A group of Granbury residents filed recall petitions against Mayor Jim Jarratt and four city council members this week, marking the latest chapter in a months-long dispute over the proposed Project Patriot data center and the city’s handling of the project.

Concerns Over Transparency

The petitions, filed Monday at Granbury City Hall, seek the removal of Jarratt and council members Skip Overdier, Bruce Wadley, Zeb Ullom and Greg Corrigan. Organizers declined to say how many people signed the petitions, but claimed each petition contained more signatures than the number of votes each official received in their most recent election.

One of the recall organizers, Jacob Herbold, said the effort was not driven by personal animosity toward elected officials, but by what organizers see as a failure to be transparent with residents. “We don’t take this lightly,” Herbold said. “But we need people that will communicate with the stakeholders, with the constituents, and not sign non-disclosure agreements with anything that would prevent them from communicating with the citizens.”

Background of the Dispute

The recall campaign stems from ongoing concerns over the city’s transparency during the annexation and rezoning of the roughly 2,000-acre Knox Ranch property, where Dallas-based Bilateral Energy has proposed Project Patriot, a large-scale power generation and artificial intelligence data center campus. Residents have spent months voicing concerns about the project’s environmental impacts, infrastructure demands and the city’s communication with the public.

Organizers with the group Granbury Grassroots described the filing as a response to what they called a breakdown in public trust. “The trust essential to effective public service has been broken,” the group said. “We are asking for leaders who will operate in the light of day, rather than behind closed doors.”

Original reporting: Fort Worth Report — read the source article.