For a few seconds Thursday night, Plymouth City Hall was dead silent as Councilwoman Patricia Fordyce walked to the podium members of the general public use to address the council.

Looking up at her fellow council members and her own vacant chair, Fordyce proceeded to level Mayor Jon Colburn with a litany of accusations, ranging from "dishonesty" and abuse of authority to pushing hidden agendas and the "usurping" of other council members.

In her opening remarks, Fordyce claimed that - rather than confronting Colburn from the podium - she'd attempted to make a discussion of the mayor's behavior an item on the city council's agenda for the evening. Fordyce said that Colburn had then pulled it from the agenda at the last minute.

"This was surprising to me," Fordyce said of her request disappearing, "considering that Jon Colburn has expressed in the past that he had never heard of a city council member requesting an item on the agenda and it being denied."

Fordyce then implied that Colburn had violated the city's bylaws by pulling the item.

"Resolution No. 2005-15 states that the city administrator and the mayor can make a decision not to put an item on the agenda," she went on. "The operative word here is 'and' - because the city manager was out of town. It also states that the person requesting the agenda item be informed of the reason of rejection. I was not informed of the reason."

Colburn sat quietly as Fordyce launched into her main complaint, which suggested that the mayor had removed her from the Local Agency Formation Commission in favor of appointing himself - according to Fordyce, so that he could carry out an obstructionist "no-growth" agenda - and then deceived a committee about the nature of the appointment.

"I was told that (Colburn) had informed the Mayor's Select Committee that the council unanimously wanted him on the commission," Fordyce said, reading a prepared statement. "Since there had been no (council) meeting that I was aware of that discussed this, I felt he was being less than truthful."

Fordyce ended by paraphrasing a number of Colburn's comments in recent years to make the case that Colburn's concerns of population growth might be rooted in a fear of diluting his own family's long-standing political power base in Plymouth. The "old ways of doing business," Fordyce concluded, were killing the city.

"Frankly, I am tired of going places in Amador County and having people ask me what is wrong with Plymouth," she lamented. "I have had a local Realtor tell me that when people come into the office and want to see what is for sale, they do not want to look in the city of Plymouth. ... Even Sacramento Magazine had an article which stated, 'if this is Main Street, we'd hate to see Second Avenue.' There are five council members. How many of your children stayed in the city? ... How many of the people in the audience have children who stayed in the city?"

At one point during Fordyce's speech, Colburn stopped her to point out that the standard three minutes allotted for individual public comments were up, but that he was yielding the floor to her because he wanted to hear all of what she had to say. When Fordyce finished, there was a round of applause from the audience.

Colburn was not in the mood for a debate.

"There's probably a lot of things in there we could address," the mayor said. "But honestly, Pat, I don't think the council should be airing its dirty laundry in public."

Fordyce responded by saying she felt there had to be public accountability for what went on inside Plymouth City Hall. Colburn then said for the record that he attempted to call Fordyce by phone before that meeting to discuss her concerns and that she had hung up on him.

"I didn't just hang up the phone," Fordyce replied. "I said, 'Goodbye, Jon."

On Sunday morning, Colburn told the Ledger Dispatch that he did not want to comment specifically on Fordyce's remarks other than to say they "were not based on facts."

Fordyce countered this rebuttal in a follow-up interview with the Ledger Dispatch by saying Monday that the public could read Colburn's statements to the Mayor's Select Committee and decide if he was being dishonest, as they were recorded in the official minutes of the meeting.

In response to the applause Fordyce received for her speech, Colburn theorized the reason the audience to her side was because they were a pro-casino audience that had experienced two major blows in recent weeks and was upset.

"The reaction was what it was because of who showed up that night," said Colburn, a founding member of No Casino in Plymouth. "The pro-casino people have been really working hard on their end of things, but their cause has now been substantially damaged. I think they're frustrated."

While Colburn didn't comment about his new role on LAFCO, he defended his stance on limited growth during the past election season by saying the majority of Plymouth residents wanted to keep a small-town atmosphere.