AUBURN – The city’s Ethics Panel decided Friday that Councilor Kelly Matzen did not have a conflict of interest when he voted to support building a parking garage at Great Falls Plaza.

However, the panel recommended the city schedule a refresher course on ethics rules for councilors and administrators.

“It comes down to the way the council and the staff work together or do not work together,” said panel member Howard Hymes. If they’d communicated better, the city might have been spared the entire discussion.

“The administrative process bears fault for a serious flaw,” Committee Chairman Denis Mailhot said. “It appears information critical to a City Council decision was not given to all councilors.”

Matzen, a local lawyer, was one of five city councilors who voted to sell $5 million in bonds on first reading at the Feb. 23 meeting. The money is being used to build a parking garage in Great Falls Plaza, near a planned Tom Platz development project.

City Manager Pat Finnigan told the ethics panel she received an e-mail from Councilor Bob Mennealy the next day saying he planned to challenge Matzen’s Feb. 23 vote before the final vote on March 1.

Mennealy argued that Matzen’s firm lists developer Pasquale Maiorino as an associate. Maiorino is also a partner of developer Platz.

City attorney Pat Scully reviewed Matzen’s connection to Maiorino before the March 1 vote and determined there was no conflict, Finnigan said. After the vote passed by a 5-2 margin, Mennealy, Councilor Belinda Gerry and 68 Auburn voters signed a petition to have the matter formally investigated by the Ethics Panel.

The panel found that city staff told Matzen and Mayor Normand Guay about the legal opinion but did not tell other city councilors.

“At least two councilors and 68 registered voters did not have that opinion,” Mailhot said. “That information was available and should have been shared.”

Mailhot suggested that the city acknowledge the error publicly, and panelists agreed that the Ethics Committee should have been involved before the councilors voted.

“It comes down to a matter of timing,” said the Rev. Frank Murray, a member of the committee. “We are all uneasy conferring on this topic now, when the votes have all been settled. The intervention this board is designed to do works best if it’s done before a vote is taken.”

Mailhot said he would write a formal draft of the committee’s recommendation. The panel will meet again Monday, July 26, to adopt that recommendation and forward it to Mayor Guay.