Blue Lake City Council members (from left): Mayor Pro-Tem Elise Scafani, Mayor John Sawatzky and Council Member Kat Napier

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During the public comment period of tonight’s Blue Lake City Council meeting, three council members, including the mayor and mayor pro-tem, were served with legal notices of voter-initiated efforts to recall them from office.

Blue Lake resident Elissa Rosado, who recently described herself as the best friend of recently ousted City Manager Mandy Mager, stood at the lectern and delivered the news to Mayor John Sawatzky, Mayor Pro-Tem Elise Scafani and Council Member Kat Napier. 

Here are the key points from that statement:

Politics in the usually sleepy city of Blue Lake have grown contentious — some might say outright hostile — over the past couple of years. Last year’s election narrowly resulted in a new council majority, a revanchist group so skeptical of the city’s housing development plans that it opted not to adopt a fully prepared housing element update, thereby risking legal repercussions from the state.

Proponents of the recall effort met in Perigot Park on May 8 to strategize and start gathering signatures. The recall supporters were largely supportive of Mager, who’d been effectively terminated by the new city council majority during a closed session meeting the previous day — though the separation agreement wouldn’t be finalized for another week, in an apparent violation (or perhaps two violations) of California’s open meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act.

Tonight, Sawatzky, Napier and Scafani took the paperwork from Rosado. Both Sawatzky and Scafani skimmed the multi-page documents as the next public speaker addressed them.

Per state law, each recall effort must take place independently from the others, though they can occur simultaneously. No date has been set for the recall election. First, the city clerk must submit the trio of recall petitions to the Humboldt County Elections Office, which must verify that all three have enough valid, verifiable signatures to qualify. For Blue Lake, that threshold is 30 percent of the city’s registered voters, which amounts to about 252 people.

If the signature threshold is met then the city council must call an election within 14 days. That election must then be held between 88 and 125 days after it’s called, or up to 180 days later if there’s a date in there that lines up with a regularly scheduled election.

City Council Member Christopher Firor was absent from tonight’s meeting. Check back tomorrow for a writeup on other matters discussed.

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