City Asked to Bar Hiring Appointees

City Councilwoman Linda Parks is urging her colleagues to bar the city from hiring members of appointed city boards for professional services.

Her concerns revolve around Planning Commissioner Forrest Frields, a photographer sometimes employed by the city to snap pictures of elected leaders for official use.

“It is certainly within the legal rights of board members to offer their services and for the city to hire them for their professional services,” Parks wrote in a memorandum to her colleagues.

Even so, she wrote, “the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided.”

A longtime Thousand Oaks resident who makes a hobby out of tracking the city’s growth, Frields said Parks’ request is nothing more than petty politics stemming from “a personal vendetta.”

“I don’t see where paying me to be a planning commissioner and paying me to be a photographer is any conflict,” said Frields, who makes about $4,500 a year on the appointed board. “When I do get paid, it’s less than the going rate. I can’t conjure up any misappropriation of funds.”

The proposed policy would be unnecessary, and possibly discriminatory, he argued, because he knows of no other board member who does any work for the city. But Frields said he would abide by the council’s decision.

To Parks, the arrangement with Frields seems strange.

“It just doesn’t seem that you should be paid for your professional services at the same time you’re supposed to be an independent arbiter of city decisions,” she said.

Frields’ recent payments from the city include $480 for taking photographs of the new interim city manager and a council member, and $200 for a photo album of pictures from the former city manager’s retirement party.

Frields said he bid only for the right to photograph city officials. The city approached him to initiate the sale, he said.