An effort to oust three Englewood City Council members as part of a recall election appears to have come up short, unofficial results released Tuesday night showed.
The special election revolves around the issue of density in this suburb of 34,000, where a contingent of residents mounted a campaign earlier this year to recall four of Englewood’s seven City Council members. One of the targeted members, Cheryl Wink, resigned over the summer and wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday.
Mayor Othoniel Sierra, Councilwoman Chelsea Nunnenkamp and Councilman Joe Anderson were targeted for recall.
According to unofficial results released after 10 p.m. Tuesday, Sierra received 654 votes against recall and 465 in favor. Anderson had a better margin — 988 to 734 against recall. Nunnenkamp’s election was the closest, with voters in her district defeating a recall 593 votes to 564 votes.
It wasn’t clear how many ballots still needed to be tallied.
Those behind the recall effort accused the four council members of being too pro-density and pushing for a change to the city’s land-use code that “looks like it was written for developers and people wanting to cash out,” according to the recall campaign’s website. Englewood has seen a significant uptick in condo and apartment building in recent years.
There is too much crime in the city, recall backers say, claiming that “homeless people use drugs openly around Englewood,” and that squeezing more homes on to the same footprint in the city won’t help the situation.
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Kurt Suppes, a longtime resident of Englewood who helped lead the recall effort, declined to comment Tuesday.
The recall election in Englewood echoes a conflict that is emerging in Colorado, as home prices continue to escalate in the face of a housing shortage. Residents in Fort Collins recently repealed at the ballot box zoning reforms that city leaders had passed to encourage density in the city.
At the statewide level, a land-use reform bill that would have paved the way for the construction of more multifamily projects in Colorado died in the final hours of the 2023 legislative session.
