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Election 2026: Tiburon council race pits five candidates over parks, housing, finances, traffic


Five candidates are competing for three seats on the Tiburon Town Council in the Nov. 3 election, with park amenities, financial transparency and housing at the center of the race.

 

Incumbent Councilmembers Alice Fredericks and Jack Ryan face challenges from Kathleen Defever, a member of the Planning Commission; Chuck Hornbrook, a member of the Parks, Open Space & Trails Commission; and Faris Jafar, who is seeking his first elected office.

 

At least one of the three challengers is guaranteed a seat because incumbent Mayor Jon Welner is not seeking reelection. The three winners will serve four-year terms until November 2030.


The Ark interviewed the five candidates in August about those issues, along with the future of the former sanitation ponds site near McKegney Green, the town’s use of Flock license-plate readers and strategies to reduce traffic.

 

The candidates will also discuss the town’s future at a forum hosted by The Ark and moderated by the League of Women Voters of Marin County from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 29 in the Town Hall council chambers at 1505 Tiburon Blvd.

 

Defever: Public’s priorities ‘are my priorities’

 

Kathleen Defever, 48, is seeking her first term on the council. She has served since 2018 on the Planning Commission, the town body that reviews the general plan, conditional-use permits, zoning and zoning text amendments.

 

This is her third run for the council. Defever lost to Ryan in the March 2020 special election and finished second to Noah Griffin in the November 2021 special election.

 

She is an attorney who has a solo practice in property- and disability-insurance litigation. Defever writes articles for law journals on consumer and insurance law and gives speeches to European lawyers about American insurance law.

 

Raised near Lansing, Michigan, she graduated from DePaul University in Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in international studies and later earned a law degree. She earned a master’s in insurance law from the University of Connecticut’s law school in Hartford and is working on a doctorate in the same subject from Ghent University in Belgium.

 

Defever moved to California in 2008 and has lived in Tiburon since about 2010. She lives in the Mount Tiburon neighborhood with her partner, Richard Grossman.

 

Defever said she is running because she enjoys serving the community, citing her experience on the Planning Commission. She described herself as a strategist who enjoys finding solutions that provide “the best, highest good for the most people.”

 

She said constituents hold strong opinions that point in different directions, which makes it hard to decide in the moment what will serve the town not only immediately but over the long term.

 

That challenge is what excites her, Defever said.

 

“I look forward to elevating that to even more issues, much broader scope, on the Town Council,” she said.

 

Defever said she does not want to enter the council with a set agenda. But she said residents have raised housing mandates and their impact on Tiburon, government transparency, traffic on Tiburon Boulevard and park improvements. She added emergency preparedness as a subject she said the town could discuss better.

 

“Priorities, to me, is kind of a misleading word, and I know everyone uses it, and I’m not criticizing that,” Defever said. “But what are the public’s priorities? Because those are my priorities. What are people really concerned about in this town, and what do they need addressed?”

 

Fredericks: Important to have a ‘legacy member’ on board

 

Alice Fredericks, 86, the longest-serving councilmember in Tiburon’s history, is seeking a seventh term. She was first elected in 2001 and has served as mayor five times: in 2004, 2009, 2014, 2020 and 2024.

 

Fredericks previously served on the town’s Planning Commission. She is Tiburon’s appointed representative to the Belvedere-Tiburon Library Agency board of trustees, the governing body that oversees library operations.

 

Born in New York and raised in Hawaii, Fredericks earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from California State University at Sacramento. She also earned a law degree from the University of San Francisco and a doctorate in behavioral medicine from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

 

She was a postdoctoral researcher in behavioral medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, where she met her husband, Neal Benowitz, a researcher on nicotine impacts. The couple raised their three children in Mill Valley and moved to the Old Tiburon neighborhood in 1997.

 

Fredericks said she is running again to bring her institutional knowledge of the town to new proposals, as “some of the new ideas are old ideas, and they’re more likely to work at the present time if we know the context.”

 

“The legacy member can often supply that so you can avoid whatever the constraints were the last time it was looked at,” she said.

 

If reelected, Fredericks said, her priorities include traffic. She wants the town to work with the Transportation Authority of Marin as it modernizes traffic signals countywide through its Countywide Coordinated Traffic Signal Modernization Plan. She also wants to prepare Tiburon for a post-landline future, after AT&T won approval to begin discontinuing landline service in parts of California that do not include the Tiburon Peninsula, and to coordinate sea-level-rise planning with county partners.

 

She said those objectives grow out of her years representing Tiburon on regional agencies, including as the town’s representative to the Transportation Authority of Marin.

 

“They’re not as sexy and interesting to the public, and I think somebody needs to be willing to continue to do that,” Fredericks said of being a town representative to other boards.

 

Hornbrook says it’s time to ‘bring that energy and excitement back’

 

Chuck Hornbrook, 59, is running for a council seat again after coming up short in November 2024, when he and Andrew Thompson did not unseat the incumbents, Holli Thier and Isaac Nikfar. Hornbrook previously sought appointment in March 2023 following Noah Griffin’s resignation, but councilmembers instead chose to hold a special election that August, which Nikfar won and Hornbrook did not contest.

 

Hornbrook has served on the Parks, Open Space & Trails Commission since 2019 and has previously chaired it. He also ran for a seat on the Reed Union School District board in 2020, finishing third of four candidates for two seats.

 

Raised in Denver, Hornbrook graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, with a bachelor’s in economics. He later earned master’s degrees in business administration and environmental science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

 

He has lived in Tiburon’s Hill Haven neighborhood since 2017 with his wife, Lisa, and their son.

 

Hornbrook said he loves Tiburon and believes the time is now to bring change to the town, particularly given the “studies that we’ve spent millions of dollars on.”

 

His goal is to “really bring that energy and excitement back to Town Council meetings as well as within the community,” he said.

 

His priorities include “lower cost, quick to implement” solutions to reduce traffic along Tiburon Boulevard that allow for quick pivots, increasing financial accountability and creating new park amenities.

 

“It’s really that community piece because, again, I think people are ready,” Hornbrook said. “They want that joy, that happiness, and I think we’re almost there.”

 

Jafar seeks more coordination among local governing bodies

 

Faris Jafar (pronounced FAR-is JAFF-er), 42, is seeking his first term on the council and his first elected office.

 

Before running for council, Jafar sought appointment to the Reed Union School District board this year as one of five applicants. The board chose Mike Ghaffary in February.

 

Jafar is the founder and chief investment officer of Jafar Management, a wealth-management firm, and he previously worked at investment and private-equity firms.

 

Born and raised in the metro Detroit area, Jafar graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with bachelor’s degrees in Spanish, psychology, finance and international studies, the finance degree from the university’s Kelley School of Business.

 

Jafar has lived in the Del Mar neighborhood since 2022 with his wife, Christina, and their three children, ages 6, 4 and 2. His two older children attend Reed Elementary School, where he volunteers as a class parent.

 

He is also a member of the Reed Union School District’s Budget Advisory Committee, and he and his wife are donors to the Foundation for Reed Schools, the school district’s nonprofit fundraising arm.

 

Jafar said he is seeking the council seat out of a desire to give back to the community and to a country he was fortunate to be born in. His parents fled Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rise to power and the Iran-Iraq War, living briefly in London before settling in the U.S.

 

“If you can, why not help?” he said, later adding that not everyone has been as lucky and that “if you feel that sense of fortune yourself that it wasn’t necessarily deserved, it was just random chance that it worked out for you.”

 

Jafar said part of his decision to run is his view that the town can coordinate with other agencies, such as the Reed Union School District, to better serve residents. The town and the school district, he said, “command a significant portion, on a combined basis, of municipal taxes and resources and assets to serve the Tiburon community.”

 

Jafar said other residents have told him about this lack of coordination, “which is odd because they both serve the same community in a lot of ways.”

 

“If we’re coordinated, as opposed to operating in just distinct silos, … we can create scenarios in which we’re way more efficient in spending resources while also creating resources that serve the town,” he said. “But then, also more importantly, we can also be collaborative in the way that we can work together to create community solutions that serve Tiburon.”

 

Ryan wants to move parks improvements forward and be a ‘conduit’ for local governance

 

Jack Ryan, 59, is seeking his second full term on the Town Council after winning a special election in 2020 and a four-year term in 2022. He served as mayor in 2023.

 

Ryan grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, and earned his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a retired derivatives trading manager.

 

Before his 2020 election, Ryan spent a year as the paid part-time coordinator of the Yellow Bus Challenge, the traffic-reduction program run by the Tiburon Peninsula Traffic Alliance. He has also volunteered as a coach for his children’s lacrosse, volleyball and softball teams.

 

He and his wife, Sara Klein, have two daughters, who attended Reed Union School District schools. The family moved to Tiburon in 2010 and resides in the Hawthorne Terrace neighborhood.

 

On seeking a second full term, Ryan said he wants to make sure the council approves spending to improve parks, calling it a longtime focus of his.

 

Ryan said that while the town has progressed “quite a way through” its master-planning process, the important threshold, approving spending for the parks, has not been crossed.

 

“As a councilmember, my commitment to seeing that go forward is important to the town,” Ryan said.

 

He also said he wants residents to know their local government is accessible, and he wants to be a conduit to it, as “it is paid for by their tax dollars.”

 

“If they ever need help doing that, getting the government services that they feel like they’re paying for, they have an ally in me on the council,” Ryan said.

 

On improving Tiburon’s parks

 

The immediate focus is what amenities to build in Tiburon’s parks and how to pay for them.

 

Unofficial estimates from town officials indicate new amenities at the former sanitation ponds site near McKegney Green will cost more than $3 million if approved. The proposal includes a basketball court, two beach volleyball courts, shaded seating, an outdoor lounge and landscaping to shield fencing around the neighboring Richardson Bay Sanitary District.

 

It is one of four park-improvement projects the town is weighing, with other improvements proposed for Cypress Hollow Park, the Bel Aire Play Area and Belveron Mini Park. Early estimates from town staff put the improvements at a combined cost of roughly $12 million.

 

Ryan said he felt the overall planning process was sensible and, ultimately, the correct approach “from a long-term planning perspective,” but he said he wished new amenities could have been added sooner. The parks master plan was approved by the Town Council in November 2024 after nearly two years of debate, workshops, surveys and public meetings.

 

For the former ponds site, Ryan said he wanted it developed all at once rather than in phases. While he acknowledged neighbors’ concerns, Ryan said the years of research and public input already collected mean more study will not “(deliver) a benefit to the community to wait and study it any longer.”

 

“The onus is on the Town Council to make that choice, ultimately, and I feel confident knowing that developing that parcel as the (parks commission) planned is what will serve the community best and best represents the community’s desires,” he said.

 

Once that initial phase is underway, Ryan said, he wants to focus on the safety and usability of existing parks. The Old Rail Trail, he said, is his top priority among them.

 

“As opposed to just trying to build more new amenities immediately, I think it makes sense to study their use patterns,” Ryan said. “And there’s certainly plenty of things to improve upon in our existing amenities.”

 

Hornbrook, the parks commissioner, said he felt his commission has done a great job moving the proposals forward, crediting the early creation of subcommittees assigned to specific park improvements for the head start.

 

For the ponds site specifically, Hornbrook said he wanted to see what cost estimates returned before deciding the best way to implement and install amenities, but he said building it all at once is better for the park.

 

He also said neighbors’ concerns need to be addressed, from parking to crowded streets and a lack of rules.

 

“If there isn’t any rules about park use and about park space and how to reserve spots, yeah, I’d be concerned about that too,” Hornbrook said. “So, that’s why we need to move forward on this and get all … these items codified so that enforcement can happen so people can know what to do.”

 

After the first round of park design, Hornbrook said he wanted to explore improving the playground at South of the Knoll Park, saying it needs to be more accessible.

 

Hornbrook also pointed to improving safety on the Old Rail Trail and working with Marin County to clarify which open space is county-owned and which is town-owned.

 

“It is encouraging that activity with Marin County Open Space and Tiburon is how we can best make those pieces work together, and so that people are like, ‘Oh, I get it,’” Hornbrook said.

 

Defever agreed the town’s play facilities can be improved, pointing to the children and families she sees using them and saying “the current facilities that we have are really minimal.”

 

She said building amenities at the former ponds site was “going to be slow no matter what — this is government.” While she said she would love for people to use it immediately and have improvements built, she also said government’s lengthy pace is intentional.

 

“You tend to get the loudest voices first, but you don’t reach everyone right away,” she said, adding that “on something that is impactful on, really, most of the community,” everyone will know about the project because of its visibility, but people may not follow the governing process to be aware of what’s going on.

 

“As much as I would love for the right decisions to be made and have it be built right away, I don’t think that’s realistic,” Defever said.

 

Defever said she also wants to explore a launch site for stand-up paddleboards and kayaks, but she stressed the importance of data in setting priorities.

 

While other ideas for recreational amenities have gained and lost traction over the years, Defever said community interest in a kayak and paddleboard launch has remained constant where “we know that they really want that.”

 

Jafar said park improvements, including at the former ponds site, require community-centered planning aimed at creating multigenerational spaces.

 

Applying multigenerational design to future improvements is also important, Jafar said, noting that it comes from “having an appreciation for my life isn’t going to look like this today forever.” He said he will raise his children, will want to retire and will want to spend time with his grandchildren.

 

One symbolic option Jafar mentioned for a multigenerational amenity is a public chess table. He recalled visits to New York parks where middle-school-aged children were seated across from older opponents, creating connections he said swings and monkey bars cannot easily match.

 

“I’m just talking about being mindful of the fact that … these are opportunities for us to come together in ways that we, our natural day-to-day environment may not necessarily bring us together, right?” Jafar said. “And I’d really like to see our community keep that in mind as we go through this planning process and the funding of it, of course.”

 

Fredericks said she wanted to revisit gaps in the access trails to the Ridge Trail.

 

“In the past, the councils that I’ve served on prioritized what got built by whether there was something in a neighboring jurisdiction,” Fredericks said. “But that prioritizes driving and … the whole priorities of travel have changed. So, we have to see what happens as we muck through this process of what improvements, how they impact the neighbors and how they’re allowed by the deeds of the land we want to change.”

 

Raising money

 

Whatever improvements the town chooses, it will have to pay for them, and it has not settled on how.

 

Town Manager Greg Chanis told councilmembers May 20 to weigh those requirements, asking them to consider taking on debt and raising taxes to fund new projects. Beyond park amenities, those projects include upgrading the Public Works Department’s corporation yard behind Reed Elementary School and improvements identified in the town’s traffic study, adopted in May.

 

Jafar said he wants to explore paid parking for nonresidents at parks, adding that it could ease traffic if some visitors stop coming to town as a result.

 

“I think that having that incremental revenue stream by having the nonresidents helping to contribute a bit would be really helpful,” Jafar said, adding that implementing and enforcing zoned parking for impacted neighborhoods would also help alleviate neighbor concerns.

 

Jafar also said adding more accessory dwelling units can increase tax revenue for the town. Building 650 of them at 1,000 square feet each and valuing them at $1,500 per square foot, he said, would add about $975 million in assessed value, “nearly a billion dollars of homeowner value” that also helps meet state housing mandates.

 

At California’s base property-tax rate of 1%, that much new value would generate about $9.75 million a year in property taxes. Tiburon receives 7.7 cents of every property-tax dollar the county collects, which would leave the town roughly $750,000 a year. Jafar said the revenue is money “that flows into the municipality, that’s good for our budget” and helps fund infrastructure requirements.

 

Fredericks said she was open to exploring a parcel tax, bond measure or sales-tax increase, pointing out that the town’s sales-tax rate is at the county minimum and lower than those of other Marin towns and cities.

 

She also noted the town’s long-standing policy of not taking on debt.

 

One factor in moving forward with a bond or parcel-tax proposal is timing its appearance on a ballot, Fredericks said. Tiburon voters will face three bond or parcel-tax measures on their November ballots, including one from the Reed Union School District.

 

“You can overload the electorate with that, so I think ultimately how fast we go depends on whether we want to change our policy and go for a bond issue, how much money will looking at fees generate, how fast the money will come in,” Fredericks said. “It’ll just come in slower if we do a parcel tax, but it will be consistent with our policy to stay out of debt.”

 

Ryan said one lesson from creating the parks master plan was focusing on long-term planning regarding spending, calling it “critically important” both in finding funds and “deploying them in a sensible way that’s consistent with the vision of the town.”

 

In deploying those funds, Ryan said the town has the spendable reserves “that will carry us a long way in developing the parks.” Regarding long-term needs, Ryan said planning how to spend that money and what capital improvements need to be funded will play a role in determining how specifically to raise funds.

 

“But if we can get a reasonable, 10-year spending outlook, does it seem crazy to me to need to raise the sales tax by half a cent to generate some extra revenue to service those gap projects?” Ryan said. “No. … That’s probably the direction I would go in.”

 

Hornbrook, like Ryan, said the council should have been working to find money to speed up park improvements.

 

“If the Town Council had said, ‘Yeah, we should put aside’ — I don’t know — ‘X million dollars, but we know things are going to be roughly 2x that,’ we need to ask the community to start thinking about fundraising for these pieces,” Hornbrook said.

 

On revenue generally, Hornbrook said he wanted to examine how the town spends its money and whether costs can be cut before it considers a bond measure or a sales-tax increase.

 

Hornbrook also said he wanted to find grant-making organizations that could pay for projects such as repairs to the Elephant Rock pier before raising taxes.

 

“We have to first understand all the people who are using the facilities to see if there’s mechanisms and ways that we can — through grants and other entities — that provide money to cities and towns for that,” Hornbrook said.

 

Defever said she needed to examine the municipal budget more closely to figure out how she would look to add potential revenue sources, but she said there are ways Tiburon could reduce the money it spends in its budget, such as in litigation, before pursuing revenue-generating opportunities.

 

Communicating the town’s finances

 

All five candidates said they support better reporting on town finances, and all backed the idea of an independent finance committee like Belvedere’s.

 

The council received its first monthly financial report at its Aug. 19 meeting, after months of calls from some residents for greater financial transparency. Those calls followed delayed year-end audits and a budgeting process that did not include up-to-date actual spending figures from the prior year, including for the current fiscal year 2026-2027.

 

Hornbrook has made increased financial transparency a central plank of his campaign.

 

He said his interest in creating an independent finance committee is threefold: There is a need for an independent body, there are residents with financial backgrounds and the committee would provide a path to other public service, such as running for Town Council.

 

“It’s not a big lift, but it’s a good way to get another set of eyes to ask those questions that you may not get otherwise in a public forum,” Hornbrook said.

 

Ryan called an independent finance committee “a great idea” that should be put in place. He said that while a council may not have a member with financial expertise, “a committee dedicated to that would be, obviously, specifically targeted at that one issue.”

 

“I would be surprised if any councilmembers were against it now, given how helpful it can be,” Ryan said. He added that while the committee should not direct how money gets spent, a committee should analyze revenues and expenditures, plan ahead and present those findings to the council and public so the community can make informed decisions.

 

However, Ryan said the discussion on financial transparency should be reframed around communicating the town’s finances, saying the word “transparency” in a government context results in “an inference or an implication that something’s being hidden.”

 

“The way we present our data that is public — and that we have, to the public — should be better,” Ryan said.

 

He added that “no municipality does it perfectly,” but he agreed with comments from resident Colin Crawford, who has become Hornbrook’s campaign treasurer, that the town should report actual expenditures rather than budgeted ones for recent years.

 

“There’s a lot of ways you can make that more digestible to the public, and I think we should do that,” Ryan said.

 

Fredericks agreed with Ryan, saying that regardless of how an independent finance committee is structured, whatever is communicated in those committee meetings must be understandable to the public.

 

She also said making residents aware of the public-engagement process was another way to improve communication about the town’s finances.

 

Jafar said it is fundamental for a town to keep its audits current because they give residents confidence and that without audited financial statements, “it literally makes planning in a thoughtful way impossible.”

 

“It is in no way to suggest that there’s anything wrong going on,” Jafar said. “It’s just what we, as a community, deserve from our fiduciaries.”

 

On an independent committee, Jafar said the town should decide whatever will serve the community, pointing to the Reed district’s budget-advisory committee and Parent Teacher Association as examples to emulate.

 

“If whether it’s finance or any other area where we feel like we’re lacking depth or expertise or an ability to execute on something,” Jafar said, “I think leveraging the intellectual capital of the Tiburon resident community is one of the greatest … unappreciated resources that, you know — we should absolutely be doing those things.”

 

Defever said she wants to know how residents want to see their tax dollars spent, adding that she has heard concerns about town spending on various items, including that the town is spending too much on parks.

 

She said that while she thinks the town provides enough information, the council should listen to residents who say more is needed, because it works for them. The same applies to an independent finance committee.

 

“I always support transparency,” Defever said. “Always.”

 

Housing

 

Housing is another central issue. Tiburon was allocated 639 units as part of its 2023-2031 housing element cycle. Though the town needs only to identify where the units can be built, the state Department of Housing and Community Development can conduct a mid-cycle review as soon as summer 2027.

 

That review will examine whether the town is following through on the housing programs it has committed to. Falling short could trigger consequences, with town officials previously indicating the most severe consequences would make the town ineligible for state funding, expose it to sanctions from the state Attorney General’s Office and activate the “builder’s remedy,” under which developers could build regardless of local zoning restrictions.

 

As of this year, Tiburon has permitted 62 units, or 9.7% of its total allocation. Accessory dwelling units remain the town’s primary source of new housing.

 

Defever and Fredericks both criticized state housing mandates over the loss of local control.

 

Fredericks said it is a statewide problem when developers do not build the housing they are approved for while jurisdictions face penalties for not meeting their allocations.

 

“If a builder doesn’t pull the permit, there really isn’t a lot that you can do about it,” Fredericks said. That is why she advocates putting housing “where there’s land,” letting towns pay fees that support housing and pushing for laws that would ease state mandates for Tiburon and other jurisdictions.

 

“Are we successful? Most of the time not, but … we’ll keep doing what we can do,” she said.

 

Fredericks said the town has lost its local control over housing, saying developers can build multiunit housing and get density bonuses while Tiburon is barred from conducting discretionary review.

 

“I think our best push is to have some way to demonstrate that we are open to housing, even if it means that we help finance other projects to meet our obligations, to produce housing when we don’t have land and resources, and to change legislation,” Fredericks said.

 

Defever said Tiburon must follow state law, as the town is required to do, “but try to come up with some alternative strategies to maintain Tiburon for the beautiful attributes that it has.”

 

Her objection, she said, is that the state treats housing as “one size fits all.” Tiburon, she said, lacks the buildable space for the 639 units it was allocated and the infrastructure to support them.

 

“We don’t have the capacity to put even half that many cars on the road,” she said.

 

Another problem, she said, is the lack of services in Tiburon, which means more driving to reach a veterinarian or a doctor. She said some units could be added with investment in better public transit or more services, but “certainly not 639 more units.”

 

“They need to tailor it or allow it to be tailored proactively from the citizens who are saying, ‘Hey, this actually can’t work where we are,’” Defever said.

 

Ryan said he was satisfied with how Tiburon got its housing element certified in 2023. “From sort of an extrapolation standpoint,” Ryan said, the number of units permitted is behind, but he trusts the process to unfold organically, “the results notwithstanding.”

 

One company he is watching is A&C Ventures, which owns land and buildings downtown. The landlord in December 2024 filed a preliminary application for 120 units across three housing sites downtown, though the application was incomplete and no formal development application followed.

 

“Their scope and vision is big enough that it would change the way we’re thinking … about our trajectory,” Ryan said.

 

Though any proposal from the company may not cover the town’s full allocation, Ryan said he wants to see how it proceeds before considering further zoning amendments or ways to attract developers to meet state requirements.

 

“Will we have to do something different to try to manage a different result in the future years? Maybe,” Ryan said. “But I don’t see anything obvious we should do different that the town would be excited about.”

 

Hornbrook said he wanted a council subcommittee on housing that would approach developers such as A&C Ventures and report to the full council quarterly.

 

Hornbrook said these are problems other Marin municipalities face, especially as much of the workforce does not live in town. He also said talking early with other agencies is key, and he said workforce housing built with the Reed Union School District, such as on a site near Reed Elementary School, is in the town’s best interest.

 

Hornbrook said the town should work with the state mandates as written, because attempts to challenge them can result in even less local control.

 

“Fighting things and not being collaborative with the other stakeholders in your sphere, I don’t think is a winning solution,” he said.

 

Jafar said building more accessory units and enlarging the housing supply would let older residents downsize and that more accessory units mean less dense development downtown.

 

That is particularly beneficial for developers when residents build accessory units earmarked for lower-income households, he said, because developers can then include more market-rate housing.

 

“The cash-on-cash returns for the developer is better, the community is happier because they don’t have these big structures that they have in place,” Jafar said, “and you’ve now created a new type of housing structure that, when I think about my life as a retiree eventually, well, maybe I want to have beautiful, new, smaller format housing near all the bars and restaurants and grocery stores downtown that doesn’t really exist today.”

 

Traffic

 

Traffic congestion on Tiburon Boulevard during peak commute hours remains a near-universal complaint, particularly about trying to leave the peninsula in late afternoons.

 

Tiburon in May adopted a two-year traffic study that examined the roughly 16,600 vehicles that use the boulevard daily. The town is planning an adaptive-signal pilot program at the Trestle Glen Boulevard bottleneck, budgeted at up to $180,000 in fiscal 2027.

 

Fredericks said she does not believe Tiburon Boulevard can be widened because of insufficient right-of-way, and she pointed to a Transportation Authority of Marin effort to coordinate 234 traffic signals across the county, including the eight in or near Tiburon town limits.

 

Fredericks said she wanted to ensure Tiburon’s pilot would not prevent the Trestle Glen signal from being folded into the wider countywide plan. If Tiburon’s plans will not interfere with the transportation authority’s, Fredericks said she “absolutely” wants the pilot program to be part of it.

 

“If we’re not going to lose anything by doing it now, absolutely, and how much will we lose will be an issue,” Fredericks said.

 

Ryan, a member of the Tiburon Peninsula Traffic Alliance, which oversees the Yellow Bus Challenge, said he wants to keep supporting the school-bus program. Though enrollment in local schools is declining, he called the program “bang for the buck, the best way to get cars off the road.”

 

He supports optimizing traffic signals along the boulevard and wants to lobby Caltrans for a physical improvement to the road. Unlike Fredericks, he favors a second outbound lane starting just before Trestle Glen Boulevard and a roundabout at the two boulevards’ intersection, though he said “they’re both low probability options.”

 

“I think that could move the needle in an interesting way,” Ryan said.

 

Hornbrook called for coordinating with local contractors or the school district to see how the town can consolidate workers to reduce commuter traffic during peak hours.

 

“That’s the energy and excitement and the … I don’t want to say easy things to do, but just to put yourself out there, be vulnerable and be available to the community to talk about these things,” Hornbrook said.

 

He also said that as the town prepares for its adaptive-signal pilot, “there’s all these other small things we could be looking at.” Even if those ideas fail, Hornbrook said, trying them is what matters.

 

“I don’t have all the answers, but I know I have the creativity and the confidence and the energy to reach out and listen to people and the curiosity to listen to other people and hear what their thoughts are,” Hornbrook said.

 

Defever said it was time to look for concrete solutions to address traffic, “because just talking about it from a larger perspective doesn’t take us anywhere.”

 

She said traffic has improved since her early days in Tiburon, crediting the Yellow Bus Challenge for driving that change.

 

“We need to keep thinking outside the box and trying to come up with things we can do because we can’t force the state to widen the road or do anything really major,” Defever said.

 

Jafar said traffic should be considered alongside other issues, such as safety, housing and park improvements, rather than in isolation.

 

Building workforce housing for local teachers, firefighters and police officers, Jafar said, does not add cars to the road because those workers already commute into town.

 

“By being proactive, by taking agency over our own housing development for our own use cases that suits our community and suits our needs, that goes a long way in … avoiding adding the incremental traffic to our roads,” Jafar said.

 

Use of Flock cameras

 

Town officials have said little about the Police Department’s allowing outside law enforcement agencies to run potentially illegal searches of Tiburon’s automated license-plate logs, which are captured by Flock Safety cameras around town.

 

Investigations by The Ark found that 41 agencies ran 16,029 searches from July to December 2025 that potentially violated Senate Bill 34, which bars sharing the data with out-of-state, private or federal agencies.

 

Police Chief Michelle Jean has not answered The Ark’s questions about the discrepancies, instead largely repeating the town’s website announcements.

 

Flock has faced national criticism from officials, privacy groups and residents. The Atlanta-based company said Aug. 13 that by the end of the year it will require all agencies to use audit tools that flag abnormal searches and to tie every plate search to a case number, both now optional. Flock also cut its default data-retention window to seven days from 30 — but only for new customers.

 

Defever, who began her legal career as a federal public defender in Chicago, took the firmest position of the five candidates on the cameras, citing The Ark’s reporting.

 

“I agree with very narrowly tailored usage of tools like Flock cameras — ‘very narrowly tailored’ being the key,” she said. That includes advocating for the Police Department to encrypt the data it collects from the cameras and allowing officers to access data only when they have a warrant to do so, a position shared by the ACLU and the Institute for Justice.

 

Other measures Defever supports include limiting other agencies from accessing the town’s data unless a judicial procedure — like a warrant or a subpoena — requires its release.

 

“I think we do have an expectation of privacy, and it’s not being handled well,” Defever said. “And I’m not blaming anyone at the Police Department or in the town. These are all new questions; it’s brand new. But we need to pay better attention to it.”

 

Hornbrook said the town could do a better job communicating how public-safety technology gets used while ensuring the “privacy of our citizens, the protection of our family members.”

 

Hornbrook cited a personal example. His family’s former nanny benefits from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which began in 2012 and grants federal work authorization to people brought to the U.S. as children without legal permission, while also protecting them from deportation.

 

“We need to make sure that that technology is not used for nefarious reasons that the community does not support, and that would be one of them,” Hornbrook said, adding that the town needs to collaborate with other nearby jurisdictions on adopting use policies that balance technology with citizens’ privacy.

 

Jafar said the technology has a legitimate use and can help law enforcement keep the community safe but that “it has to be tailored bespoke to our community.”

 

He said he was not sure how “allowing our data sent across 250 partners” is in Tiburon’s best interest, but he is open to talking with Flock and police officials to better understand it. However, he again emphasized his approach to finding community-driven solutions.

 

Tiburon shared its automated license-plate data with 210 outside agencies as of Aug. 27, according to The Ark’s review of the town’s Flock portal.

 

“It’s my job to make sure that my clients’ interests are what come first,” Jafar said. “And it’s not going to be a vendor telling me, ‘Take it or leave it.’ No. You want our community’s money, we’re going to pay you for a service and we’re going to tell you what kind of service we want.”

 

Ryan said Flock’s practices and vulnerabilities have drawn legitimate complaints, and he said he supports the town’s ensuring its cameras meet legal requirements and are “functioning the way we want.”

 

Flock’s functionality and cost savings were superior to other systems, he said, adding that if a competing vendor offered better security, he would drop Flock’s contract.

 

“That thing does not exist right now,” Ryan said, “and the public’s desire to have the safety and investigative capabilities of an automated license-plate reader right now outweigh the vulnerabilities of the system, in my opinion.”

 

The threshold for when the vulnerabilities outweigh the public’s desire “is something that we will have to explore as those things intersect,” Ryan said when pressed. He added that “if you think Flock is the only tool that can be misused for nefarious purposes, you’re out of your mind.”

 

Ryan said he favors further discussion of how Flock is used in town, though he said he already talks with police officials about the cameras and the challenges the department faces.

 

He said the system so far has “come a long way toward a healthier, safer system for all.”

 

“It’s an ongoing process, but … I would like to think that we’re not waiting until something bad happens and ignoring it until then,” Ryan said.

 

Fredericks said she supports the town’s use of Flock cameras, though she said “more effective” guardrails “on controlling who accesses our data” should be put in place.

 

The Police Department should continue developing “effective ways of identifying and excluding entities that do illegal searches,” but Fredericks said police officials “have told us that anyone who has questions can just ask and they will be glad to answer” — though police officials continue to decline to answer questions posed by The Ark.

 

“For the glitches in the interim, we just need to perfect our guardrails, and it’s a process,” she said.

 

Fredericks earlier in August told The Ark that the council should not take up the matter until after the election. Asked Aug. 10 why the council had not put the Flock program on a public agenda, she said the question of whether to convene a public meeting on the Police Department’s controls over access to the data “should be considered when the new council is seated.”

 

“Because the town has received a citizen letter that can be interpreted as a litigation threat, a public council meeting would not be productive at this time,” she wrote. Asked whether the town attorney had made that determination or whether it was her own reading of the letter, Fredericks said the reason was her own.

 

Fredericks said people have a limited right to privacy when out in public, arguing that the difference between cameras capturing snapshots at a particular location and “a series of cameras so that they know when and where you were from beginning to end of your trip” is a legal question.

 

“Do I personally have a problem with that? I don’t,” Fredericks said. “Some people do. That’ll just have to wind its way through the courts.”

 

Candidates’ direct pitches to voters

 

The Ark asked each candidate the same final question: Why should people vote for them?

 

Fredericks said she bridges the town’s past and its future. A pedestrian tunnel connecting the Old Rail Trail to Del Mar Middle School, proposed by former Mayor Andrew Thompson in 2025, is not a new idea, she said: Former Mayor Emmett O’Donnell proposed a tunnel under Tiburon Boulevard in December 2012.

 

“I can look at old things like that, and then I can look forward to things like the … coordinated adaptive-signal planning at the county level and the sea-level-rise planning coordination,” Fredericks said. “And in between those two views, I am very experienced at doing the town’s business.”

 

Ryan said he feels he has done a good job of helping residents access government services in his six years on the council.

 

The community connections he has built help him understand what the town wants from its councilmembers and the vision it wants to implement, he said.

 

“I’m in a good position to direct the council’s vision going forward,” he said.

 

Hornbrook cited his professional and community experience, saying he brings a “kind of can-do, roll-up-sleeves curiosity that I don’t think the others do.”

 

He said his experience reaching out to other governmental entities as a parks commissioner has helped him build connections that will be strengthened if elected to the council.

 

“People know who I am, and I’m able to make those relationships,” Hornbrook said. “As a town councilmember, that’s even easier, which then will allow us to do things even faster.”

 

Defever said she wants what is best for the town and listens to everyone, adding, “and I don’t have preconceived set agendas.” She said residents are smart, sophisticated and creative, and she described the town as “world-class, sophisticated, gorgeous.”

 

“I want to preserve that — and I want to also be the action that makes it even better,” she said. “And I do that through listening and collaborating.”

 

Jafar said his work as a fiduciary, dealing with everyone from corporate executives to union members with pensions, has taught him how to bring his private-sector experience to different groups and find solutions that benefit everyone.

 

“That is absolutely what we’re doing here,” Jafar said. “It’s understanding all of the interests of our stakeholders and identifying ways to unlock untapped value and potential to make everybody’s outcomes better.”

 

Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.

 
 

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