Council Rejects Effort to Lift Surfing Limits : Recreation: Newport Beach will keep current system restricting waters to bathers during certain hours, but lifeguards will be allowed to remove ban at their discretion.

After a summer of heated debate over whether to allow year-round surfing at the beaches, the City Council voted late Monday night not to change the current system but to give lifeguards new authority to lift the surfing ban at their discretion.

“I envision this like an ice rink. If you try to mix the hard-core athletes with novices, there may be a nightmare,” Councilwoman Janice A. Debay said before the unanimous decision.

The ordinance would have allowed surfing any time at three four-block areas. Those are between the jetties at 36th and 40th streets and between 44th and 48th streets and 52nd and 56th streets.

Angered that Newport Beach is the only coastal city in Orange County without a year-round surfing area, surfers lobbied city officials this summer. Before Monday’s meeting, the Newport Surf Council, comprising local surfers and the surfing industry, collected more than 2,000 signatures of residents and surfers in support of changing the ordinance.

“The original plan was to have 25% to 50% of the beaches for [year-round] surfing, but we compromised to 8%,” said Dan Horgan, 32, a Newport Beach homeowner and surfer on the Surf Council.

“Now, of the 6.2 miles of beach in the city, we’ve only asked for three, 100-yard stretches,” Horgan said before the meeting.

In comparison, neighboring cities such as Laguna Beach have set aside 12.5% of their beaches, he said.

Since 1966, Newport Beach lifeguards have raised a yellow flag with a black ball in the middle to call surfers out of the water from noon to 4 p.m., June 10 through Sept. 10. Known as “blackballing” among the surfing community, the surf ban was established to separate bathers from surfers to prevent collisions.

Diane Heimstaedt, a mother of two, including a surfer, told the council Monday that her husband recently had eight stitches in his head after he collided with a surfboard.

“As it stands, surfers have the beach 100% of the time for nine months of the year. We have four hours a day for 12 weeks,” she said, urging the council to vote against the ordinance.

But Robin Sinclair, a mother of four sons who surf, compared the city’s recent decision to allow dogs on the beaches during the summer to the blackball issue, urging the council to “place children in as high regard as dogs, or higher.”

Monday night’s decision was unexpected.

“The beaches are an attraction to everybody,” Debay said, explaining the reasoning. “One hundred thousand people a day visit Newport Beach in the summer. We play host to each of those users.”

A council vote scheduled for Sept. 25 was postponed to Monday night to allow time to notify homeowners of the issue.

Some members of the West Newport Beach Assn., a homeowners’ group, had contended that property values in the area would drop because of what they contended was surfing’s negative image. But Kenneth Bonner, a member of the Parks, Beaches and Recreation Commission, said in response that there was no evidence supporting their contention.

Early in August, 120 surfers attended a commission meeting to challenge the current law. As a result, the commission appointed a panel made up of surfers, homeowners and city officials, calling it the Blackball Revision Committee. After two sessions, the committee agreed on the areas where year-round surfing might be allowed, and on Sept. 5 the commission agreed.

Under the proposal, city officials estimated, additional costs of patrolling the beaches would have been about $1,800 annually, with a start-up cost of about $4,500.

But Bill Sharp, 34, who formed the Newport Surf Council, said surfers and the surfing industry already had established a trust account of more than $17,000, which would have covered costs through the year 2000. The Surf Council said more money could be raised through city-sponsored surfing competitions.

Surfing has been regulated since 1958, and until 1961 board surfing was not allowed in Newport Beach during the summer months.

Since the blackball flags went up, there have been three attempts to reform the system. But the city’s Marine and Safety Department recommended against the changes, contending that the current system was the most efficient way to regulate beach users.