SAN FERNANDO : Council Acts Against Alcohol Promotions

The San Fernando City Council has voted 3 to 2 to ask the city to withhold funding from any group or activity that promotes alcoholic beverages at public events.

Included is the two-day San Fernando Fiesta held every summer at Recreation Park. The city is the fiesta’s main sponsor, providing $15,000.

“It’s just telling the people we will not support any activity that will support” the promotion of alcohol, said Councilman Jose Hernandez in an interview. “It has nothing to do with opposing alcohol.”

Council members Doude Wysbeek and Ray Ojeda voted against the measure.

The resolution was proposed by representatives of community organizations, who initially sought to prevent Anheuser-Busch Inc. from prominently featuring a huge inflatable Budweiser can, as it has done in years past as a fiesta sponsor.

The issue fizzled after community members learned that Anheuser-Busch would not become a sponsor for the July 17-18 event, a decision made jointly with the fiesta’s co-sponsor, San Fernando Civic Assn., in May.

“What’s going on with the City Council has nothing to do with it. I didn’t have the dollars they requested,” Rudy Beltran, a special markets coordinator for Anheuser-Busch, said in an interview.

Beltran, who said the company has been a sponsor for seven years, said it could offer only $3,500 instead of the usual $5,000 as an event sponsor because of budget cutbacks.

But community members asked the council to consider the resolution to prevent such advertising in the future. “To come in and advertise like that is really insensitive,” said Raul Godinez, a member of the San Fernando Residents Council.

Joe Sandoval, the fiesta chairman and incoming president of the San Fernando Chamber of Commerce, warned that the resolution may pose a threat to the city’s business climate and thwart the fund-raising efforts of nonprofit groups.

“The language is such that people will form an image of a community that . . . could come across as being anti-business,” he said.