Huntington Beach considers reworking its midnight closing time law for some downtown businesses

The Huntington Beach City Council on Monday will consider replacing a 2013 resolution requiring downtown businesses that serve alcohol to close at midnight when they seek to amend or apply for new conditional use permits.

In March, the council directed city staff to look into making changes to the resolution. Councilmen Mike Posey and Erik Peterson, who together proposed the original item, said the law might hurt downtown businesses.

In particular, the existing resolution may prevent businesses from applying to alter or improve their properties because doing so would trigger the midnight closing requirement.

The new proposal includes a number of changes.

As an example, it would allows the zoning administrator, Planning Commission and the City Council to approve exceptions to the standard conditions of the conditional use permit process, according to a report submitted by City Manager Fred Wilson.

The original resolution allowed only the council to approve these exceptions.

The change would shorten the process for requested deviations, the report says, and strengthen city staff’s ability to revoke conditional use permits if conditions are not followed.

The original resolution was approved to aid in combating the often-rowdy crowds leaving bars in the early morning.

If the council approves the new resolution the old one will be repealed.

Organic pesticides

Also at the meeting, city staff will present the council with a three-month update on a one-year organic pesticide pilot program.

Following the council’s approval, city staff started the project in the western section of Central Park. Staff met with representatives from Irvine to glean insights on how its non-toxic pesticide program is working.

Irvine and San Juan Capistrano have adopted organic-first pesticide policies. The Ocean View School District, based in Huntington Beach, stopped using the herbicide Roundup, which the state classifies as a carcinogen, in 2016. The Irvine and Newport-Mesa unified school districts stopped using it in 2015.

Huntington Beach city staff concluded that there are three options.

The first is the continuous use of organic chemicals to mitigate weeds, but further testing would be needed in order to find the “breaking point” that would keep invasive plants at bay without using non-organic solutions, the report says.

The second is to use Irvine’s model: manual labor for much of its weed abatement. As part of this plan, Surf City wouldn’t use herbicides in parks but would use organic pesticides in rights-of-way.

And in the third the city wouldn’t use any chemicals and would manually abate all weeds in rights-of-way and parks.

Cost estimates for the three options range from $540,000 to $1 million per year, though more specific pricing will be known after the completion of the pilot program next year, the report says.

Some community members are rallying behind the non-toxic pesticide issue. A petition calling for the city to end the use of synthetic pesticides has collected over 300 supporters since late June.

Honoring hometown heroes

In other business, the council will consider an item proposed by Councilman Billy O’Connell that would install signs to pay tribute to three law enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty within the city.

Huntington officers Leo Darst, who died in 1928, and Leslie Prince, 1974, and Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Ezra Stanley, 1940, would be honored with signs at Main Street and Crest Avenue, Pacific Coast Highway at Center Signal and Adams Avenue and Beach Boulevard.

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot