Council Lifts Alcohol Ban at City Beaches : Cost: Action is aimed at avoiding a referendum that would have cost $450,000, but members say they hope to resurrect some of the controversial restrictions.

Unwilling to spend nearly half a million dollars for a special referendum, the San Diego City Council on Monday rescinded a controversial ban on alcohol consumption at city beaches and parks.

By a unanimous vote, with Councilman Bob Filner absent, the council overturned the ban it had approved in February in an effort to curtail crime and rowdiness stemming from excessive drinking at area beaches and parks.

However, council members made it clear they hope to resurrect some restrictions on alcohol use at city beaches and parks, perhaps as soon as this summer. In addition, the issue may eventually appear before voters on the June, 1992, citywide ballot, when the cost would be only a fraction of what it would have been this fall.

During Monday’s debate, the council emphasized that its action reflected not dissatisfaction with the ban itself, but rather a desire to avoid the estimated $450,000 cost of a special fall election that otherwise would have been necessary.

“The price of democracy is not cheap, that’s for sure,” Councilwoman Judy McCarty said.

By collecting nearly 30,000 valid voter signatures on anti-ban petitions this spring, opponents qualified the issue for the ballot, leaving the council with two major options: put the issue on the ballot within the next 11 months, or simply rescind the measure.

The only city election scheduled during the 11-month period, however, is this fall’s council district primaries, which cover only four of the city’s eight districts. To reach the other half of the city’s electorate would have cost about $450,000, City Clerk Charles Abdelnour told the council Monday.

In light of the city’s severe fiscal constraints, the council opted for the less expensive alternative.

“I don’t believe we should be placing this on the ballot . . . if it’s going to cost us a half-million dollars,” Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer said.

However, with the exception of Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who opposes the ban on the grounds that existing laws are sufficient to control public drunkenness, the council members characterized Monday’s action as only a temporary setback in their effort to control a problem that Councilman Ron Roberts likened to “an attack of the locusts that descends on the beaches.”

At Wolfsheimer’s suggestion, city administrators and attorneys will study one alternative under which limited drinking “nodes” would be created on beaches in Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and La Jolla.

Comparing her plan to the “combat zones” where other cities have attempted to limit activities such as adult bookstores, Wolfsheimer argued that limiting drinking to certain beach areas would make it simpler for police to monitor the areas and arrest offenders.

The council’s action came after several public speakers pointedly criticized O’Connor’s opposition to the ban.

“You said the laws are adequate to control the problem, but they’re not,” said Bob Moore of Mission Beach. “You failed us.” As O’Connor glared at him, Moore added: “You’re indignant, and that’s fine. I am, too. Stamp your little foot all you want, Mayor.”

When another speaker argued that the council has failed to provide sufficient funding for police to address the beach drinking problem, the mayor dispatched an aide to gather statistics that she used to attempt to refute that assertion. Minutes later, O’Connor noted that in fiscal 1985, the year before she became mayor, the city spent $81 million on police, a figure that has grown to $153 million during the current fiscal year.

Opponents of the ban, however, were gratified by Monday’s action, which they argued rectified “an outrageous infringement” on individual rights.

“The ban was an overkill,” said Linda Jo Hardison of the People to Ban the Ban Committee, the group that, financed largely by local beer distributors, helped qualify the issue for the ballot. “There’s no denying there’s a problem. But there has to be a better, more reasonable way of solving it.”