In a mobilized effort to give political cover to the Thousand Oaks City Council majority, letters have recently been published in the Thousand Oaks Acorn praising Andy Fox, Jacqui Irwin and Dennis Gillette for throwing Phil Gatch, our former city manager and public servant of nearly four decades, out on his keister.

Nobody disputes the right of the city council majority to hire and fire city managers, but it must be done legally and handled professionally.

Andy Fox violated Thousand Oaks Municipal Code TOMC Sec.2-1-208: Relationship with Council, which states: "The city manager shall take orders and instructions from the council, as a body only when sitting in a duly held meeting of the council, and no individual councilmember shall give any orders or instructions to the city manager."

Please check out via Internet www.thousand-oaks.org (Gatch-Gate) to view the official documents. The facts are:

•On Wed., March 23, Fox had his Los Angeles County Fire Department secretary set up a meeting with Phil Gatch.

•On March 23 at 5:20 p.m., Fox met with Gatch and instructed Gatch to resign or he’d be fired and locked out of his city manager’s office by the April 5 council meeting.

•Fox insisted that Gatch provide him a resignation letter by March 31. Under these threats, Gatch complied, faxing it to Fox’s LAFD office.

In the letter he faxed back to city hall, Fox edited Gatch’s letter, deleting any references to talking with other council members, as I believe this would implicate Fox in coordinating the coup and giving instructions to Gatch—a violation of city law.

The Thousand Oaks Municipal Code is our constitution and citizens must obey these laws. Is Andy Fox above them? Fox must think so because on April 19, Fox, along with Irwin and Gillette, voted 3-2 against the mayor’s request for an independent investigation into Fox’s violation of these very laws.

Fox, Irwin and Gillette played power politics through threats and intimidation, possibly coordinating their efforts outside of a public meeting and violating the state’s open meeting law in addition to our city’s laws.

Now, the Letters pages of the Acorn have become riddled with contributions from their supporters. What is important for readers to know is that these are many of the same people who have promoted the dirty politics our city has had to suffer through for the past decade.

•They tried and failed to recall a popular slow-growth councilwoman.

•They supported the firings of two hard-working and honorable planning commissioners.

•They reveled in the Fox-led censure of another councilwoman in the unsuccessful hope of denying her a supervisor seat.

•And now they are out in full force to denigrate an admired 38-year public servant, just to give themselves political cover.

They can’t argue with the truth, so they’re trying to destroy those who are telling the truth, and they have "supported" the tactics of political thuggery that have poisoned our town for more than a decade. It needs to end––Thousand Oaks deserves better.

Debbie Gregory

Thousand Oaks

Gregory is vice-chair of the city’s Residents Roundtable and president of Save the Conejo.