VFW Post to Stay Open While Judge Decides Its Future

The embattled Veterans of Foreign Wars bar and meeting hall in Santa Clarita was given permission Thursday to remain open indefinitely while a Los Angeles Superior Court judge decides whether to allow the city to close it.

After hearing arguments, Judge Robert H. O’Brien told attorneys for both sides that he would take the matter under submission before ruling in the yearlong battle over VFW Post 6885, which neighbors say is a public nuisance because of loud parties and overnight camping. The judge has 90 days to issue his decision.

The squabble came to a head in late August, when the veterans openly defied a city order to close the facility. The city had responded to complaints by the Sand Canyon Homeowners Assn. that twice last summer some patrons of the bar had too much to drink and were allowed to sleep overnight in campers in the post’s parking lot.

On Sept. 18, O’Brien blocked the city’s closure attempts. He issued a temporary stay that remains in effect and ordered both sides to return for Thursday’s hearing after VFW attorney Gary Symonds argued that the veterans had been denied due process and that the city had defined the word camping too broadly.

On Sept. 29, attorneys for the city of Santa Clarita went to court, seeking a preliminary injunction in hopes of making the closure order stick.

At the one-hour hearing Thursday, O’Brien raised the issue of the statute of limitations, asking Symonds why the veterans did not contest--within 90 days, as required by law--conditions they had agreed to in March. Those conditions allowed the veterans to operate the facility until Jan. 28 if they banned on-site camping immediately and suspended alcohol sales after Wednesday of this week.

Symonds contended that it was never made clear to the veterans exactly when those conditions went into effect, that the City Council finalized them in what he called a “secret meeting” in violation of California’s open-meetings law. He told the court that at least one city official stated that getting the veterans to sign the agreement “amounts to putting a gun to their heads.”

“They did it under duress,” Symonds told the judge, without elaborating.

“Yes, but they signed it,” the judge replied.

Symonds cited as proof of his argument a transcript he filed with the court quoting then-Councilman Howard (Buck) McKeon as saying to Mayor Jill Klajic during a council proceeding: “So what you are doing by this motion is moving up the closure date 10 months. That might be pretty severe, like putting a gun to their heads and forcing them to sign the letter.”

The document also quotes Councilman Carl Boyer: “I don’t have a problem with it. I just don’t want to hold the gun to their heads too much.”

Attorney Virginia Pesola, representing the city, told the judge that the city did not force the VFW to agree to the conditions, that the VFW had cooperated in working out the wording of an interim agreement.