An ethics complaint against City Councilor Sweetie Marbury was dismissed Monday by the city’s Ethics Board. And rightly so, the Ethics Board’s job is to ensure that city business is on the up-and-up, not to find evil intent in every policy question or neighborhood dispute.

Then again, the board should investigate complaints, which is precisely what it did. A complaint was filed after Marbury suggested in a council study session that the required lot size for adding auxiliary dwelling units to existing homes be decreased to 6,500 square feet. That would have increased both density and the number of units in the city. The suggested change was not adopted.

But Marbury’s son, who owns a house in an affected neighborhood, might like to add an apartment and his lot does not meet current requirements. A neighbor complained.

But 27 other property owners could have gained from the changes Marbury advocated. In addition, her comments came at a study session where issues like this are meant to be examined. There was no vote.

Ethics issues can certainly get complicated, and too often distinctions can be drawn so loosely as to be meaningless. At the same time, though, they can also be so tightly construed as to have the same effect.

Should city councilors be required to recuse themselves from a vote on a park or the rec center just because they have children or grandchildren who might use the facilities? Must councilors be disqualified from a vote on roads or road taxes simply because they or their kin might drive on those roads?

There are plenty of legitimate worries over government malfeasance. Nepotism, sweetheart contracts and advancing one’s own pet projects come to mind. But in a small town, simple proximity – in distance, friendship or even family – cannot be enough to sustain allegations of wrongdoing absent other, more concrete, evidence. Anyone likely to be elected here is bound to have a friend or relative in just about any neighborhood. It is a part of small town life.