HUNTINGTON BEACH : Alcohol Ads Banned on Beaches, at Events

The City Council narrowly voted Monday to ban all advertising of alcoholic beverages on city beaches and at all city-sponsored events.

The vote effectively rescinds a beach-use permit for a popular professional volleyball tournament planned for June 29 and 30 that was to be co-sponsored by a beer company.

The Women’s Professional Volleyball Tournament, an annual event on the city beach for the past four years, will not be held there this year because Coors Lite beer is one of its sponsors. Coors was to have displayed a pair of 2-by-10-foot banners at the event.

The council voted 4-3 for the ban.

Council members voting in favor argued that accepting sponsorships from liquor manufacturers goes against the city’s drug- and alcohol-awareness efforts and a local ordinance that prohibits alcohol on its beach. Earlier this month, the Community Services Commission, a council advisory panel, voted 9-2 to recommend that the city reject the permit request for the tournament.

With the cancellation of the tournament, the Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn. stands to lose thousands of dollars in printing costs and advertising saying that the event will be held at the Huntington Beach Pier, Executive Director Roxanne Vargas said.

“This is nothing new, and we have had alcohol sponsors for the event in the past and the city never had any concern before,” Vargas said Tuesday. “What surprised us,” she said of the council members, is that they have these concerns when we have heard no negative feedback in the past.”

The council’s action against alcohol ads is similar to an action the Laguna Beach City Council took last month.

Laguna Beach also has had annual tournaments sponsored by the Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn., but its council rejected the event for this year because of the Coors sponsorship.

Laguna Beach has since the mid-1980s forbidden liquor advertising on its beaches and at city-sponsored events.

Council members who backed the Huntington Beach advertising ban argued their case Monday by citing the Laguna Beach policy and recalling a riot that broke out in Huntington Beach during during the OP surfing championships in 1986. Police put some of the blame for the riot on the drunkenness of spectators.

“It’s very clear that we’re trying to promote a drug- and alcohol-free attitude in our city,” Councilwoman Grace H. Winchell said. “The city needs to be a leader in this. We . . . can’t trade principles for dollars.”

Councilmen Jack Kelly, Don MacAllister and Earle Robitaille, however, voted against the policy. They contended that allowing two advertising signs would not encourage spectators to drink beer and that the issue is not relevant to the city’s drug- and alcohol-awareness crusade.

“I think this is an atrocious misuse of our authority,” Kelly said. “Here’s somebody who gets a sponsor for a positive event, and we take a narrow point of view about it.”