Residents and voters of Thousand Oaks have every right to be infuriated over what happened last Friday night. By a 3-1 vote, our city council acted irresponsibly and selfishly regarding the democratic process.

Our illustrious city council in its infinite wisdom has decided that three council members know better than the people of Thousand Oaks who should sit in the council seat vacated by Ed Masry, who resigned earlier last week due to health reasons. He died five days later. He wanted an election to decide his replacement.

The same city council that in a matter of minutes found a quartermillion dollars to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina suddenly can’t quite scrape up $178,000 to fund a special election to let the people decide who should sit on our city council. If Masry only had a year to serve, it might have made sense. But he won reelection 13 months ago. He had three more years to serve.

So the city council (or more accurately, Andy Fox, Dennis Gillette and Jacqui Irwin) will handpick their anointed one, the person who will try to take the place of Masry.

Instead of a popular vote in a public election, which Masry preferred, incumbent officeholders will decide.

This is an insult to the taxpayers of Thousand Oaks and a slap in the face of democracy. Our hats are off to Councilmember Claudia Bill de la Peña for doing the right thing. Although her microphone on Channel 10 mysteriously malfunctioned at the precise moment it happened, she called for a special election. It’s pathetic that no other council member had the guts to stand with her.

The financial concerns are poppycock. The city has plenty of money or it wouldn’t have been so generous in the aftermath of Katrina. The council has decided to ignore the people and use a power play to select Masry’s successor. Representative government in Thousand Oaks obviously means nothing to the council majority.

A special election should have been mandatory. Even worse, the council quickly conducted an emergency meeting two days after Masry’s resignation to do their dirty work, and then they only allowed a week for the application process. Not only was it a contemptible decision, it was a rush to judgment.

The public should express its outrage. The rights of the people have been sacrificed to the egos of three incumbents.

The supporters of Fox, Gillette and Irwin—and everyone else in the city of Thousand Oaks—should be embarrassed, sad, angry and depressed.