Members of the Operation Yellow Ribbon committee and family members of local soldiers who are or have recently been stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan attended the town's July 4 morning ceremonies. They were expecting the soldiers' names to be read and honorary pins to be presented to the families.

But when Los Gatos Mayor Steve Glickman simply offered a general tribute to military men and women, some attendees became upset.

The mayor later read the names and handed out the pins at the Los Gatos Rotary Club's tent, but some of the organization's members felt they had still been slighted. Monte Sereno resident Bill Ferguson, whose son Tom is a lance corporal in the Marine Corps, said he was disappointed that he wasn't informed correctly.

"Nobody could step up and say, 'We're very sorry, but this is what the community has chosen to do,' " Ferguson said. "None of that came out at all. I felt disappointed for the officials of the town, because I'm sure they wanted to show respect for what was happening."

Ferguson said when he approached Glickman about what he thought was a change of plans, the mayor became "defiant" and told him there had been no such agreement to read the names.

Glickman said Operation Yellow Ribbon representatives approached him and town staff late in the celebration's planning stages to request the addition to the ceremony. He said the planners decided not to include the name reading because of concerns about the list being inaccurate or incomplete, as well as a desire to avoid making a political statement.

Ferguson and others said they thought the mayor did not want to read the names because he personally opposed the war. Glickman said he did indeed tell Ferguson there was no agreement, but denied taking a defiant tone or making political remarks.

"When he made some statements of a political nature, I simply said this had nothing to do with politics," Glickman said. "It had everything to do with the fact that these things are carefully organized and carefully vetted. We are not going to make sudden changes, regardless of how sincerely passionate the advocates are."

Monte Sereno City Councilman Curtis Wright said he contacted Glickman about a week before the event to see if there was still a way to honor the local troops and their families.

"I asked the mayor, and as a favor to me he decided he was going to do something," Wright said. "Under the restraints he made, he was genuine and he was sincere."

But when Wright told Operation Yellow Ribbon members that he had worked out an agreement with the mayor, they still thought the names would be read in public and were disappointed to learn that was not the case.

"They just for some reason would not read the names in public," committee chairman Mike Frangadakis said. "They did it in a very obscure fashion which is pretty embarrassing."

Frangadakis said a bandleader read soldiers' names at the 2003 Independence Day ceremony, but he approached Glickman to do the reading this year because he wanted it to have a more official tone.

"If I would have known it was going to be such a big deal I would have left the mayor out of it," Frangadakis said.