Groundhog Day In Dickinson
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Dickinson residents are once again asking controversial mayor Sean Skipworth to step down after citizens gathered enough signatures to vote him out of office in a recall election. We think the Galveston County mayor should resign immediately because this is becoming like Groundhog Day in Dickinson.
“It’s heartbreaking in a way that you have to go through this to get things on the right track,” said resident Wally Deats.
It’s happened again. Another recall of Sean Skipworth has enough signatures of residents who simply want him to go away.
“We had to start from scratch again on this,” Deats said.
The first recall had more than enough signatures, but city hall rejected it for technical mistakes. So here we are again. It’s like Groundhog Day.
“We had around 850 signatures and we needed 689. We’re sure that we’ve addressed all of the previous concerns,” Deats said.
Mayor Skipworth has already announced his plans to resign in July. But for these folks, that’s not good enough.
“There has been no formal notice given to the city secretary or council that he is resigning,” Deats said.
The Galveston Daily News once accused recall organizers of being nameless. That was clearly not true.
“I know of four ex-council people, two ex-mayors. It’s a significant number of people,” Deats said.
The city has until June 22 to certify the recall petition, but the mayor should spare the city any more division and simply step down now. Go away.
“That would be my preference. Yes,” Deats said.
We’ve exposed the lack of transparency on city contracts and finances.
The Dickinson EDC now owns 13 million dollars worth of land and it’s not clear who wants any of it.
The new recall comes as the city is working with the owners of the Creekside apartment complex to begin reopening some of the apartment buildings. We’ve learned inspections are already underway.
Creekside has been shuttered for a year and a half and there is evidence the complex was targeted for closure even before inspections.
The owners cried foul when city officials reportedly told tenants to stop paying rent.
“The city officials themselves, the mayor himself has stepped onto my property and spoke to my residents and said look this place is so terrible right? If I were you I would not pay rent. Don’t worry about rent. Don’t pay rent,” Ahmet Kalkan said.
It is unclear how all of this will affect a threatened lawsuit by the owners of Creekside for the considerable financial damage done to the Kalkan family who owns it and their reputation.
But they wanted the mayor out of the negotiations, complaining he was vindictive, and that has happened.
And that’s been the mayor’s biggest problem. It helps explain the shocking exodus of city employees during his tenure.
Will Skipworth resign and save the city more months of controversy? We shall see.
“This whole effort is out of love and concern for the city of Dickinson. Everybody that’s associated with this group loves Dickinson and wants the best for it,” Deats said.
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