Critics Assail Plan to Loosen Liquor Laws : Alcohol: Officials will wait for results of a community survey before deciding whether to allow beer and wine to be sold with food in restaurants.

For decades, San Marino has been as close to dry as a city can get in California.

Because of zoning laws, there are no bars, and restaurants can’t sell alcoholic beverages. Only three stores have state licenses to sell liquor, and their permits don’t allow drinking on the premises.

Now, a quiet, three-year movement to relax alcohol regulations--for the convenience of residents and the enhancement of the city’s tax base--has generated a bit of a maelstrom in this normally placid, conservative suburb.

The debate has become so impassioned that one of the organizers against any change is invoking the specter of the recent Los Angeles rioting as a way of comparing what happens when a community has slack zoning laws.

“Remember the fires, the violence, the lawlessness, that were too close for comfort . . . in places with weak zoning laws?” asked investments adviser Dick Spencer in remarks submitted to the Planning Commission. “We do not want that here. It is your duty to protect us from outsiders.”

Under the proposal, however, the rules would be changed only slightly. The Planning Commission, as instructed by the City Council, is developing a draft ordinance that would permit restaurants to sell beer and wine, but only with meals.

After considering proposals during the last three years and hearing little opposition, city officials said they were taken by surprise by the well-organized opposition, whose leaders claim to represent the majority of the town’s 13,000 residents.

Citing potential decline in property values, safety hazards from drunk driving and other crime problems, the opposition in recent weeks has launched an intense campaign and petition drive.

Spencer, whose Citizens for Privacy and Safety has gathered 800 signatures on a petition, said: “We want strong zoning laws so we can have unique residential neighborhoods. We don’t want a South-Central L.A. situation. We want a quiet town at night, a peaceful town, a safe town.”

Allowing beer and wine sales could change all that, he said. “Then the next thing we know it’ll be hard liquor. It will change the whole character of the community. Alcohol is the bait for outsiders to come into our town. We don’t want outsiders in our town after dark.”

Proponents, who include most of the city’s handful of restaurateurs, say such talk represents the narrow-minded thinking of only a fraction of the population.

“Not to allow beer and wine is just ridiculous,” said Susan Campoy who owns upscale Julienne, a brasserie, boulangerie and food take-out establishment in the city’s Mission District.

“It’s like Prohibition here in San Marino,” Campoy said. “We have people that come to our shop from all over Southern California,” she said. “I welcome the people that come from the outside.”

Local legend holds that the prohibition was enacted in the 1930s or 1940s out of fear that the crowd from the nearby Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia might want to stop by for drinks and then get rowdy.

Establishments that sell alcohol for immediate consumption are banned outright in the zoning code, along with about 20 other types of businesses, including dance halls, mortuaries and hospitals.

Officials with the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control said cities can’t make such restrictions because the power to regulate the sale of alcoholic beverages lies with the state.

Consequently, the code stipulates that if the ban were ever declared invalid, another section of the code would go into effect requiring conditional use permits for commercial ventures within 300 feet of a residential zone. City officials say all the city’s commercial areas are within 300 feet of homes.

But, in any case, the blanket prohibition has never been challenged in court.

The impetus for relaxing the rules initially came in 1990 when one of nine citywide volunteer committees, studying many aspects of the town’s life, concluded that it would be beneficial “to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages in order to attract desirable, appropriate restaurants.”

Again, in January of this year, a task force on alcoholic beverages issued a report and endorsed beer and wine sales in restaurants.

City Manager Keith Till said city officials determined through a 1989 residents’ survey and a more recent straw poll among civic leaders that within the community “there wasn’t widespread opposition or support. There was just large-scale, apparent indifference.”

But now Till said city officials, confounded by the recent opposition, are repeating earlier efforts at determining public opinion. “The question now is what really is the public sentiment,” he said. “How widespread is the opposition or support?”

Last week, residents received a questionnaire about the alcohol issue.

“This is their opportunity to get back to us,” said Mayor Eugene H. Dryden. “If they don’t get back to us, we’ll conclude . . . that they are giving their proxy to the City Council.”

The council, he said, likely won’t consider the issue until the fall.

Regardless, Spencer said, “The council is trying to railroad this thing.

“We have people that drink liquor, ones that drink wine, ones that drink beer. We’ve got teetotalers and people that don’t even drink tea,” Spencer said. “I don’t drink. But I’m not imposing my personal values on the public. Whether I drink or not is not the issue.”

City officials deny that they are forcing the issue.

“If there is, in fact, widespread community opposition, I don’t think anybody is predisposed to pushing this through,” Till said.

Anyway, he doesn’t think the change of rules would change San Marino very much. “It’s always been just a question of will beer and wine be served in restaurants. Having a cocktail lounge--that’s never even been up for discussion.”