Fairfax councilmembers targeted by recall effort

The group called the Committee to Rescue Fairfax wants to oust Lisel Blash and Stephanie Hellman over rent control and other issues.

A group of Fairfax residents has launched a recall campaign against two Town Council members they say have undermined community values by promoting policies like rent control.

Charles Dines, treasurer for the recall group, Committee to Rescue Fairfax, said it is seeking to recall Vice Mayor Lisel Blash and Councilmember Stephanie Hellman.

Blash was elected to her first term, and Hellman her second, in 2022. The remaining three council members, Mayor Barbara Coler, Councilmember Chance Cutrano and Councilmember Bruce Ackerman, are up for reelection this year.

“Democracy is supposed to be representative. These people are not representative of us,” said Dines, who said he was a 35-year resident who has never been involved in local politics. “They are not listening to us. They are not following any of the ways that the town has existed before.”

The grievances of the recall group are numerous, members said. They include rent-control policies, which the group has denounced; the town’s development plan in its housing element; claims of abridged constitutional rights; and claims of inappropriate affiliations with groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Town Council recently established a system to review challenges involving its rent-control ordinance, which sets an annual rent increase cap at 75% of the regional consumer price index. The annual adjustment cannot be greater than 5%.

Blash said that upon taking office she was aware of many challenges, including the state-mandated housing element, homelessness and the newly adopted rental ordinances.

“In my short time on this Council, I have worked hard to address these issues, enhance communications and transparency, engage constituents, and make room for a broader range of voices in local decision making,” Blash said in an emailed statement. “It is disappointing to see this petition, where some of the complaints are about decisions made before I was elected, and many are untrue or misleading at best.”

Blash acknowledged the right of residents to seek recalls, but warned they could be “costly and divisive.”

“We have a number of challenges to face, and I hope we can come together around positive solutions rather than creating more polarization, which undermines our ability to effectively face these challenges as a community,” Blash said.

Hellman, who was elected to the council in 2018, said she took office advocating for the issues that the recall group was challenging. She said voters clearly sided with the candidates whom they elected.

“We have seen recalls are ineffective and a waste of resources,” Hellman said in an emailed statement. “Voters already made their democratic choice based on what I ran on. I’m taking it seriously though and look forward to talking to voters.”

Hellman defended the town’s institution of rent control as inexpensive and common sense. She said costly efforts to overturn rent control around the Bay Area were failing.

“Our communities want us to address the housing affordability crisis. Tenant protections are one important solution among other strategies to address it,” she said. “The real estate industry are the folks that brought us redlining, segregation in housing and fought the Fair Housing Act of 1969.  It only follows that they would fight these policies.”

The recall group filed two notices of intent to circulate a recall petition, one for each councilmember, on April 22, according to the town.

A letter addressed to Dines from Christine Foster, deputy town clerk, said the petitions were rejected.

The petitions were deemed insufficient because each only had 42 signatures. The petitions are required to have three times the number of signatures to nominate the candidates originally, 20 signatures, meaning they needed 60 signatures, Foster said.

If the recall petition is verified as valid, the state will certify a recall. Organizers will have 90 days to acquire about 1,500 signatures. Once those are verified, a special recall election will be set. The organizers hope to gather the signatures before Aug. 9 and have all five seats up for election on the November ballot.

Lynette Shaw, chair of the recall committee, said the town refused to return the original documents. She said the committee’s attorney said that the original submission could be amended and the needed signatures could be added within 10 days of the original filing.

The town is not permitted to discuss required steps, but would respond to any filing submitted, Town Attorney Janet Coleson said in an email.

Shaw, owner of the cannabis dispensary Marin Alliance, was one of five candidates running for two spots on the Town Council in 2022.

“This is going to make everyone even madder,” she said. “The recall is still going forward. If we have to regather all the signatures, that is going to be easy. This Town Council is completely out of touch with who we are in Fairfax.”

Candace Neal-Ricker, a member of the recall committee, said the combativeness with the council tracked back to the original passage of rent control in 2022. From then on, residents had a lack of confidence in town leadership and began engaging more on policy issues.

“The situation has continued to downgrade and break down,” Neal-Ricker said. “This was a justified response to an extreme situation.”

Voters will decide the fate of rent control at the ballot box this November, with a citizen’s initiative set to potentially overturn the town’s rent-control and just-cause-for-eviction ordinances.

The town’s new rent-control rules call for a town hearing officer to evaluate claims and can include a fee of up to $1,000. The hearings are for landlords petitioning to raise rent above the town’s limit or for residents challenging a rent increase.

Initially, the council approved a cap at 60% of the index. The council agreed to amend the ordinance about a month after voting to certify a ballot referendum challenging the ordinance.

The effective date of rent control is retroactive to March 2022.