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The citizen-led effort to recall three Blue Lake city councilmembers has fallen short for all but one of the targets: Mayor Pro-Tem Elise Scafani, who will soon be the subject of a special election to consider her removal from office.

A signature-gathering effort that wrapped up Saturday fell five valid signatures shy of the 250-voter threshold necessary to trigger a recall election for Mayor John Sawatzky; a parallel effort for Councilmember Kat Napier fell just four signatures shy of the mark, leaving both of them secure in their seats.

In Sawatzky’s case, recall proponents had gathered 267 signatures, but three were found to be duplicates and 19 others were deemed insufficient by the Humboldt County Elections Office. Similarly, the petition for Napier had 269 signatures with three duplicates and 20 others deemed insufficient.

Petition signatures can be rejected for a variety of reasons, such as when they’re illegible, when they don’t match what’s on file with the Elections Office or when they come from people who live outside city limits.

The petition for Scafani likewise had 22 signatures rejected, but with 276 collected, that left four to spare.

The recall effort was launched in response to community uproar over the departure of longtime City Manager Amanda “Mandy” Mager, with many residents concluding that she’d been forced out. Recall proponents were also upset about the council’s delays in adopting an updated housing element despite threats of fines and other legal consequences from the state. (That document has since been adopted.)

There had been some concern and confusion about what would result should all three recall efforts succeed. The prospect of simultaneous removal of a majority of a governing body was virtually without precedent in California. That conundrum won’t have to be solved in Blue Lake. 

Someone from the county Elections Office dropped off the official signature verification certificates this morning at City Hall. In a phone conversation, Blue Lake Acting City Manager Jill Duffy explained what comes next. 

At the next city council meeting, scheduled for Aug. 26, the council will consider those certificates, she said. Per California Election Code, the council then has 14 days to issue an order calling for a special election. Staff will then present the council with an array of potential dates for that election, though it must fall somewhere between 88 and 125 days after the day the council issued its order. 

Could the council simply decline to accept the certificates? Or perhaps refuse to call a special election? Duffy said no. Per state law, those actions are now mandatory.

Having checked the calendar, Duffy said the earliest possible date for Blue Lake’s recall election would be Nov. 25, which is just two days before Thanksgiving and thus a poor option. The last possible date is Dec. 23, so Blue Lake residents should expect the election to take place on the first, second or third Tuesday in December.

The location of this time window of opportunity on the calendar means that Blue Lake’s special recall election can’t possibly be consolidated with the statewide special election being cooked up by Governor Gavin Newsom in a bid to counteract blatant partisan gerrymandering in Texas. 

Duffy said it’s impossible to know exactly how much this special election will wind up costing the City of Blue Lake, but it’ll likely be in the neighborhood of $10,000. That estimate is based on the cost of a 2023 special election in Garberville, which cost about $8,800. 

A voicemail left for Scafani seeking comment was not immediately returned. Sawatzky declined to immediately comment on the record. An email to Napier had not been returned by the time this post was published.

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