MONTEREY PARK : Two Measures Kept Off Ballot

The Monterey Park City Council this week refused to put two measures on the ballot, one on whether to allow a card club in the city, the other on whether keep the city’s ban on billboards. Council members cited the cost of special elections, and said the billboard ban was already moving toward the ballot through the initiative process.

“If (the measures) are to be placed on the ballot, the registered voters of the city” should be the ones to do it, Councilman Francisco Alonso said. “I don’t believe at a price tag of between $65,000 and $90,000 (that) a special election might cost, that we should be shortcutting the process.”

But Mayor Judy Chu, the only council member to voice support for a billboard vote, said it would be cheaper to put the billboard ban on the June ballot with community college elections than to hold a special election. The initiative clearly will gain the signatures needed to force an election, she said.

Monterey Park has a 5-year-old ordinance banning billboards. But in December a coalition called Residents Against Billboards launched a petition drive to get the issue on the ballot in anticipation of the council overturning that ban.

Card clubs are also currently banned in the city. After a public outcry in 1993, the council rejected an election to lift that exclusion. A developer, BCTC Development of Los Angeles, which had proposed a club, then abandoned the effort after the vote.

More than 200 residents attended the meeting Monday night, most in support of the billboard ban and opposed to allowing card clubs.