Simi Imposes Moratorium on Adult-Oriented Business

SIMI VALLEY â€”  Buying time to craft a new law, the City Council on Monday night unanimously backed a 45-day moratorium on all adult-oriented and sexually explicit businesses within Simi Valley’s borders.

The moratorium--which could be extended twice, for up to two years--is the city’s response to a federal judge’s tentative ruling last week. That decision, penned by U.S. District Court Judge William J. Rea, deemed that Simi Valley’s current ordinance regulating the location of adult businesses was so restrictive as to be unconstitutional.

Adopted without discussion on an urgency basis Monday, the moratorium takes effect immediately and applies to adult bookshops and novelty stores, strip clubs in which people appear nude or semi-nude, movie theaters showing pornography, escort services, massage parlors and cabarets.

“The moratorium is a fairly routine practice when we have a problem with an [existing] ordinance,� City Councilwoman Sandi Webb said before the meeting. “This way, we can go back and address the issues the court has.�

To be adopted without the usual public hearing process, the ordinance needed four-fifths approval from the council. All five council members endorsed it.

The moratorium is a “precautionary measure,� according to a staff report prepared by City Atty. John Torrance, in case Rea soon finalizes his decision in the matter. Rea ruled on the issue after a jury deadlocked in May on a lawsuit brought against the city by Phil Young, who has long sought to open a strip club in this conservative city of 103,000.

Unless Rea radically alters his findings, the ruling--which could become final any day--will wipe out Simi Valley’s existing law regulating where adult businesses can and cannot locate.

“If the tentative ruling becomes final, the city of Simi Valley will have no enforceable ordinance on the books regulating adult businesses, and should such a business seek to locate in the city, it could do so anywhere in [commercial areas] with a zone clearance,� Torrance wrote.

The 45-day moratorium allows city leaders time to devise a new law to regulate the harmful secondary effects of adult businesses, such as increased crime and prostitution, council members said before the meeting.

But attorney Roger Jon Diamond--who represents Young in the case--claims that city leaders are illegally trying to ban all adult businesses--at great cost to taxpayers.

Because nude dancing is considered free expression that is protected by the 1st Amendment, cities cannot legally ban such adult establishments from moving into town. But city leaders can regulate harmful side effects of such businesses--namely crime--by limiting where cabarets and adult bookstores can set up shop.

“The [moratorium] is bad from a number of viewpoints,� said the Santa Monica-based Diamond, who did not attend Monday’s meeting. “It doesn’t solve anything. A rational, honest city council would tell its people, ‘Although we would like to ban this business, we have no choice, so we will allow it in this location.’ That’s a politically unpopular, but legally sound, position.�

Should the city eventually lose this battle, Diamond noted, taxpayers would be stuck with the tab: The city’s outside legal fees for Century City-based lawyer Bert Deixler total about $157,000 to date; Young’s legal fees have already reached $100,000, plus any punitive damages.

Diamond and Young are considering a challenge to the city’s moratorium. The city, meanwhile, is thinking about appealing Rea’s decision once it becomes final.

The Simi ordinance that Rea found faulty prohibits nude dance clubs from operating within 1,000 feet of a school or religious facility or within 500 feet of a business catering to youth.

That ordinance’s problems are twofold, he wrote.

First, it allows churches, schools and other so-called “sensitive uses� to thwart adult businesses at any time during the permitting process by setting up shop nearby. Secondly, the way the law is now written, Simi Valley has only three sites suitable for a striptease club such as Young’s proposed Mirages Cabaret Theater, originally planned for a site at the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and Sinaloa Road. That number is too low, Rea found.