Cypress deadlocks on seeking info related to allegations against its city manager
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The Cypress City Council held a special meeting on Monday in the wake of misconduct allegations that have hounded City Manager Peter Grant for the past month.
The panel discussed whether to direct City Atty. Fred Galante to turn over any documents related to possible complaints made by Doug Dancs, a former Public Works director who called for Grant’s firing during an April 28 council meeting after he accused him of unspecified “unlawful acts.” Galante interrupted Dancs when he spoke out on April 28 and called his brief comments “inappropriate” while cautioning that they should not be made in a public setting.
The agenda item Monday also called for the full report of any investigation and other related documents.
“We’ve got a very simple choice today,” said Mayor David Burke, who called the special meeting. “We can choose to bury our heads in the sand, engage in willful ignorance about alleged misconduct and put even more of our residents’ tax dollars at risk. Or we can take the other path, and choose to be responsible leaders who handle accusations and misconduct appropriately.”
After less than 30 minutes of deliberation, the council deadlocked on a 2-2 vote.
Doug Dancs, a former Cypress public works director, called on Cypress City Manager Peter Grant to be fired during Monday’s City Council meeting where Grant was honored for his service.
Mayor Pro Tem Leo Medrano was not in attendance. Several people TimesOC spoke with saw Medrano attend a Hubert H. Humphrey Democratic Club meeting at a Cerritos IHOP at the same time as the special meeting.
Medrano did not return a TimesOC request for comment by press time.
Burke considered continuing the discussion to a future meeting when Medrano could participate, but his council colleagues Bonnie Peat and Scott Minikus wanted to press forward.
Questions surrounding Dancs’ allegations, separation agreement and what may have preceded his departure continued to be made by concerned residents at the special meeting.
Peat asked speakers addressing the City Council to identify whether they lived in Cypress or not, a request Burke did not endorse.
Most of the speakers, like Paul Kokkinos, noted themselves as Cypress residents anyway.
“Our city is a wonderful place to live, and, overall, the city operates in a solid way,” said Kokkinos, who is a Republican supporter of the mayor. “Mr. Grant has a significant amount of supporters. But none of this matters. What matters is a previously secret $183,000 separation agreement with Doug Dancs that has now been surrounded by a serious — and let’s call it for what it is — cover up.”
Minikus, when serving as mayor, signed Dancs’ separation agreement in October.
The document, which is a public record, included a confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement but also allowed Dancs to discuss “information about unlawful acts in the workplace.”
David Loy, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, reviewed a copy of the agreement provided to him by TimesOC.
“Nothing prevents Dancs from talking about allegedly unlawful acts in the workplace in any form that he wishes, be it at a city council meeting, on social media, in a newspaper or to law enforcement,” he said. “If it turned out that he was wrong and the facts that he shared were absolutely false, the city could potentially say that he breached the contract, but that’s not grounds, as I see it, for prior restraint.”
During the special meeting, Minikus claimed that Burke, like others on council last year, was privy to the circumstances surrounding Dancs’ agreement and criticized his fact-finding push as political theater.
“Your only intention here is to get the information and then leak it out to your friends at the L.A. Times,” Minikus told Burke. “You’re so incredibly unethical in pulling this forward when it’s already been settled and done.”
Despite the fact she was serving on the panel at the same time as the separation agreement with Dancs was made, Frances Marquez, who left the City Council in December, stated after Dancs’ made the allegations on April 28 that she had no knowledge of his separation agreement. That Minikus and others apparently did, she argued, only serves to bolster her legal claims against the city for being singled out and retaliated against during her term of office.
“As I stated in my pending lawsuit in federal court, I have been very clear that I have been unlawfully treated differently than my colleagues,” she said in a statement to TimesOC.
The special meeting, scheduled for May 19, will seek to direct City Atty. Fred Galante to produce records possibly related to former Public Works Director Doug Dancs’ misconduct allegations against City Manager Peter Grant.
Prior to the special meeting, TimesOC filed a public records request for any documents related to misconduct or harassment claims involving Dancs and Grant. Cypress had not formally acknowledged receiving the request as of press deadline.
Dancs could not be reached for comment.
Peat spoke against directing Galante to provide the council with any documents related to the matter.
“If you feel that everything that’s been done was appropriate and handled the right way, why wouldn’t you want the council and our residents to have proof of that?” Burke asked Peat.
Peat acknowledged that Cypress should have put out a public statement at the time the agreement was signed, but that was as far as she was willing to go.
“I think our attorneys, I’ll just say, gave us the information that we need to understand the issue and to move forward,” Peat said. “Do I think [these documents] hould go out to the public? Absolutely not.”
Burke quipped that the vote would resemble the satirical headline of an Onion article.
“City Council votes to keep information hidden from itself,” he said.
Peat disagreed with that framing of the discussion before voting with Minikus against directing Galante to disclose documents.
Burke and Councilmember Kyle Chang voted to do so in the deadlock. If they want to continue the discussion they will have to put it on a future council meeting agenda.
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