The Suffolk City Council spent part of its retreat Thursday hammering out a plan to reduce the number of members of the Planning Commission from 14 to eight.

Council members bristled at the idea that the move is being taken as a result of the commission delaying the controversial CenterPoint project, saying it had been in the works since Suffolk decided to directly elect its mayor.

Council wants boards and commissions in the city to mirror the governing body, with seven borough members and a member chosen at-large by the mayor.

For most boards and commissions, the process is simply a matter of adding the new at-large member. The Planning Commission, however, has 14 members already – two for each borough in the city.

Early on in the discussion, some council members, including Charles Parr and Joe Barlow, advocated simply abolishing the current commission and creating a new one with eight members.

Councilman Charles Brown, however, was adamantly against that option, saying it would be wrong to pull members in the middle of their terms.

“Why we can’t do the thing with integrity?” he asked during the discussion. “I am not for pulling my people off. They have not done anything wrong.”

The members who advocated abolishing and recreating the commission said it would make a clean transition.

“I think it would be cleaner if you just abolished it and started over,” Parr said.

However, it seemed like Brown and Councilman Curtis Milteer eventually brought their fellow members around to their point of view.

The apparent consensus – which awaits a council vote – will extend the terms that expired on Dec. 31 until June 30 of this year. At that point, the four council members who just won election – Mayor Linda Johnson, and council members Leroy Bennett, Rob Barclay and Milteer – will each nominate one person, instead of two, to the commission, which would create a 12-member commission beginning on July 1, 2009.

Two years from now, the council members who win election in November 2010 – the representatives from the Holy Neck, Chuckatuck, Cypress and Suffolk boroughs – will each nominate one person, instead of two, to begin service on July 1, 2011. At that point, the Planning Commission will be pared down to eight members.

“That way, they phase out by attrition,” Bennett said.

The council is expected to vote on a new ordinance authorizing the changes at an upcoming meeting.

Members of the Planning Commission receive $200 a month for their service if they attend at least one meeting of the commission during the month.