Mayor Gets Council to Take a Dry View : Redondo Beach: The proposed Visitors’ Bureau won’t be allowed to promote alcohol-sponsored events.

The mayor of Redondo Beach, an outspoken opponent of alcohol sales in public parks, has persuaded the City Council to ban the city’s proposed Visitors’ Bureau from actively promoting events sponsored by alcoholic beverage companies.

The prohibition, passed Wednesday at the behest of Mayor Brad Parton during a hearing on the city budget, would prevent the bureau from promoting some of the South Bay’s biggest annual events, including the Chamber of Commerce’s annual Wine Expo and the Miller Lite Superbowl Sunday 10K Run, the largest race of its kind in the West.

Business leaders in the city said the ban would probably not affect attendance at the events but would dampen the bureau’s ability to market the beach city to tourists.

“I don’t agree with it,” said Ernie O’Dell, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the race and the wine-tasting event. “It’s like saying one person’s personal opinion has to be held by everybody. I would never impose my personal tastes on people that way.”

Race promoter Mark Conte said: “It’s like telling the Long Beach tourism bureau, ‘Go ahead and promote our city--just don’t tell anybody about the Long Beach Grand Prix.’ ”

The restriction came about during passage of an increase in the city’s bed tax to fund the Visitors’ Bureau, which has long been sought by the business community as a means of bringing tourism to Redondo Beach.

Whittled to four members by the absence of Councilman Ron Cawdrey, the council deadlocked on a motion to raise the bed tax from 9% to 10% and earmark the additional money--about $150,000 a year--for the Visitors’ Bureau.

Parton, who by law cannot vote except to break a tie, offered to end the stalemate and support the tax increase if the new agency were prohibited from promoting events that involve alcohol consumption or that are sponsored by alcoholic beverage companies.

“I don’t care if people want to drink. That’s none of my business,” Parton said in an interview Thursday. “But I don’t think we should use city money to promote alcohol or cigarettes--or television, for that matter.”

Parton’s offer was rebuffed initially by Councilwoman Barbara Doerr, who had made the motion to raise the bed tax and who refused to alter it.

“I didn’t think it was appropriate for Brad to impose his personal beliefs on people,” she said in an interview afterward. “We tried Prohibition before in the United States. We don’t have it anymore.”

Finally, however, the council compromised, banning the bureau from funding or actively promoting events involving alcohol, except to publish the dates of those events in a brochure or calendar.

Although the vote was unanimous, some council members indicated that they may try to have the issue reconsidered.

It was not Parton’s first attack on the use of alcohol at city-sanctioned events. Nine months ago, soon after he was named mayor, the 30-year-old “born-again” Christian made headlines with a call for curbs on beer sales at city parks. Although Redondo Beach already bans such sales, the council commonly waives it for fund-raisers put on by charitable and civic groups.

Parton charged that the practice undercut the city’s position and tacitly encouraged alcohol abuse.

Business leaders said they understood Parton’s position but felt that he was going too far. Many of the city’s biggest events involve alcohol or are sponsored by the alcoholic beverage industry, they said.

The Superbowl 10K--which drew more than 15,000 runners and 20,000 spectators this year--has been sponsored by beer companies since it began in 1979, promoter Conte noted, and the city’s Frontier Days, commemorating the founding of Redondo Beach, was sponsored this year in part by Coors Lite.

The Wine Expo, a public wine tasting restricted to people over 21, draws tens of thousands of visitors each year to the city’s Seaside Lagoon, the chamber’s O’Dell said. Beer also is served at the North Redondo Beach Business Assn.’s annual two-day Springfest, which this year drew about 20,000 people to Aviation Park.

Typically, corporate sponsors make large donations to underwrite the cost of such events in return for banners, T-shirts, official designations and other forms of advertising. At this year’s Long Beach Toyota Grand Prix, for example, Coors was named the race’s official beer in exchange for the brewer’s corporate sponsorship.

At the Superbowl 10K, the Miller Brewing Co. was among five corporations donating $10,000 each. Its logo appeared on the start and finish lines, cups of Miller Lite beer were handed out to the runners, and Miller advertisements were prominently displayed on banners where spectators were gathered.

“I understand the mayor’s thought patterns, but it’s not as if we make a habit of doing advertisements for alcohol,” O’Dell said. “It’s just one of those truths of life that . . . we need those funds to offset the cost of putting on those events.”

But Parton noted that brewers aren’t the only corporate sponsors available and pointed to Newport Beach, which in 1986 banned alcohol and tobacco firms from sponsoring any bicycle or footrace in the city. This year, Parton said, the city’s annual Corona del Mar 5K Scenic run was sponsored by a supermarket chain.

Doerr, meanwhile, said the matter is far from settled, adding that the council could vote again as soon as next week on the bed tax increase and other ordinances relating to the Visitor’s Bureau.

“It’s all still rather conceptual, and . . . it has to come up again because none of the specifics have been worked out,” Doerr said. “Who knows what will happen on Tuesday night, when we have full council present?”