Council Met in Secret, Lewis Says : Dismissal: Judy Chu denies the meeting but admits calling two other members to tell them that she wanted to oust the city manager.

City Manager Mark Lewis on Tuesday accused three City Council members of holding an illegal secret meeting before they voted July 22 to fire him.

He said he plans to file a $10-million claim with the city for damages resulting from his ouster.

The three council members--Mayor Betty Couch and Councilwomen Judy Chu and Marie T. Purvis--denied that they met to discuss Lewis’ firing before they arrived at the July 22 session of the full council.

However, Chu on Wednesday acknowledged telephoning Couch and Purvis before the meeting to inform them that she would call for Lewis’ ouster.

She said they replied that they “were willing to go with whatever I decided.”

During the meeting, held later that day behind closed doors because it involved a personnel matter, the three voted to fire Lewis, while Councilmen Fred Balderrama and Sam Kiang voted in favor of the city manager.

Lewis, in a prepared statement faxed to reporters Tuesday afternoon, said Couch, Chu and Purvis “conspired in secret with the city attorney and engineered my illegal removal.”

Such a meeting, he said, would violate the Brown Act, a state law that prohibits most private meetings of public agencies.

Filing a claim is a prerequisite for suing the city. In addition to filing the claim, Lewis may also file a separate lawsuit alleging the Brown Act violation, said his attorney, E. Day Carman.

Lewis has appealed his ouster and awaits an Aug. 13 public hearing before the City Council on the matter.

As proof of his claim, Lewis cited a typewritten letter the council gave him during the closed session that informed him of his firing. He said the letter indicated that there had been some discussion of the matter beforehand.

Chu disputed Lewis’ statements but acknowledged that she telephoned each of the council members the week before Lewis was fired and told them that she planned to call a July 22 closed session to ask that Lewis be investigated or removed.

Shortly afterward, Chu said, she decided to push for Lewis’ resignation or firing. She said she asked City Atty. Anthony Canzoneri to draw up two documents, a resignation letter and a termination letter.

Chu said that on July 22, before the meeting was to take place, she telephoned Couch and Purvis and told them what she planned to do.

“Of course Marie and Betty were ecstatic,” Chu said Wednesday. “They were willing to go with whatever I decided.”

The council suspended Lewis for 30 days, effectively giving him notice, and appointed Chris Jeffers, the city’s management services director, as acting city manager.

Ruth Holton, a legislative advocate for California Common Cause, a government watchdog group, suggested that Chu’s action could be “seen as dealing (through) the back door and just presenting the public with a fait accompli .”

She added, however, that there appeared to be no outright violation of the law.

Lewis, informed Wednesday of Chu’s version of events, disagreed.

“You can’t telephone someone and reach an agreement over the telephone. I’m surprised she admitted that,” Lewis said.

Lewis’ sudden ouster has sparked protests among some Chinese-American community groups who believe that Lewis has been sensitive to Chinese residents’ needs in Monterey Park.

Some Chinese leaders believe that with Lewis gone, the city is less likely to adopt a hiring policy giving preference to bilingual 911 dispatchers.

On Wednesday, about 100 people, many of them leaders of local Chinese-American organizations, picketed in front of City Hall in support of Lewis.

They also criticized council members who do not support the 911 hiring plan.

Couch and Purvis are strongly opposed to the plan, but the demonstrators did not single them out by name.

“Why the sudden firing of the city manager when he was in the process of trying to implement the 911 bilingual program dispatcher?” said Terry Seto, a Monterey Park resident and chairman of the Chinese-American Action Alliance, which organized the protest.

“All these incidents are a reflection of an anti-Chinese, anti-minority and anti-newcomer sentiment in the San Gabriel Valley.”

Another point of view came in a joint statement issued Wednesday by all five of the city’s employee associations.

“We endorse the July 22, 1991, decision by the Monterey Park City Council to remove Mark Lewis from the position of City Manager,” the statement said.

* Related letters, J5