Corrections: 1. Pacifica resident Dan Stegink was not a part of the group Roger Heyder supporters who interacted with the Los Altos city clerk on Aug. 7. City Manager Gabriel Engeland had said in a memo to City Council that Stegink was part of that group, but has since said he was incorrect.
2. In an earlier version of this story, Engeland claimed resident Jon Baer yelled at City Clerk Melissa Thurman over a speaker phone. However, Baer said he never spoke to Thurman either in person or on a speaker phone. The Post regrets the errors.
BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Los Altos’ city manager has accused supporters of a potential council candidate of screaming and getting in the city clerk’s face during a dispute over paperwork at city hall.
City Manager Gabriel Engeland said the city will seek a restraining order, and police are now escorting City Clerk Melissa Thurman to her car.
In response, potential candidate Roger Heyder said his supporters were annoyed but not hostile, and Engeland’s summary of the dispute is false.
“There was some back and forth … People weren’t throwing cupcakes or anything,” Heyder said.
Engeland recapped the dispute in an email to council. He said Heyder and two supporters — Maria Bautista and Robert Specker — came in to fill out paperwork to get Heyder on the ballot around 4 p.m. on Friday, just before the 5 p.m. deadline.
Bautista is an advocate for historic preservation in Los Altos, and Specker is her husband.
Heyder’s forms had missing information, weren’t notarized, and were filled out by Bautista after the nomination period had closed, Engeland said in his email.
Thurman declined to notarize the forms and told Bautista that she couldn’t fill out Heyder’s forms for him.
That caused Specker to get “irate” in Thurman’s face, according to Engeland’s email.
Thurman “said she thought (Specker) was going to hit her,” according to Engeland.
Neither Bautista nor Specker returned the Post’s request for comment on Tuesday.
An attempt to discredit?
“And there is some speculation that Mr. Heyder was inebriated,” Engeland told council in his email.
In an interview, Heyder said the suggestion that he was inebriated is false and unacceptable, and Engeland is trying to discredit his campaign.
Engeland “has people that he likes, and he wants to have in. And he has other people that he doesn’t want to have in,” Heyder said, accusing Engeland of discouraging public participation. Heyder said he’s waiting for the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters to decide if he’s on the ballot.
‘A talking point’
Engeland said Heyder’s forms were incomplete, and he didn’t qualify. But Engeland is also asking the Registrar of Voters to weigh in, given the accusation of bias.
“It will certainly be a talking point that the city rejected a candidate’s paperwork, and I want council to understand the background behind the de-cision, even though the decision itself was determined by requirements under state law,” Engeland said in his email to council.
Engeland declined to answer questions about the dispute Tuesday.
“The city attorney’s office is currently exploring its available remedies. City policies prohibit me from making any statements at this time,” he said.
Hostile behavior
Councilman Pete Dailey has criticized Heyder and his supporters as “the loudest voices in town, but by no means the majority.”
“It’s not new behavior, and the public should understand the hostility and threatening demeanor of these residents,” Dailey said in an email on Monday.
Heyder is aligned with a group of residents who are trying to stop the city from developing downtown parking lots.
The group gathered over 2,600 signatures in April to qualify a measure for the ballot to require council to get voter approval before moving forward with its plans.
Challenging an incumbent Heyder, a retired electrical engineer, wants to challenge Vice Mayor Larry Lang, 62, who is running in the area around downtown.
Juno Szalay, also a critic of the city’s downtown plans, picked up forms to run for the seat but didn’t return them by the deadline.
Heyder, 73, ran as a write-in candidate in 2022 and received 52 votes.
During that campaign, he said he’s against 5G cell towers and wants to stop airplanes from flying above Los Altos.
The Registrar of Voters didn’t return a request for comment yesterday about
Heyder’s status.
If Heyder does not qualify for the ballot, Lang will run uncontested.
This is absolutely egregious that the City Manager, Gabe Engeland, made those accusations along with the City Clerk about Pacifica resident, Dan Stegnick. Engeland claimed there are videos, show them.
Furthermore, since Engeland made this accusation in a memo to the City Council, he needs to also submit a memo to the City Council that he made false claims, as well as the City Clerk, and make it public record.
Absolutely deplorable. Ones got to question everything the City Manager, Engeland is claiming. Using words such as … “speculated”…is what it exactly is speculation.
Engeland made a major error in claiming Dan Stegnick was present (he wasn’t!). We have to wonder what other errors were in his email to council? Was Heyder “inebriated”? Was Baer “yelling”? Who’s getting a restraining order? Everyone named in England’s email?
Engeland wasn’t present during the incident. Everything he reported was hearsay. Why didn’t he review the video himself and get the facts before sending an alarm to council members? Who sent his email to the Daily Post for maximum exposure and embarrassment to all involved — or not involved?
You’ve got to wonder if this was so important to Heyder, why was he filing at the last minute. The filing period lasted four weeks, beginning July 13. As for Engeland’s memo making the paper, I doubt anybody gave that to them. It’s a public document, available to anyone. But conspiracy theorists will be conspiracy theorists.
SK is correct. Emails to the city council are public documents. But they aren’t just sitting in a folder on the city website. You have to get them through a public records access request. No one requested any communications regarding this incident from August 7 through August 12 when the Daily Post published the story. Not looking for conspiracies. Just looking for facts.
History Buff apparently doesn’t realize that it was Richard Nixon who tried to hunt down the leakers. Go GOP!
Looks like History Buff is OK with censorship and hounding newspapers to give up their sources.
Roger Heyder is being pushed by a small group of very loud voices in Los Altos that hasn’t been able to put a person on city council in over 10 years. They scream conspiracy but never seem to get over 17% of the vote. Don’t get me wrong. I think the majority on council needs effective opposition, but filing to run at literally the last minute isn’t the sign of a well-organized campaign. It’s more like the work of the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.