Liquor Law Meeting Ends in Screaming Match : Confrontation: San Fernando City Council abruptly adjourns meeting with group that seeks to limit future licenses for sale of alcoholic beverages.

A dispute over how to control proliferation of liquor sales outlets erupted into a screaming match that ended a meeting Monday night between the San Fernando City Council and a citizens group.

“We’re not going to be intimidated by mob rule,” Councilman Doude Wysbeek declared as he motioned that the meeting be ended because of a confrontation between council members and about 25 members of Valley Organized in Community Efforts, or VOICE.

VOICE is a citizens group dedicated to passage of a law limiting the city to only one more liquor outlet. The group also wants to prohibit alcohol sales permits for stores, restaurants and bars located within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, parks or another liquor sales outlet.

The confrontation began after VOICE member Raul Godinez addressed the council at a public “workshop” convened by the council to hear comments on liquor sales problems.

When Mayor Jose Hernandez told Godinez that he had used up his allotted three minutes, Godinez continued to speak, demanding that council members be polled immediately as to whether they would vote for the VOICE-backed liquor ordinance at a meeting next week.

The alternative--which VOICE opposes--would be to establish guidelines, using the zoning permit process to apply them, to control liquor sales outlets.

When other council members asked Godinez to step down, fellow VOICE members yelled “Let him finish.”

The mayor told Godinez he was not going to put the council on the defensive by allowing them to be polled, that the issue would be decided next week.

The VOICE group began to yell “No guidelines.” Wysbeek then told the crowd, “This is a democracy,” and the council voted to adjourn.

San Fernando, with a population of 23,850 in 2.4 square miles, has 32 stores that sell liquor and 23 restaurants and bars that serve alcohol, more than twice the county average of one liquor outlet for each 1,000 residents.

There has been a moratorium on permits to establish new liquor sales outlets since last July. It expires Feb. 28.

The mayor said in an interview that the City Council will probably decide at its next meeting to extend the moratorium another five months to allow time for the processing of an ordinance.

If the City Council does decide next week to extend the moratorium, the process for the ordinance to become law could take at least three months, said Howard Miura, San Fernando’s director of community development.

“If you’re going to have an ordinance, we have to extend the moratorium,” said Miura.

Since only two extensions are allowed, he said the next one would be the last.

“It has to go through the planning commission, then back to City Council for discussions,” he said. “If we started March 3, we could have an ordinance on the books by June 3, 1993, if everything falls into place.”

Monday’s workshop was the third such meeting since last June, said John Becker, chairman of the San Fernando chapter of VOICE.

During a previous public workshop, VOICE presented a proposed ordinance to the council, which passed it along to the city attorney, who returned it Nov. 23 to the council for action.

“We didn’t hear from the City Council, and we asked for a third workshop,” Becker said.

Although City Council members have not publicly dismissed the idea of controlling liquor sales by enacting such an ordinance, they have instead proposed alternative guidelines which would prohibit granting alcohol sales licenses to stores within 600 feet of a school, or 300 feet of a church.

“The city has always mentioned guidelines,” said Becker. “Guidelines have no teeth. We want something that is really going to set down some rules that people can follow.”

“Guidelines are unacceptable to us,” said Lenor Ramirez, a VOICE member, in an interview.

Members of VOICE argue that guidelines would be more difficult to enforce than an ordinance.

Councilman Wysbeek said, however, that liquor outlets are limited to commercial zones and the city already controls the establishment of new ones through issuance of conditional use permits.

“Somebody can’t just open a bar,” Wysbeek said, without getting a permit after “a public hearing by the planning commission.” An ordinance would weaken that process, he argued.

“If you establish an ordinance, you eliminate the public hearing process . . . the public would no longer have input.”

Angry City Council members said after the disrupted meeting that VOICE members were disrespectful.

“They all want due process, but they have no respect for due process,” said Wysbeek. “That’s the saddest part.”