By David Rolland
Last week's candidates night for Bolinas Public Utility District degenerated into a melee over one candidate's trailer and his dispute with his neighbors.

Candidate Stephen Simac and Big Mesa residents Arlene Allsman and husband Rick Hall beefed repeatedly at each other, leaving some in the audience bewildered. BPUD manager Phil Buchanan afterwards described the evening as "torture."

Frustrated by the incessant arguing, current BPUD Director Jack McClellan at one point shouted from the audience, "Is this candidates' night or amateur night?"

Former BPUD Director Paul Kayfetz joked later that nobody at the forum knew what the battle was about, least of all the combatants themselves.

Simac is running against BPUD incumbents Jenny Pfeiffer and Vic Amoroso in a three-way race for two seats on the board.

Angry words flared when Allsman began asking her neighbor Simac about his trailer, apparently a source of contention between the two for five months. In the ensuing fracas - with members of the audience being drawn in - charges of deception, threats to phone the county, and threats to phone the Sheriff came from both sides.

Simac declined to tell the The Light his side of the story, but he did say the battle with his neighbors was far from over.

As Hall and Allsman tell it, Simac had been living in a trailer on a 40-by-100-foot lot on Fern Road when they bought the house nextdoor. Simac had been paying the former owner of his neighbors' property for water and electricity.

Simac was expected to pack up his trailer and go, but he didn't. It turns out he bought the lot where his trailer sits without telling anyone. At the same time, he was also negotiating to buy the small lot behind Hall and Allsman on Evergreen Road.

According to Hall and Allsman, Simac was using the name John Golden - his middle name and mother's maiden name - in inquiring about the back property. Simac had said he wanted to grow potatoes on the property or harvest its Eucalyptus trees for firewood.

The pair believe Simac was secretive in his inquiries to the landowner, John Smith, because Simac knew his new neighbors would outbid him for the lot.

In a letter to Smith, Simac explained why was using the fake name:

"I am sorry if you are confused about the name switch, but if you know Bolinas, you realize how inbred everyone can be about their territory. They prevent you from building on it, but [they] don't want to buy it or change it. Open space at your expense."

"He's not only not trustworthy," Hall said. "He's devious. Here's someone who's running for public office, and this is how he treats his neighbors."

The two parties met three times to work out a deadline for Simac's removal of his trailer, but "three meetings didn't yield anything," Hall said. The deadline got moved several times; at first Simac agreed to move in several months, then in several years, and then in one year.

However, Hall said, "We were trying to imagine ourselves living for a year with this character while he is trying to take care of his trailer."

The parties eventually asked Bolinas lawyer and BPUD director Jack Siedman to mediate the dispute, and a deadline of September 16 was set for Simac's move. The day came and went, Hall said, but Simac didn't budge: "He claimed we violated the agreement by vilifying his name."

Indeed, at the candidates forum last Wednesday, Simac charged his neighbors with "saying vile things at the bakery" about him.

Under persistent questioning from his neighbors, Simac shot back, "Look at your own living situation [for county code violations], and shop downtown once in a while."

The couple said they are fairly certain they have no code violations. "We think it's a big bluff," Hall said.

Simac in turn said there is nothing illegal or unethical about his negotiating with a property owner under his own or any other name.

He urged voters to "watch what I do and not what I say."

Allsman volleyed, "Your actions speak far louder than your rhetoric."

Moderator Howard Dillon tried to steer the discussion back to roads, drainage, septic problems, and other district issues, but had little luck. The subject of Simac's trailer kept popping up.

Dillon later said he couldn't keep the meeting under control, in part because he had no idea what the dispute was about.