Discussion on Catering Boils Over

What began as a discussion about competitive bidding for city catering services has devolved into a food fight among City Council members over personal ethics.

At issue are two proposals by Councilwoman Linda Parks to consider competitive bidding for city-sponsored fetes--including volunteer appreciation days and retirement bashes--and to forbid appointed board members from offering their professional services to the city.

But debate about the suggestions spurred sniping on the dais at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. That ended a string of relatively tranquil sessions in this city, where the usually rancorous council meetings are sometimes called “Tuesday Night Fights.”

On a 3-2 vote, the council majority fried the catering proposal after hearing officials say the city uses more than a dozen restaurants on a rotating basis. Parks had expressed concern that the city favors the Plug Nickel, whose owner was active in the effort to recall her council ally Elois Zeanah.

After her colleagues suggested that she was being vindictive, Parks withdrew a second proposal that would have barred Planning Commissioner Forrest Frields--who also backed the Zeanah recall effort--from bidding for the city’s photography contracts because he is an appointed member of the Planning Commission.

Frields recently photographed the interim city manager for $480 after submitting the lowest of three bids.

By state law, City Council members cannot do business with the city. But similar conflict-of-interest laws are not common for board members, City Atty. Mark Sellers told the council Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the city attorney in Ventura, which has no such law, agreed.

After repeated criticisms from her colleagues late Tuesday night--long after most spectators had left the Civic Arts Plaza--Parks said she had not meant to single anyone out for criticism.

“Honestly, I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings,” she said. “I just felt things should be separate. . . . There are enough photographers in town who could take these [city] pictures.”

That provoked Councilwoman Judy Lazar to respond.

“The concern about hurting people’s feelings that Mrs. Parks seems to feel . . . only occurred after she got plenty of publicity,” Lazar said.

“This is part of a continuing witch hunt and vendetta,” she said. “I hate to say this . . . but people who disagree with Mrs. Parks seem to be the subject of her supposed accusations of impropriety.”

Parks said vendettas have nothing to do with it. She said she is concerned with how the city spends money and will continue to question who gets a shot at city contracts.

“I think there was no more of my being retaliatory against the people who did the recall than one could say the city is now rewarding the people who were participants in the recall,” Parks said.

As the council member who each week reviews demands for payment for the city, Parks said payments to the Plug Nickel--about $7,000 recently--jumped out at her.

Although she acknowledges that her interest may have been piqued because the restaurant is owned by a political foe, Parks said that doesn’t dilute her belief that opportunities should be expanded to other businesses.

So she asked her colleagues to solicit bids for major annual events and also proposed that the city manager send a letter to restaurants inviting them to compete for bids.

One of the criticisms of Parks’ suggestions is that the city already does what she was asking.

“The process Mrs. Parks alluded to is already being followed,” Lazar said. “It has been for many, many years.”

Councilman Andy Fox said, “I don’t see any need for this.”

Lazar and Fox were referring to an April 30 memo to the City Council, in which Interim City Manager MaryJane V. Lazz wrote that the city rotates among a dozen or more restaurants that can deliver to city hall to cater events and meetings.

For smaller gatherings, the duties are rotated from restaurant to restaurant, she said. The city solicits informal quotes for larger fetes, including the volunteer appreciation day, which the Plug Nickel catered this year. Last year, another caterer was used, Lazz added.

“Obviously the emotions were running pretty high,” Parks said. “But if you take out the emotions, take out the innuendoes, the issue was: Do you think that, in a two-week period, you should pay $7,000 on three different events to the same caterer when we could have spent it on different caterers?”

Mayor Mike Markey--who joined Fox and Lazar in nixing Parks’ suggestion--said he was troubled by the “underlying retaliatory issue here.”

“Why was this business singled out?” he asked. “I think it’s unconscionable to use our elected positions to go after one citizen of this city.”

He accused Parks of trying to tear down the city and trying “deliberately to embarrass the mayor and the rest of the council” with her crusades.

Zeanah was not available for comment Wednesday. But after Tuesday’s meeting, she said Markey, as the council’s parliamentarian, wrongly allowed people to gang up on Parks.

“There was an absolute lack of protocol,” she said.

In other action Tuesday night, the council voted to move ahead with development of a vacant parcel next to Civic Arts Plaza--but not without another tiff.

The council wound up approving 3 to 2 a 112,400-square-foot project that would include a children’s science museum, police center, theater, specialty shop, park and restaurants--with the possible addition of a catering center.

But Parks and Zeanah voted no because of concerns about the scope of the project and the results of the telephone poll through which residents picked their favorite options.

“Unfortunately, it was a difficult evening for dialogue,” Parks said Wednesday.