City Council Decides Proposed Card Club Is No Deal : Revenue: Officials bow to opposition and keep the plan off the ballot. The city is considering other ways of raising funds.

Baldwin Park city officials are considering a special assessment for police services and a utility tax on businesses as ways of curing the city’s money problems after a proposed card club was unexpectedly voted down by the City Council.

No details were available on the new proposals, Mayor Bette L. Lowes said Thursday.

The council rejected a proposal to bring a card club to the city to raise badly needed revenue after a stormy, three-hour public hearing Wednesday night.

The unexpected 3-2 vote came after nearly 50 people addressed the council, most of them members of the East Valleys Organization, a church-sponsored group staunchly opposed to the card club idea.

Councilman Martin Gallegos made the motion that the council drop plans to hold a special election this fall to have voters consider establishing a card club. Council members Bobbie Izell and Julia S. McNeill voted with Gallegos, while Lowes and Councilman Herschel Keyser supported putting the issue on the ballot.

“The residents were so overwhelmingly against the idea, my true opinion was it didn’t really have a chance,” Gallegos said after the vote.

Izell said he felt he owed it to Baldwin Park churchgoers to vote against the idea since the city’s religious community supported him when he first ran for the council in 1978.

The city has had recurring budget shortfalls that have forced the council to cut 26 city positions over the last three years. The proposed $25 million 1991-1992 budget does not include cost-of-living increases for any city employees.

In February, a citizen’s finance committee suggested a card club, along with a utility tax on businesses and a special police assessment as ways to bring money into the city.

Police Chief Carmine Lanza said Wednesday he did not oppose the card club idea because his research showed Los Angeles County’s card clubs have heavy internal security and do not bring added crime into the communities that allow them.

The Bicycle Club, the county’s most successful card club, generates $10 million annually for the city of Bell Gardens, city manager Donald Penman told the council.

But the East Valley Organization brought about 200 demonstrators to the meeting to protest the card club idea. They arrived in a horn-honking, 30-car convoy, waving signs that said “EVO” and “No Casinos.”

The Rev. James Forsen, pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, told the council his parishioners nearly unanimously opposed a card club in the city.

“It’s tawdry, they fear it. I don’t think any of us are educating children so they can grow up and work in a casino,” he said.

The Rev. Donn Crail of First Presbyterian Church said the city’s image and ability to attract new business would be severely hampered by the establishment of a card club.

“I can’t think of a single thing that could be done in one shot to damage a community as much as bringing in a card club would,” he said.

“We’re very angry that (the council) would even consider spending $25,000 on a special election for something they know our community doesn’t want,” said Lucy Boutte, youth minister of St. John’s church.

A dozen teen-agers from Boutte’s youth group did a short skit for the council, with half of them appearing costumed as card dealers and cocktail waitresses and the other half dressed in hospital garb, in support of a proposal for a Los Angeles County hospital in Baldwin Park.

About a third of the speakers Wednesday supported the idea of a card club, many saying they felt it was the only way for the city to raise money.

“They police themselves, they’re gated and the people at the tables are good people as well as bad, they’re people just like you,” Raoul Reyes said.

Alicia Curbelo said she worked in a card club in the City of Commerce several years ago and found there were no security problems.

“I felt my car was more secure when I parked in at the casino than when it was in front of my own house,” she said. “Let’s take the money and run.”