SCOTTSDALE, AZ – Scottsdale City Council members yesterday decided unanimously to hold a required referendum in September covering new restrictions regulating local strip clubs that the Council passed in December.The City Council is also considering putting the referendum on the ballot for May, the earliest possible date that the vote could be held.
“My preference is to just get it done,” said Councilman Jim Lane. “The sooner the better. I think the public’s awareness is more heightened now as opposed to a later date.”
Others, including Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross, prefer the September date because the deadline for May ballot arguments is next week, which they say wouldn’t give the public time to consider all the information available related to the issue.
“The election should not be in May,” Manross said. “We would really have to cut corners.”
The council also voted 6-1 against negotiating a compromise with local club owners, which include adult megastar Jenna Jameson, part owner of Babe’s Cabaret. Representatives for the club owners, including First Amendment attorney Richard Hetzberg, who represents Jameson, had urged the council to forge a compromise and avoid the costly, time-consuming referendum process.
“You have nothing to lose,” said Hertzberg. “We think there is plenty of time to work out a compromise.”
“The city and every other affected party could be spared the agony, in a sense, of this kind of municipal election,” added John Weston, a Los Angeles-based attorney who is representing the clubs’ interests in the referendum.
Scottsdale officials, however, see no room for compromise, painting the issue as entirely black and white. Councilman Bob Littlefield said he would not support a compromise, or even a committee to examine the possibility of compromise, because he knows what the strip-club owners want.
“There is no ambiguity there,” Littlefield said. “This is a referendum on lap dancing.”
When the Council passed the new restrictions in December, Babe’s Cabaret and another local club, Skin’s Cabaret, began collecting signatures to force the referendum. In January, they submitted over 8,000 signed petitions demanding the referendum; a minimum of 3,384 signatures are required.
According to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, the signatures submitted by the clubs have at least 5,382 valid signatures out of the total of 8,000.
Council members claim that their new regulations were contained in the city’s original ordinance, and simply had never been enforced. A closer inspection of the original and new restrictions, however, shows that the old restrictions only applied to “nude” dancing, and not to partial-nude dancing.
The city’s new regulations address partially nude dancers, those who wear G-strings and pasties, and thereby applies to both Babe’s and Skin. In fact, in order to totally avoid violating the new regulations, dancers will have to cover almost all of their breasts, and have full coverage of their buttocks.
Club owners have protested that the new regulations would effectively put them out of business, and are a violation of the First Amendment rights of dancers, club owners, and their patrons.
Opponents of the regulations point out that Los Angeles passed similar restrictions, but once local strip clubs gathered enough signatures to force a vote, officials in L.A. overturned the revised regulations.
When told about what had transpired in Los Angeles, Littlefield said, “Maybe we’re going to have a little more spine.”
