Petitioners fail to gather enough signatures for recall election of Cedar Park council member

Petitioners failed to gather enough signatures to ask the Cedar Park City Council to hold a recall election for Council Member Tim Kelly.

The organizers of the petition, a group of teachers, were required to gather 4,112 votes, or 10% of the registered voters, by Monday, the deadline for the City Council to vote to place the election on the November ballot.

Information was not immediately available Tuesday on how many signatures were collected.

Kelly angered many people in July when he posted on Facebook that teachers should return to campuses immediately during the coronavirus pandemic or be fired.

He said at a July 30 meeting that his comments did not include teachers in Texas or in the Leander school district, which includes Cedar Park schools.

Kelly was elected in 2019 with 2,916 votes. He is up for reelection in May 2021.

The City Council voted to censure Kelly on July 30 for his actions and comments both on and off the dais. The censure was a formal reprimand that carries no punishment.

Kelly was censured based on a motion by Council Member Mel Kirkland that said Kelly had violated the core values of the City Council, which include promoting fairness, dignity and respect.

Kirkland’s motion also called for Kelly to be censured for violating the part of the city charter that calls for council members to show respect and courtesy to other council members, residents and city staffers during and outside of council meetings.

Mayor Corbin Van Arsdale said at the July 30 meeting that Kelly had called another council member a “stupid idiot” at a council retreat, cursed at the city attorney and had also called other elected officials “lunatics, leprechauns and losers.” The mayor said Kelly also had called a Cedar Park mother “a prostitute, a cancer, a terrorist, a lunatic and a loser.”

Kelly said at the July 30 meeting that the motion to censure him was a “witch hunt.”

He said at the Aug. 13 council meeting the the city’s emergency coronavirus declaration should be lifted because wearing masks did not work.

After the Aug. 13, meeting he posted a picture of himself on Facebook wearing a mask saying “This mask is as useless as the mayor.”

Several residents criticized Kelly in April for not wearing a mask while attending a weekend protest in Austin against stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic.

Kelly said after the criticism in April that he would consider wearing masks in the future.

Kelly also criticized Van Arsdale and other members of the City Council in a Facebook post on Monday in connection to the shooting of three Cedar Park police officers on Sunday.

“It takes a tragedy for the mayor to be a leader?,” Kelly said. ’Three conservatives wanted to add funding to the police department but the other 3 leftists said nothing? Now he (Van Arsdale) is wanting to add $ to CPPD?“

Van Arsdale as well of all the other council members have previously said they support the police.