A crowd of fans sporting “I support Jacob Foos” buttons attended the Eufaula City Council meeting Monday.

Foos, city manager for the past two years, has come under fire recently by a group of citizens who want the city council to remove Foos and to return to the mayoral form of government.

A petition with more than 300 signatures was turned over to city hall recently, demanding Foos’ firing.

The petition created an uproar among Foos supporters, some of whom took out ads in the Indian Journal pointing out the city manager’s accomplishments.

“Thank you, Jacob, for everything you are doing,” Karen Weldin spoke from the podium when it came to the public comments portion of the meeting.

A round of applause from an estimated 40 people responded to Weldin’s expression of gratitude.

Carol Albro also spoke.

“We are so blessed to have this man,” she said, and noted that since his arrival two years ago significant progress had been made in the city’s infrastructure. “He came in and got it done.”

Also, she pointed out the increase in revenue and the overall appearance in the town.

“But it’s not just the revenue. People come in and say ‘Wow, it’s different,’” Albro said.

Foos was hired as city manager in May, 2018.

Carl Grauberger, one of those who support the firing of Foos, said that the city council’s written agenda no longer has a “public comments” section during which residents can speak for five minutes on any subject they choose.

Now, he said, they can only address matters that are on the agenda.

Grauberger said, “The council meeting tonight is a good example of what Citizens for Change are trying to bring out. With all the signatures we had, instead of council or city manager reaching out to find out what our concerns are they have now shut off our only contact to voice our matters to the council or to the manager by now not letting us put on anything on the agenda or letting us talk for our five minutes at the council meetings. Always in the past citizens had five minutes to speak if they filled out a yellow card. Now our rights have been taken away. What are they so scared of? The truth?”

In response to Grauberger, Foos referred to an opinion by the State Attorney General in reference to public comments. The opinion states:

“Oklahoma’s Open Meeting Act does not require that public bodies, such as city councils, afford citizens a right to be heard at meetings conducted under the act.”

The controversy surrounding Foos arose more than a month ago when a faction in the city opposed to the city manager form of government in general and Foos in particular began circulating the petition demanding that he be fired and that Eufaula revert to a mayoral form of government.

Vernon Hysell, with a group calling itself “Eufaula Citizens for Change,” handed over the petition containing 332 signatures to City Hall two weeks ago.

Neither Foos nor Mayor James Duty would comment on the petition, which stated that “This manager does not represent the views of the citizens of Eufaula.”

It does not go into detail as to what those views are, other than they want to be able to vote every four years on officials who run the city.

A prepared statement furnished by Hysell said:

“We want (the) city council to vote to remove (the) city manager. Council members not acting to remove (him) after seeing the amount of signatures will also be in a recall petition to follow, to remove them for not doing their job. We also are going to do a petition to change the form of government back to mayor.

“We have shown (the) council (that) we have the signatures to get a citywide election. The last city election had 136 voters. It takes 25 percent of that number to get on (the) ballot. We have 332. Eufaula citizens want a city manager, mayor, police chief, city clerk and city attorney that citizens can decide (on) every four years to keep or replace instead of five council members. (The) council has 30 days to vote on this recall.”

Hysell did not attend Monday nights city council meeting.

The petition was rejected by city hall, but Grauberger said a new one drawn up by an attorney soon will be circulated.

Monday’s council meeting was brief, lasting fewer than 10 minutes, followed by Public Works Authority meeting, which also was brief. Both meetings took 13 minutes.

When the meetings ended most of the Foos supporters gathered outside the community center to cheer on the city manager when he emerged form the building.

Weldin, among those waiting for Foos, said the supporters will do whatever it takes to keep the city manager form of government, which she worked hard to help create five years ago.

“It would be going back light years to go back to a mayoral form of government,” she said.