City Assailed Over Revoking of Permits

Claiming Camarillo officials violated their own laws, the attorney for a Dominguez Hills cleaning-supply company says the city had no right to revoke the company’s solicitation permits.

The city’s finance director revoked permits from Austin Diversified Products, which sells Advantage cleaning products, after employees were arrested on suspicion of prowling and falsifying documents in November.

Timothy Jones, attorney for Austin Diversified, says the finance director should have provided the company an opportunity to correct problems and give more than one day’s notice before revoking the door-to-door sales permits.

But council members said city code allows time to correct problems only if they can actually be corrected.

“Had it been any one of the incidents, I think that they perhaps could have been warned and could have cured it,” Councilman Bill Liebmann said. “But in a situation where they have already had their license revoked for similar problems, there is a pattern and they have not changed--I don’t see that warning them would have done any good.”

After a tedious three-hour appeals hearing, the council unanimously decided Wednesday to send the matter back to city staff members to prepare formal findings. The council will make a decision Jan. 28 whether to uphold the finance director’s decision or reinstate the solicitation permits.

The president of Austin Diversified, who filed the appeal Dec. 1, said action should be taken only against individual employees rather than the entire company.

Company President Nathan Edwards, however, said he has not terminated any employees who were arrested because no one was ever convicted of a crime.

If permits are not reinstated at the Jan. 28 meeting, Edwards says he plans to take legal action against the city.

The Illinois-based company, which has a regional office in Dominguez Hills, was founded in 1982 and has brought in about $2.8 million in sales tax revenue for the state, Edwards said.

His employees are recruited from Midwestern cities and trained to sell door-to-door products.

Company workers have been soliciting on and off in Ventura County for about 12 years, Edwards said.