona official said this week Bird removed its scooters after they illegally popped up in late November. Mark Gluba, Pomona’s deputy city manager, said the electric scooter company had requested a business license but was denied because it is not an allowed use in the city.

City officials, however, told the company they would be denying on the premise that it wouldn’t be the final word. Bird could reapply once the council has considered and given staff direction on these types of uses, Gluba said.

The goal is for the council to discuss it next month, he said.

“They agreed to remove the scooters while the council discussed potential ordinance or pilot program to allow the use,” Gluba said by phone Monday.

The electric scooters are app-based: A user downloads an app on a smartphone and pays for each use. The vehicles have popped up in numerous Southern California cities where ordinances have not been established, and their presence has communities divided.

Being dockless, the scooters are randomly left around town, propped up on sidewalks wherever someone, or the company, leaves them.

After the electric sharing scooters arrived, Larry Egan said he noticed on the app that every day they were dispersed a little farther from downtown. Until one day, they were completely gone.

“They left as mysteriously as they came in,” said Egan, executive director of the Downtown Pomona Owner’s Association.

He happened to notice one on the night of the association’s annual Christmas Parade on Dec. 8.

“He was using his feet to push it so it seems he disabled it,” Egan added.

John Pena, who owns the Mission Promenade mixed-use center at Mission Boulevard and Garey Avenue, was among those who weren’t happy to see the scooters on his property, where a posted sign reads “No skateboards, no bikes.”

He had phoned Bird on Nov. 28, a couple of days after the scooters’ arrival, asking they be removed, and the company assured him it would do so, he said. Two hours later, he phoned again and they told him they’d already collected them.

No, they hadn’t, Pena told the company, adding if the scooters weren’t gone in two hours, he’d throw them in the trash. That got no response either.

He didn’t want to damage them, so no throwing was involved, Pena said. Instead, he placed the eight scooters upright in the trash enclosure and texted a photo to Bird.

“Guess what? Two hours later, they were gone,” Pena said. “They probably thought I was bluffing, but I wasn’t bluffing.”

Egan said it was shocking to see the popular but polarizing scooters pop up in Pomona.

“I guess we have arrived,” he joked.

He imagined the scooters would be popular among Western University of Health Sciences students getting around downtown and with Cal Poly Pomona students.

He’s not entirely against Bird scooters, just as long as the company follows the rules.

“I think they’ll be back,” he said.

Staff writer David Allen contributed to this report.