Hawaiian Gardens : Bingo Moratorium Enacted

The Hawaiian Gardens City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to extend a moratorium on bingo licenses.

A 45-day moratorium was adopted in June to give the city time to develop a more restrictive bingo ordinance that prohibits games from being played during certain days and hours. Council members said they wanted to avoid a proliferation of bingo parlors in the city.

“Let’s put this on hold until we can figure out how to handle the whole bingo issue,” Mayor Rosalie Sher said.

The 10 1/2-month moratorium adopted Tuesday will expire in June, 1988.

An ordinance was adopted in 1983 that allows bingo games to be operated by charitable organizations that obtain permits and licenses from the city. Since then, organizations like the Elks and Veterans of Foreign Wars have obtained permits to operate bingo games, City Clerk Carol Dorfmeyer said. In 1984, the Cooper Fellowship Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Orange County that runs an alcohol treatment center, set up a bingo parlor in the city.

Although city officials say there have been no problems with these organizations, Sher said a more restrictive ordinance is needed to “make it more difficult for anyone who wanted to go into the bingo business. As it stands now, if someone came to us for a bingo license, we could not rule against it because our ordinance allows it. We need more control over it.”