Festival Size Limit Would Not Affect Gay Event

A proposed size limit on all festivals in Centennial Regional Park in Santa Ana would not prevent the Gay Pride Festival in September but would ban any future event that attracting large crowds, including the Mother’s Day Festival and the Cinco De Mayo celebration, city officials said Wednesday.

Mayor Daniel H. Young has asked the city attorney’s office to draft an ordinance that would prohibit events that attract more than 5,000 people to the 87-acre park at Fairview Street and Edinger Avenue.

“Any crowd that reaches above 5,000 people doesn’t belong in a neighborhood park,” Young said Wednesday. “They belong in a stadium or a facility larger than a park.”

Young said the long-term controversy over the gay festival prompted him to ask for the ordinance.

“That festival made me think whether the park is an appropriate setting for such a large number of people,” Young said.

The mayor also said the ordinance is directed against profit-making groups that charge fees for events held in the park. Those groups, he said, usually have concession stands selling beer and attract a rowdier crowd.

“My motivation is to get beer-drinking events out of Centennial and into some place where they can be controlled easier,” Young said.

City Atty. Edward J. Cooper said the city can set a limit on crowd size as long as the ordinance does not discriminate against any group.

Janet Avery, president of Orange County Cultural Pride, said the proposal reflects the pressure on the City Council from the controversy over the festival.

“I guess if I was on the City Council, I would be scrambling as well to prevent this sort of controversy in the future,” Avery said.

Avery estimated that 4,000 people will attend the festival the first day, Sept. 9, and that about 6,000 will attend on Sept. 10.

But Councilman John Acosta said the ban proposed by Young would be unfair to all the nonprofit groups that have traditionally held their festivals in the park. Only the gay festival, he said, should be prohibited.

“We’re going to hurt these other groups just because we want to stop one undesirable element from having their festival,” Acosta said.

Acosta said he would support the proposal only if it was enacted as an emergency ordinance, which would take effect immediately and therefore prevent the gay-pride festival, he said.

But Cooper said an emergency ordinance can only be proposed if public peace, health or safety is jeopardized.

“I’ve seen no facts to suggest that this proposal should be considered an emergency,” Cooper said.

Serjio Velazquez, editor and publisher of the Spanish-language weekly Miniondas, which sponsors the Mother’s Day Festival in May, said the newspaper plans to look for alternative sites and talk to city officials. The Mother’s Day Festival, which has been held in Santa Ana for four years, attracts a crowd of about 45,000 annually.

“We can do it in other cities. But it has been a nice park to hold the festival. We don’t want to change places,” Velazquez said.