Parking Law Raises Conflict of Interest Question : Hawthorne Investigating Planning Director’s Role in Measure That Affected Wife’s Property

Planning Director Jim A. Marquez guided into enactment a new parking ordinance that removed an obstacle to construction of a 15-unit apartment house on property owned by his wife and brother-in-law, according to city records and interviews with present and former city officials.

A spokesman for the California Fair Political Practices Commission said the situation appeared to be a potential conflict of interest. State law prohibits public officials from taking part in decisions in which they or their spouses have a financial interest.

City officials, who learned of the situation last week from a Times reporter, said they are looking into the matter to see if discipline is warranted. City Atty. Michael Adamson said his office and the Police Department are investigating.

Marquez, 35, who became planning director in 1981 after six years with the city, denied any wrongdoing. “There is no conflict of interest,” he said. Asked to explain further, Marquez said, “I don’t think I really have to.”

Financial Stake

Throughout months of deliberations on the new ordinance, which was adopted June 11, 1984, Marquez did not inform the mayor, the City Council, the Planning Commission or the city manager that he had a financial stake in its passage, the officials said.

“I hate to think I was snookered,” said Dr. Maurice Lee, a Planning Commission member. Said City Council member David York: “I would have liked to have known. It might have made me alter my vote.”

Without the new ordinance, which permitted narrower parking stalls, the planning director would have had to alter his plans and build fewer units, according to a former Hawthorne building official. The official, Anand P. Laroyia, said he refused to accept Marquez’s initial plans because they violated parking requirements which were then in effect. The 15-unit project might have lost as many as four apartments, according to parking requirements in effect at the time.

Documents, tape recordings of city meetings and interviews give the following account:

The property in question is a deep but narrow lot, 42 feet by 302 feet, at 12617 Eucalyptus Ave. near the intersection of El Segundo Boulevard and Inglewood Avenue. Three units on the site were demolished in November, 1983.

About that time, a parking committee of the Planning Commission, which had been formed in May, 1983, to review parking standards and work up proposals for a new ordinance, began a series of meetings at Marquez’s request, after having been apparently inactive, according to city records, for at least four months.

Requested Meetings

The first of those meetings took place as a result of a request made by Marquez on Nov. 2, 1983. A second meeting was held at Marquez’s request on Dec. 7. The parking committee met next on Jan. 4, 1984, and during the Jan. 18 commission meeting, Marquez scheduled another committee meeting.

City officials said no tapes or minutes of the committee meetings exist. But, according to Lee and Jim Nakai, the two commission members on the parking committee, at one of those meetings Marquez suggested that proposals for a new parking ordinance include permission for narrower parking stalls for compact cars. They could not recall which meeting it was.

“There was a time when the director brought up the fact that we should allow for compact parking. . . . He had examples from other cities he showed us. We were in his office, the three of us,” Nakai said in an interview.

City records show that on Jan. 12, 1984, Marquez applied for a permit to build a 15-unit apartment house on the lot on Eucalyptus and paid $676.65 to have the plans checked. The building permit application was for a 27-foot-wide building.

Marquez claimed in a recent interview that the plans he submitted met parking requirements in effect at that time. “I never received a plan check correction that the parking had to be modified,” he said.

But records of the planning department contradict Marquez’s assertion: The planning department’s plan-check record for January and February, 1984, shows that planning assistant Michael Goodson wrote on Feb. 2 that plans could be approved only if new parking standards were adopted.

Marquez’s building plans met further opposition, according to other officials.

Laroyia, whose job in the Building Department at the time was to review plans to see if they conformed with the building code, said he rejected the plans because parking was not according to code. “I was saying because it was not according to the code, he must move the parking and he must have (fewer) apartments. . . . I say, ‘You will lose some of the parking and you will lose some of the apartments.’ I gave it back.

“I worked in another department so he could not put pressure on me. Marquez backed off. (My boss) agreed with me.”

Marquez said Laroyia’s job involved checking building standards, not parking. He said that parking was checked by the planning department, adding that Laroyia was wrong and questioning why a former official should be believed. Laroyia left his job as plan checker in Hawthorne about a year ago to become the superintendent of buildings and safety for Gardena.

James Mitsch, the city’s chief of general services and Laroyia’s supervisor at the time, confirmed Laroyia’s account of the story. “We were the ones who held up the permit because it didn’t meet the parking requirements,” said Mitsch, who now supervises Marquez.

Gladys Leeman, a retired city employee, who was secretary in the Planning Department at the time, said Marquez was unhappy that his plans were rejected.

“When his plans were not approved, Jim kept fussing and fussing,” said Leeman, who said Marquez began expediting the new ordinance.

“You can leave things off the agenda or you can set them. You recommend they be set for public hearing. The planning director does that. He hadn’t done anything about it for a long time and then when he discovered he needed it, he went ahead.”

The first mention of compact parking in Planning Commission minutes occurred Feb. 1, when the commission was notified that its parking committee had decided a week before that the revised parking ordinance should include provisions for compact parking stalls. Marquez told the commission that a draft ordinance would be ready for the next meeting.

Draft Ordinance

On Feb. 10, Marquez wrote the Planning Commission advising them that a draft parking ordinance was in hand. The draft, he wrote, “represents over 10 months of review, comprehensive analysis and extrapolation of development standards for off-street parking from 80 cities in the state of California. The primary focus . . . is to bring the current development standards up to date by making provisions for compacts.”

The draft said developers could set aside half their parking spaces for compact cars and that stall widths for compacts could be narrowed from 9 feet to 7 feet 6 inches. Stall widths for standard-size cars were narrowed from 9 feet to 8 feet 6 inches.

“It was time for the city to amend the code,” Marquez said last week. “Previous parking requirements, with 75% of the cars on the road being compact, were onerous.”

The planning commission discussed the draft ordinance in detail on Feb. 15, according to minutes of the meeting. Planning department employees could not find the tapes of this meeting or the Feb. 1 meeting, at which compact parking was mentioned for the first time in commission minutes.

Commissioners decided to continue the discussion on March 7 and set a public hearing for March 21.

Active Role

Marquez had an active role in the March 7 meeting. He successfully argued for the deletion of a provision requiring more staff parking at old age homes, sanitariums and convalescent homes. He also recommended adoption of some changes proposed by Northrop Corp. but not others.

The commission accepted all of his recommendations.

On March 16, Marquez wrote the Planning Commission, explaining that departmental reviews required a two-week delay before the commission could send a new parking measure to the City Council. On March 19, Marquez wrote to city department heads soliciting comment.

The first part of a public hearing was held March 21, as scheduled. No one discussed compact parking, according to records of the meeting.

On March 30, Marquez wrote the Planning Commission that the parking committee had proposed some changes in the draft ordinance, adding that if they were acceptable, “it is recommended that the Planning Commission adopt a resolution recommending that the City Council adopt an ordinance pertaining to off-street parking.”

Approved Measure

After the second round of the public hearing on April 4, the Planning Commission followed Marquez’s recommendation to approve the measure and send it to the council.

But after the vote, which was unanimous, Commissioner Barbara Workman was troubled, according to a recording of the meeting.

A year before, the commission had created the parking committee to look into parking problems in small shopping malls, where commercial tenants created a lot of traffic. She contended that the ordinance did not address the problem that the committee had been created to examine.

“Nothing has been done as far as I can see,” Workman said.

Marquez conceded the point but did not want the ordinance delayed any longer.

“I don’t want to hold up this just for that one issue,” he said, according to the tape. Workman acquiesced.

On April 12, Marquez wrote the city clerk, telling him to set a public hearing on the proposed ordinance before the City Council.

The next day, Marquez wrote the City Council on behalf of the Planning Commission chairman: “It is respectfully requested that the City Council initiate action to adopt an ordinance . . . pertaining to off-street parking in residential, commercial and industrial zones as recommended.”

The council was sent a package of information on the ordinance April 20.

Passed Unanimously

The measure was introduced at the council meeting of May 29 and passed unanimously on June 11. On both occasions, there was no discussion of the ordinance, according to tapes of the meetings.

Throughout the months of discussions, meetings, memos, studies and drafts, Marquez never told the city’s ranking officials about the effect it would have on the Eucalyptus property, the officials said.

Mayor Betty Ainsworth, Guy Hocker, who was mayor when the measure passed, and Councilmen Steve Andersen, Chuck Bookhammer and York said in interviews that Marquez did not inform them about his parking problems or say that the ordinance would cure them.

“It was certainly inappropriate on his part not disclosing that he had a lot which was going to benefit from the ordinance. Definitely,” said Hocker, who has abstained from several City Council votes because they conflicted with his private role as developer.

Unaware of Need

City Manager Kenneth Jue said he was aware that Marquez’s family owned property, that they wanted to develop the property on Eucalyptus and that Marquez was working on an off-street parking ordinance permitting narrower stalls for compact cars. But he said he was unaware that Marquez needed the ordinance in order to build according to his plans.

Planning Commissioner Lee, who said he has “a lot of confidence” in Marquez and said Hawthorne is “lucky to have him,” said the planning director never mentioned his Eucalyptus Avenue project or said that it had been held up by existing parking requirements.

Now, the commissioner said, “I am not sure that Marquez was doing it for the benefit of the city or for his own benefit. I would hate to think he was doing it for his own personal benefit.”

Commissioner Nakai added: “I didn’t even know he was putting up an apartment there. Nobody tells me these things.”

The other planning commissioners contacted by The Times said they, too, were unaware that Marquez had any problem meeting parking requirements.

The planning director said he did not inform officials about the project “because we hadn’t received financing and I wasn’t sure we were going to build the project.”

Marquez acknowledged, however, that he paid to have his building plans checked by the city in January 1984.

Pursue the Matter

Councilman Bookhammer, like several council members and planning commissioners, said in an interview that he intends to pursue the matter.

“At this point, I don’t want to say what might happen to Marquez. If it appears that he knew he had a conflict when he made the proposal to the (planning) commission and the council, then a wrong was committed and it should be corrected. . . . Some form of discipline might have to come up. This kind of thing does become a serious offense--if he knowingly made a recommendation to benefit himself.”

Bookhammer said he would seek more information from the city manager and city attorney.

Jue said he did not know whether the state statute prohibiting conflicts of interest was violated. “I will have to look into it,” he said.

The California law banning conflicts of interest says: “No public official at any level of state or local government shall make, participate in making, or in any way attempt to use his official position to influence a governmental decision in which he knows or has reason to know he has a financial interest.” The statute defines financial interest in real estate as a direct or indirect investment of more than $1,000. Indirect investments include those owned by spouses, according to the law.

Revised Plans

Some time after the ordinance was approved, Marquez submitted revised plans, including a new stairwell adjacent to 7-foot, 6-inch parking spaces. Planning department records show that they were approved without qualification on Jan. 17, 1985. Marquez applied for a building permit Nov. 25, 1985, and it was approved.

Marquez defended his project as “something I am happy about. In my profession, it is really good to be building because it expands your understanding of the full dynamics of the business.”

At the construction site this week, concrete slabs have been poured for the foundations and cinder block walls for the parking bays are standing.