Dozens of campaign signs backing Ross Town Council candidates Bob Herbst and Paul Roesler disappeared from town rights of way on Sept. 16, and newly surfaced text messages show Mayor Julie McMillan had asked the town manager to have public works look at those exact signs the night before. McMillan says she never ordered anyone to remove anything. Critics in the small Marin County town say the timing tells a different story, and the fight has become central to a council race in which Herbst is pushing to reopen the historic fire station the town shuttered last year.
The Text Exchange Behind 'Signgate'
The dispute, which locals have taken to calling signgate, centers on a text McMillan sent Town Manager Christa Johnson the evening before the removals. “Seems like there are lots of Bob & Paul signs in the town's right of way. Could you please ask public works to take a look?” McMillan wrote, according to records obtained through a public records request and reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. The next morning, Johnson replied that she hoped “this isn't going to be a game all fall” with people plastering signs on weekends when staff isn't around; she also told McMillan that 40 signs had just been removed. Herbst, who obtained the exchange, is running alongside Roesler as a slate for two open council seats.
McMillan's response to Johnson the next morning is drawing particular scrutiny. She called Herbst and Roesler “very bad actors,” a phrase she later said referred to the candidates' refusal to follow town rules rather than anything personal. McMillan maintains she did not direct the removals and was simply doing what council members do when flagging an issue for staff. “I did not ‘direct’ anyone to do anything,” she said, framing the move as routine enforcement of a sign ban that has existed in Ross for 65 years.
A Rule Nobody Remembers Being Enforced
That ordinance bars any sign from being erected on, under, above or across public property or a public right of way, but Ross Council Members Elizabeth Robbins and Matt Salter said at a Sept. 23 meeting that they had never previously seen the town enforce it. Robbins went further, saying she doubted Johnson initiated the enforcement sweep without McMillan's direction or consent, and suggested the town was trying to blunt support for the two candidates. McMillan has said she did not order any sign removals.
Part of the confusion traces back to geography. Ross residents dispute exactly where the public right of way ends, since the town has few sidewalks and the boundary is often hard to discern, even though such rights of way typically include space running alongside roads. Town Manager Christa Johnson acknowledged that staff does not consult maps when deciding where that boundary falls, according to the Marin Independent Journal. In response, the Town Council agreed its general government committee should meet with Town Attorney Ben Stock to clarify the law, and the town is reevaluating whether property owners should be notified before signs in rights of way are removed.
An Earlier Banner Dispute
This was not the first flashpoint of the campaign season. Herbst and Roesler posted an oversized banner on the Ross Common baseball backstop in August, which McMillan said violated town rules and sat for four days before public works took it down. The episode now reads as a prelude to the larger sign controversy that followed weeks later.
The Firehouse Fight Underneath It All
The sign fight is tangled up with a bigger argument over Ross's fire service. The town closed its historic Spanish Revival firehouse in July 2025 after officials said the building was structurally and functionally obsolete, a closure McMillan supported. A town consultant estimated that a new firehouse could cost up to $17.5 million, a figure Herbst has disputed as he rallies support to reopen the historic station. As California City News has noted, the Nov. 3 election could reshape the council's position on restoring fire service, raising the stakes of any perceived advantage in the signage dispute.
A Censure Vote Looms
Salter now plans to propose censuring McMillan at the council's next meeting, which falls nine days after the election. A censure is a formal public rebuke expressing council disapproval of a member's conduct, but it would not remove McMillan from office. Salter said he was disappointed that a sitting mayor would lie to the people. Legal precedent generally favors towns in disputes like this one: the Chronicle notes that a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upheld restrictions on signs in public rights of way so long as a city does not discriminate based on what the signs say, leaving Ross's broader right to regulate signage largely intact even as the specifics of its enforcement remain under review.
