MISSION VIEJO : Panel Grapples with Adult-Business Laws

After a year of preparation, Mission Viejo’s proposed laws regulating adult businesses will go before the City Council on Monday.

City officials have decided to separate the proposed adult business law into three parts and look at them as individual ordinances.

“The longer we looked at this, the more complex it got,” said Planning Commissioner Sherri Butterfield. “The fact that our (Assistant City Atty. John Cavanaugh) ended up breaking (one law) into three ordinances suggests the complexity of this issue.”

One ordinance will attempt to control any influx of adult businesses by limiting them to four areas in the city--off El Toro Road just north of Marguerite Parkway; Maquina and Acero; Obrero Drive and Via Fabricante and Crown Valley Parkway and Los Altos. No more than nine adult businesses will be permitted in the city.

The other ordinances will make topless dancing illegal in Mission Viejo and regulate massage parlors by requiring masseuses to be certified professionals with at least 100 hours of training.

City officials have also spent the past year educating people on several occasions in protest of the regulations.

“That’s partially what has made this process so difficult,” said Butterfield, who, along with the rest of the commission and city staff, worked on the ordinance throughout 1993. “Just as we would get one roomful educated about the ordinance, the next roomful would come in. It feels like we’ve started over on the education process about five times.”

Many residents have called for a city ordinance that banishes all adult businesses. However, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled against communities that have tried to legislate adult businesses out of existence, say legal experts.

As late as September, more than 100 people appeared at a planning commission meeting to protest the proposed ordinance. But at a commission meeting earlier this month, only a handful of people showed up.