Hesperia City Council delays vote on single-serve alcoholic beverage ban

The Hesperia City Council has delayed voting on a proposed ban of the sale of single-serve alcoholic beverages after complaints from store owners.

The council continued the proposal indefinitely so city officials could study its effects and have more dialogue with store owners, who said they were being made scapegoats for the city’s problems with homelessness and crime.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, Alicen Wong, an attorney for several liquor store owners in attendance, asked the council to delay its decision so store owners could have a chance to develop “self-policing” plans to reduce crime around their stores.

They want “to become engaged in their own activities in their own stores to reduce panhandling, nuisance behaviors” and to work with the city and authorities to halt the sale of alcohol to problematic customers, she said.

Mayor Eric Schmidt called for the delay. The proposal, introduced earlier this month, would have taken effect in August.

“I believe that as we gather more information, we’ll be able to flesh it out, and we’ll be able to come back with a responsible set of conditions on an ordinance ... that would allow us to make a better decision,” Schmidt said.

Councilman Russell Blewett, who proposed the beverage ban to curb homelessness and panhandling, told the mayor, “The only flushing is you’re flushing it down the toilet.”

Blewett said the town has too many liquor stores and that he did not “want Hesperia to become another South Central L.A. or an East Los Angeles or a Pomona or a San Bernardino” — places he described as also having too many such stores.

Blewett said at the meeting that he “did a little field test” recently and sat outside three liquor stores.

“I had my little field glasses out there, and I watched,” he said. At two of the stores, he saw people come out of the store, open a beverage and begin drinking in the parking lot, he said.

Blewett said that although he is not a “nanny state guy” and has an “incredible distaste for the state and federal government,” the town had a responsibility to protect residents by imposing a single-serve beverage ban.

The councilman told The Times last week that he doesn’t care if people drink as long as they do it responsibly. He said he does not drink.

Towns that have imposed similar bans in an attempt to reduce crime include San Bernardino and Victorville, which borders Hesperia. Researchers at UC Riverside reviewed San Bernardino crime data and found areas with more liquor stores — including ones that devoted significant space to single-serve alcoholic beverages — had higher crime rates.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

Twitter: @haileybranson