TIVERTON — The future of the Tiverton Yacht Club has become such a sensitive issue — and the club has touched so many lives — that six of nine Planning Board members found it necessary to ask the Rhode Island Ethics Commission whether they would have conflicts of interest if they participated in any deliberations on the case.

That the Planning Board currently has no active petition pending from the yacht club appears to be a lull in the battle, since the club’s lawyer says it plans to resubmit a request for a zoning change to the Town Council in the next few weeks.

The council would ask for a recommendation from the Planning Board, setting the stage for a new skirmish in a neighborhood war that has punctuated life on scenic Riverside Drive off and on since the clubhouse burned down in 2003 and the membership sought to rebuild.

When arguments on the zoning change are eventually laid out before the Planning Board, five members are expected to deliberate on its recommendation to the Town Council.

They are the chairwoman, Rosemary Eva, Noel Berg, Trish Sylvester, Pat Cody, and Fred Strachura.

Four others have recused themselves: Stephen Hughes, John Raposa, Cynthia Nebergall, and Peter Corr.

Corr, whose parents helped found the club in the 1950s in a Victorian house on Riverside Drive, told the Ethics Commission he believes he is a shareholder who would benefit if the club were to be sold.

Hughes is a member of the club’s board of directors.

John Raposa has not been a member of the club since 1984, but his father, Franklin, is one of three club trustees who have general oversight duties over the board of directors, he has told the Ethics Commission.

Nebergall has been a club member for about 15 years, but has no leadership position in the organization.

Stachura is not a member, but his two young children participated in a Red Cross-certified swimming program open to the public at the club pool last summer.

Sylvester belonged to the yacht club in the 1970s and early 1980s, serving as the social chairwoman from 1979 to 1981. She hasn’t had any involvement with the club for more than 20 years.

In seeking opinions from the Ethics Commission, various Planning Board members described it as a family-oriented organization that focuses on sailing and swimming lessons for children and teenagers, with the swim program open to the public.

The yacht club, with 155 member families, runs a marina with 20 slips on the Sakonnet River, across the street from the site of the former clubhouse. Since the clubhouse burned down, social events have been held under a tent.

Many members do not own boats but join the club to take advantage of the social gatherings and family-centered activities offered by the club, the petitioners told the Ethics Commission. Hughes described the club as a “blue collar” organization.

One of the club’s neighbors, however, has contested members’ benign description of the organization.

David M. Campbell, one of four plaintiffs who won a Superior Court order last summer blocking the club’s building plans, wrote the Planning Board several months ago complaining that he and his wife “have been subjected to abusive behavior” by some club members for defending their legal rights.

“I have found dead animals in my yard and nails in my driveway,” he wrote.

“Verbal abuse, profanity, obscene gestures and threats of physical harm and property damage,” he continued.

“When things were at their worst, I could not walk my dogs down Riverside Drive without anticipating a hateful encounter,” Campbell wrote.

While some club members “have been quietly sympathetic,” Campbell wrote, he did not believe that any Planning Board member who also belonged to the yacht club “would not automatically favor the (club) position or else fear being ostracized.”

By the time Campbell wrote to Eva in December, Hughes had already obtained a decision from the Ethics Commission saying he should not deliberate on the yacht club’s petition for a zoning change.

The commission took up the remaining five requests for advisory opinions in January.

In Hughes’ case, the commission concluded that his leadership role as a club director made him a “business associate” with the power to influence the financial fortunes of the organization. That relationship resulted in a conflict with Hughes’ position as a public official, according to the Ethics Commission.

It found that Corr had a fiduciary conflict because he stood to gain or lose as a shareholder.

While Corr stressed that any financial impact would be “inconsequential,” according to the commission, the state’s Code of Ethics requires that a public official step aide as long as such a connection has been established, regardless of its dollar value.

The commission ruled there were no conflicts in the cases of Sylvester and Stachura. Sylvester has had no dealings with the yacht club for more than two decades, the commission noted, and Stachura’s only contact was tangential — the swimming program, open to the public, attended by his two children last summer.

The commission declined to clear Raposa and Nebergall to participate in any Planning Board deliberations on the yacht club, even though a staff attorney had concluded that their associations with the club did not meet any legal test for a conflict.

Commission member Ross Cheit said he felt the commission focused too narrowly on the issue of financial impact. He said he didn’t believe Raposa should vote on the yacht club, according to the minutes of a meeting in mid-January.

Raposa was in a position to approve a zoning option that could save his father money if the Planning Board vote went a certain way, according to commission member Richard E. Kirby.

And Cheit said Nebergall’s participation in Planning Board deliberations would convey the appearance of a conflict, even if there was none.

Neither Nebergall nor Raposa will review the yacht club petition, according to a Planning Board spokesman.

The request for a zoning change was submitted to the Town Council last November.

But last month, Town Solicitor Andrew M. Teitz told the council the application was incomplete.

In addition to the text of the proposed zoning change, the proposal needed a map showing the extent of the proposed zoning change and a circle indicating the properties whose owners had been notified of the application, Teitz said.

His position concurred with that of Campbell, the abutter, who made the same point in a letter to Teitz last November.

Kenneth Tremblay, the club’s lawyer, said this week that the required map is being drawn up.

He has said the proposed zoning change would make a yacht club a permitted use by right in the location of the former club house, which is across the street from a waterfront zone, where such a club is already allowed.

No land available in the waterfront zone, however, is suitable for a clubhouse, he said.

Last August, Superior Court Judge Melanie Wilk Thunberg ruled that the club’s plans to rebuild its headquarters along the footprint of the old one would represent expansion of a nonconforming use because it would increase the usable interior space.

She said the zoning ordinance foresaw the elimination of nonconforming uses, not their entrenchment.

Tremblay, meanwhile, maintains that the town’s comprehensive land-use plan intends marine activity in the area including the yacht club, suggesting that the plan takes precedence over the zoning ordinance.

Campbell disputes the assertion that yacht club conforms to the comprehensive plan.

The club’s request is a “transparent effort” to reverse Thunberg’s ruling, Campbell has said in a letter to the Planning Board.

gmacris@projo.com