The Sand Springs city council has survived a recall effort launched after the members approved a controversial data center that was opposed by a large number of residents.
The Sand Springs city clerk recently determined the group organized in opposition to the data center had not collected enough required numbers of signatures. As the Tulsa Flyer reported this week, Grassroots organization Protect Sand Springs Alliance submitted more than 1,600 signatures on a recall petition in protest of council actions to approve a Google-backed data center campus in February. The petition did not have the necessary amount of verified signatures, according to a city media release.
Under the city charter in Sand Springs, a recall petition must include at least 20 percent of the number of registered voters in a ward before a recall election can be held.
“I am very appreciative of the many calls and signs of support from our community,” Sand Springs Mayor Jim Spoon, who was not among the officials targeted in the recall, said in a recent statement. “I am equally thankful that the vast majority of our community politely declined to sign the petition as a show of support to the City Council who faithfully serves this community.”
“In the interest of bringing clarity to the situation, the City Clerk’s office examined the petitions and found that even if the argument had been accepted as valid, the result would have still fallen well short of the number required for recall,” according to the city press release.
The city explained there were only enough signatures to recall three of the councilors. However, there was a determination that many of the signatures were invalid because they included non-registered voters, some signatures from the wrong ward and others from residents outside the city limits of Sand Springs.