The Latest Bay Area Recall Campaign Is Over a 6-Story Apartment Building

It’s spooky season in the Marin County town of Fairfax, where skeletons and pumpkins take up their positions in yards, right alongside signs urging residents to “Vote Yes to Recall” or “Vote No Recalls.”

On Nov. 4, voters will decide whether to recall Fairfax’s mayor and vice mayor over their approval of a six-story apartment complex — a decision that’s divided this small town of about 7,500 residents.

The recall petition accuses Mayor Lisel Blash and Vice Mayor Stephanie Hellman of mismanaging funds, neglecting road maintenance and prioritizing their personal agendas. But at the heart of the recall is a high-density housing development proposed for a 2-acre site called School Street Plaza.

Last November, developer Mill Creek Residential submitted a preliminary application to build a 243-unit apartment complex at School Street Plaza, with 49 affordable housing units priced between about $1,900 to $2,500 a month for a studio. The proposal includes two levels of parking and commercial space on the ground floor.

Residents immediately pushed back. The development site sits on a hill at the edge of downtown Fairfax. A six-story building would tower over the town, where most buildings are one or two stories and the tallest reaches just four stories, and would block many residents’ views of the rolling hills.

Recall proponents blame Blash, who was elected to the council in 2022, and Hellman, who has served since 2019, for approving zoning changes to School Street Plaza that allowed the housing proposal to move forward.

Last year, voters replaced two council members who had approved the rezoning with Mike Ghiringhelli and Frank Egger, who both opposed taller buildings. Egger told KQED he will vote Yes on the recall.

Blash and Hellman argue their hands were tied. State housing mandates require Fairfax to approve a housing plan, or “housing element,” for at least 490 new homes by 2031.

If the town fails to make progress toward meeting its required housing allocation, it could face lawsuits, fines of up to $600,000 a month and a loss of permitting and zoning authority.

The push to unseat Blash and Hellman is the latest in a string of Bay Area recall campaigns, where frustrated residents have increasingly turned to recalls to express their dissatisfaction with political leaders.

The fight also underscores a fundamental shift in California housing policy, as new state laws steadily erode local control in favor of state mandates.

A small town divided

Fairfax, nestled in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais, is known as the cradle of mountain biking and was once an oasis for artists and musicians, who have since been priced out of the town. Many people find the charming homes along winding, redwood-forested streets a desirable place to settle down and raise kids.

Ian Glover, 47, who’s lived in Fairfax for five years, was among families shopping at a recent Wednesday evening farmers market in Bolinas Park. Glover had initially signed the recall petition, believing it would block the School Street apartment complex. The property’s former occupants included a school, a marijuana dispensary and community hot tubs and saunas.

“I don’t want to see a big high-rise. I don’t want to see more traffic,” Glover said as he offered his 2.5-year-old son some pomegranate seeds and melon slices. Even though he believes apartments and cheap housing benefit the community, Glover said he’d prefer the site become something that preserves the town’s character. “I’d rather see it be a cool school again or … the hot tub place was funky.”

Many residents share his sentiment. Some call the building proposal a “monstrosity.” Even Vice Mayor Hellman agrees it’s too tall and would look out of place.

“Design-wise, it’s cookie-cutter, cheap, ugly, doesn’t fit within the design and aesthetic or character of the town,” Hellman said.

Wendy Lee, 64, has lived in Fairfax for nearly 40 years, raised three kids there and now has three grandchildren. Lee is against the recall, but like many residents, she doesn’t like the development.

“I don’t want to be a NIMBY because I know Marin County, we need low-income housing,” Lee said. “But I also don’t think that a six-story apartment building should be smack downtown on that little hill rise.”

Along with concerns about parking and traffic, recall supporters contend the project could create a “death trap” in the event of a wildfire, flood or earthquake.

“We have one road in and out in case of fire coming from West Marin,” said recall treasurer Sean Fitzgerald. “We have to go through four other towns to get out to the freeway.”

Riley Hurd, a land use attorney representing Mill Creek, said he isn’t surprised by the town’s pushback on the School Street proposal.

“That’s been the Fairfax way for decades and decades,” he said. “That’s why nothing ever gets built there.”

The debate over the recall has driven a wedge between neighbors and strained friendships in the tight-knit community.

“This has totally splintered our town,” Lee said. “It’s so sad.”

Council meetings have turned “ugly and vitriolic,” Blash said, with people yelling, pounding chairs and waving their fists.

“People talk about gnawing on our necks, or lynching us or tar and feathering us,” Blash said.

“I’ve had days where it’s really taken a toll on my mental health for sure,” Hellman added. “I’ve had days where I’ve thought about quitting.”

Hellman installed a new security system after a few recall organizers showed up at her house. Blash stopped walking home from meetings at night and no longer goes to her favorite coffee shop, now that its windows are plastered with pro-recall signs.

“People hear about East Bay recalls or recalls in San Francisco, and I’m sure those are painful for the recallees, but this is a really tiny town,” she said. “It just really feels very personal.”

Bay Area recall fever

The campaign to oust Blash and Hellman joins a growing list of Bay Area recalls since the pandemic, including the removal of three school board members in San Francisco and the city’s District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022.

Last year, voters recalled two more school board members in Sunol, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao.

In September, residents in San Francisco’s Sunset District recalled Supervisor Joel Engardio over his support for closing part of the Great Highway to turn it into a park. His removal did not alter the highway’s closure.

Mark Baldassare, a director at the Public Policy Institute of California, said local recalls offer residents a tool to effect change. They’re far harder to pull off at the state level and they don’t exist at the federal level.

“COVID put the emphasis on local government as being both the solution and in some cases the problem,” Baldassare said. “As that’s taken place, it’s also become apparent to a lot of people that an option is the recall.”

Fairfax recall organizers received guidance from Chris Moore and Edward Escobar, who helped lead the recalls of Price and Thao. Fitzgerald said they sought their advice after their initial petition was rejected by the town clerk and town attorney over technical errors.

“They came out, they shared with us what they had done successfully for free,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ve done this all 100% grassroots.”

Moore said he spent a few hours with recall organizers in the spring, advising them on messaging strategies, how to gather signatures and volunteers and recommending an attorney. Since then, he’s answered one or two questions a month over text.

“I wasn’t active in day-to-day activity,” Moore said. “I just kind of say, ‘OK, here’s what we did in that scenario.’ But largely they’ve run it up there themselves.”

In July, recall supporters held a rally, which Moore and Escobar attended. Escobar said he helped “orchestrate” a press conference, reaching out to reporters to cover the event.

“All we do is amplify the voice of the people,” Escobar said. “These folks are, they’re weeds that need to be pulled out of office.”

A shift in housing policy

Recall organizers often meet at Nave’s Bar, a downtown pub managed by recall leader Candace Neal-Ricker, which they jokingly call their “newsroom.”

“I am your local, ultra-low-income, born and raised Fairfaxian that could not afford what they are proposing there,” Neal-Ricker said as she poured drinks and rang up customers on a 1967 vintage cash register. If the development had included “truly affordable” housing with fewer stories, she said she would’ve supported it.

Neal-Ricker believes the mayor and vice mayor are out of touch with their constituents’ desires. In 2022, the town council approved a rent stabilization ordinance and its “just cause” eviction ordinance, which aimed to protect tenants from arbitrary evictions. At the time, Hellman was on the council, but Blash had not yet been elected. Voters repealed the law in last year’s election.

“Council members are not gods,” Neal-Ricker said. “They’ve forgotten who they work for and what they were elected to represent.”

She’s also critical of the development receiving “ministerial approval,” which fast-tracks developments by bypassing public hearings and review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Hellman defended her handling of the housing proposal, saying she followed state laws.

“All of my actions have been to protect the town from litigation, penalties and fines,” Hellman said. “I’m not happy about a lot of these laws, but I didn’t run for office to break the law. And if I have to fall on my sword for that, that’s perfectly fine.”

In July, Hellman said the town council received letters from Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) groups and “threatening communications” from the enforcement arm of the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), reminding them that they could face enforcement action if they failed to process the School Street project under ministerial approval.

“I truly believe that the state and lots of jurisdictions are looking at Fairfax right now as a test case,” Hellman said. “I also believe that they would love to make an example out of Marin County due to their perception that we haven’t kept up with housing demand.”

A Marin County Grand Jury report in June noted that since 2017, lawmakers have passed over 100 pieces of legislation to shift power over housing policy to the state. “New state laws significantly reduce the ability of local jurisdictions to deny housing projects that meet objective requirements, even if there is community opposition,” the report said.

Lawmakers passed many of these laws in response to years of Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) communities interfering with state efforts to ease California’s housing crunch.

Blash said recall supporters don’t understand how much power the state has taken from local governments.

“They’ve chipped away at most of our local control,” Blash said. “It used to be possible to object to something and either force the developer to give a little bit or to stop the project altogether. And that power isn’t there as much as it used to be.”

The grand jury report determined that the state’s requirement for the whole county to issue 14,405 permits by 2031 is “unrealistic and unlikely to be achieved.” The report cites community resistance as a major obstacle to new housing in Marin.

“The town has a really famous reputation for fighting development,” Blash said. “People are very proud of the small town atmosphere and very protective of it, so it’s often been hard to get just about anything built.”

Despite the threat of lawsuits and fines, recall proponents feel their city leaders caved to state demands too readily.

“You can’t let the fear of financial penalties be the deciding factor in what’s right for a town,” Fitzgerald said. “Do I think the state’s gonna come in and bankrupt every small town because we don’t meet their housing numbers? I doubt it.”

Recall organizers know their town has a reputation for being NIMBY. But Fitzgerald said, actually, they consider themselves more “MIMBY” — maybe in my backyard.

“There’s all these elements that go into why we don’t want that particular building in its current form, so I think being called NIMBY is lazy,” Fitzgerald said. “It prevents people from having constructive dialogue.”

Hurd, the developer’s attorney, pointed out that the School Street proposal only represents about half of Fairfax’s housing allocation, and there are currently no other multi-family housing applications in the town.

“If doing just half of what was allotted results in this level of outcry, I think it’s pretty clear that doing all or meeting the goal was never really on the table,” he said.

Less than three weeks before the election, Fairfax’s planning department sent a letter to the developer requiring major changes to the housing proposal. The letter cited 25 deficiencies that, if not addressed in 30 days, will result in the project’s denial.

Hurd said he does not expect the developer to make any project changes, nor will they abandon ship.

“That letter violates numerous, numerous laws,” he said. He expects HCD to weigh in and “inform the town that that letter is illegal.”

Even if the recall fails, both Blash and Hellman said they will not seek reelection when their terms expire next November.