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A special meeting of the Dacono city council on April 5 became contentious as officials set the date for an upcoming recall election and hired an interim city attorney.
The recall election against council members Jim Turini and Jackie Thomas will be held on June 27. Karen Goldman, the deputy city clerk for the City of Aurora and a consultant with the Colorado Municipal League, will assist with the election.
Turini and Thomas are two of the four city council members who voted to remove former city manager A.J. Euckert on February 13. A citizens group that organized the recall told Yellow Scene Magazine in March that they did not target the other two council members who voted to remove Euckert—mayor pro tem Kathryn Wittman and Danny Long—because Wittman is up for reelection in November and Long’s seat is protected by a local ordinance.
The meeting then became contentious as the council moved to its second piece of business, hiring an interim city attorney. Dacono hired attorney Scott Oliver, a real business and estate trust attorney from Longmont, by a 4-2 vote that visibly frustrated some members of council.
Wittman made the initial motion to approve the resolution to hire Oliver. After a brief pause, council member Kevin Plain made a new motion to hire Sampson, which was seconded by Mayor Adam Morehead.
Council appealed to city attorney Kathleen Kelly to resolve the procedural issue. Kelly, who is leaving the city on April 15, became frustrated and told the mayor she “is not the presiding officer” of the meeting. Turini then seconded Wittman’s initial motion, which was put up for a vote and subsequently passed.
Council members also interviewed another lawyer named Rick Sampson for the job. Sampson has more than 33 years of municipal law experience and told the council he wanted to partner with another lawyer named Payton Buhler to serve as his assistant because the volume of work in Dacono is “probably too much for a one-person firm,” he said.
