To Catch a Chief

Even on his last day at the Civic Arts Plaza on Thursday, Grant Brimhall couldn’t slow down.

He just had to attend an early city managers’ conference in Santa Barbara, then check in on sewer repairs, and attend the open house in honor of his retirement and see the evening performance of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” at which the millionth patron was feted.

Today, Brimhall’s last official day of work, will be spent back at the city managers’ conference in Santa Barbara, schmoozing with his colleagues.

“It’s his last week, and we’ve hardly even seen him,” said Jana Covell, the city’s media services coordinator. “He’s going full speed ahead.”

It is the same pace Brimhall has kept for the past 20 years as Thousand Oaks’ top administrator--a tenure that has made him dean of Ventura County’s bureaucrats. And it shows.

The 60-year-old city manager is widely viewed as the architect behind Thousand Oaks’ growth from sleepy small town to safe, booming suburban city with 14,000 acres of open space and trails, a library visited by hundreds daily and a first-rate performing arts center and city hall.

Since leaving Glendora two decades ago, Brimhall has made his mark on Thousand Oaks. He has been lauded as visionary and reviled as a schemer. But friends and foes alike agree that Brimhall’s retirement is nothing less than the end of an era.

Perhaps on Monday, his first official day off, the father of six grown children will take time to savor his accomplishments, as he did when recovering from open-heart surgery earlier this year.

Certainly, Brimhall will spend part of Monday catching up on the things he has been too busy for this week: boxing up 20 years of commendations, plaques and letters, the glossy photos of his family that decorate his corner office and the statuette of a man teaching his daughter to dance.

“It’ll be a holiday, and there shouldn’t be all that many people here, and I think I’ll still have a key,” he said Thursday. “So I’ll come in, clean out my personal effects, shed some tears, make some prayers and do some rejoicing. All the while knowing it’s the right thing. . . . I’m a happy guy.”

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Although sad to see him go, colleagues gamely tried to match Brimhall’s mood at a going-away party thrown by City Hall staffers Thursday afternoon.

The dozens of city employees and friends who came to Brimhall’s party wore green satin ribbons printed with a silver oak tree and the inscription “Good luck Grant.” They fiddled with chopsticks and listened to Japanese music in honor of the city manager’s fondness for Asian cultures.

And they told their favorite Grant anecdotes.

Former Thousand Oaks mayor Larry Horner recalled how he and another council member interviewed Glendora city officials and residents in 1978 before hiring away their city manager.

“We were in a hurry to leave, because they weren’t too pleased that we were proselyting their favorite son,” he recalled. “They came en masse to a council meeting to light candles when we hired him.”

Chief Deputy Bob Brooks, who had spent most of his career in Thousand Oaks, said he admired the city manager’s even keel even when times got rough.

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“He’s never lost his enthusiasm for the job despite the ups and downs of the political world he works in,” Brooks said, shaking his head. “He has this mischievous sense of fun that breaks the tension.”

Seeming almost overwhelmed by the fuss, Brimhall simply shook hands, accepted hugs and beamed.