Ventura OKs Competing for City Work While Serving on Panel : Government: Action stems from resignation of a planner who accepted a contract to redesign a plaza.

Ventura residents may serve on city commissions and committees at the same time they are competing for contract work with the city, council members said this week.

Two weeks after landscape architect Curtis Stiles resigned from the city’s Planning Commission, a majority of council members said they should not have forced him to leave the city board just because he had contracted with Ventura to design a downtown plaza.

Furthermore, four of the seven council members decided Monday night that no one will be asked to leave a committee post in the future because of conflict of interest problems--unless the state attorney general rules that his or her particular situation violates state law.

“I think I voted the wrong way, and I want to apologize for that,” Councilman Jack Tingstrom said. “I would hate to see us lose the talent of the business community because we state that (a situation creates) a conflict of interest.”

Ventura council members had considered adopting a strict conflict of interest policy that would prohibit city appointees from accepting city work. Such a policy would have gone beyond state law, which merely requires appointees not to use their post to lobby for city contracts or discuss or vote on a contract in which they have a personal stake.

The council voted 4 to 3 to stay with the standard outlined by the state law, with council members Gary Tuttle, Steve Bennett and Gregory L. Carson opposing.

Tuttle and Bennett said allowing city appointees to take work with the city creates a perception of cronyism.

“I think the perception is equally as important as the law,” Tuttle said.

Carson said in an interview Tuesday that he thought the council needed to send the matter to a committee and spend more time studying the issue.

“I think the council reacted emotionally when it voted last time, and it didn’t really look at the issues this time,” Carson said. “I don’t think we comprehensively looked at the ramifications of (the policy) and how far it would reach.”

Carson added that even those committee members with the highest standards might find their judgment compromised when they stand to gain financially from decisions they make on city boards.

“When you are beholden to staff for contracts, your perspective might change,” he said.

The debate began last month, when city planners asked the council to approve a $25,000 contract with Stiles for the redesign of California Street Plaza.

The area is now a cluster of vacant storefronts at the south end of California Street, next to the beach promenade and across from the Holiday Inn. City officials hope to renovate the plaza as part of an overall downtown redevelopment project. Plans include a new restaurant with outdoor dining.

Staff members had already asked the state attorney general to review the situation, since Stiles served on both the Planning Commission and the city’s architectural review board. The attorney general said the city would not violate state law by allowing Stiles to take the contract and keep his seat on both commissions.

Council members, however, said they nevertheless found the predicament troubling, and told Stiles he would have to choose between the committees and the contract.

An infuriated Stiles turned down the contract, resigned from both committees and stormed out of City Hall. He has since agreed to accept the contract, but says he is not yet ready to return to the Planning Commission or the Design Review Committee.

On Tuesday, other city appointees said they thought the council made the best possible decision.

“If they had voted for a stricter policy, then I probably would have resigned,” said Planning Commissioner and local architect Mike Jones. “Perceived conflict of interest is such a nebulous concept . . . just like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder.”

Jones, who has never worked on a city contract, said he worried that under such a policy even working for a private client whose project came under city review would become a problem for him as a commissioner.