City Hall News / ALTADENA : Ousted Candidate’s Bid to Return Sparks Race

Eights seats on the Altadena Town Council are open for election Saturday, but most of the attention is focused on one seat.

Jonathan Vos Post’s bid to gain a place on the council after he was expelled from his alternate spot this year has drawn four opposing candidates.

That is considerable campaign action in an election where six of the eights seats are occupied by unopposed candidates; in fact, five of the 13 people running for office are vying for the one seat that represents Census Tract 4602.

The 14-member council in the unincorporated hillside community is an informal advisory body to the County Board of Supervisors.

“Vos Post has brought a lot of attention to this census tract for all the wrong reasons,” opponent Camille Dudley said.

At a March council meeting, sheriff’s deputies arrested Vos Post and took him to jail after he refused to stop a speech in which he accused the body of corruption and election fraud, which he contends denied him a full seat.

Vos Post was elected as a council alternate, a substitute representative, last May after losing his bid to represent the tract to Craig Hall. Vos Post was suspended in October after he continuously accused the council of election fraud and attempted a citizen’s arrest on a woman by letting the air out of her van’s tires.

In February, a divided council removed him from office for violating the terms of his suspension, which prohibited him from associating himself with that body for six months.

Vos Post’s opponents include local Little League baseball coach Stacy Manning, retiree Francis Crunk, former forest service employee Gus Edmondson and ex-Councilwoman Dudley.

Vos Post, 41, a local computer business owner and publisher, said he has been targeted by some council members because of his outspoken opposition to the way they run the body. “My suspension, expulsion and arrest were all attempts to restrict my 1st Amendment rights to free speech and to stop me exposing corruption and election fraud,” he said. The district attorney’s office’s decision not to file charges after his arrest was a victory for free speech, he said.

Vos Post said that as a council member he would fight to get back $100,000 to $550,000 for Altadena’s county parks that has been spent at Castaic Lake in recent years and be a voice for cleaning up garbage on the streets of Altadena.

He said he would continue to expose what he alleges to be corruption among officials. In the past he has alleged that present and former members are linked to narcotics, among other things.

“The kind of free speech that Vos Post constantly attempts at the Town Council is the same kind of free speech that is illegal if you are in a building and yell “Fire” when there is no fire,” wrote Cue MacKenzie, a retiring council member who is overseeing the election, in a letter to the local press.

Dudley, 48, a city of Los Angeles building and safety department employee, said keeping the Altadena Sheriff’s station open and revitalizing the business area along Lincoln Avenue are her priorities. Dudley is also co-chairwoman of the Friends of La Vina, a group opposed to a controversial 280-home hillside development at the end of Lincoln Avenue.

Manning, 29, a bookkeeper and part owner of Manning Press, said maintaining services at the county’s Farnsworth Park for the children is her goal along with graffiti removal.

Crunk, 52, a retired engineer, wants to preserve the community and prevent what he calls overdevelopment. He said the council must be the county’s eyes in insuring that zoning laws are obeyed and favors a county ordinance against large developments on relatively small lots.

Edmondson, 67, a retired U.S. Forest Service official, said neighborhood safety would be his major issue if elected. A Neighborhood Watch leader, he said that lobbying to keep the sheriff’s station is the most important way to ensure that.

The other competitive race is in Tract 4603, where education activist Millie Lee faces Council Alternate Tom Cartwright.