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 Enge-land’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 three supporters — Maria Bautista, Robert Specker and Pacifica resident Dan Stegink — 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. Stegink is a supporter of former San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus, who was removed from office in October for misusing her authority.
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. Stegink allegedly screamed at Thurman and demanded she notarize the paperwork.
“He claimed it is a state law and that he was going to sue if we didn’t comply,” Engeland said.
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.
Resident Jon Baer was also yelling at Thurman on speakerphone, Engeland said.
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.
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