Veterans Lose Fight as City Orders Meeting Hall Closed : Santa Clarita: The VFW vows that the war is not over, charging a conflict of interest by 2 council members.

Santa Clarita veterans fighting the city to save their bar and meeting hall lost a key battle Tuesday but promised that the war is not over.

The Santa Clarita City Council voted 5 to 0 to shut down Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6885 on Sand Canyon Road in response to complaints from neighbors, who said the hall is a nuisance that does not belong in their residential neighborhood. The council gave the veterans up to a year to relocate the post, and ordered homeowners and veterans to come up with a closure plan agreeable to both within a month.

Veterans, one of whom shouted “anti-American” while a homeowner testified, said they may seek a court injunction to prevent the city from shutting the hall.

“Santa Clarita has some explaining to do” to Cable News Network, which called it the most patriotic city in the country during the Gulf War, said the veterans’ attorney, Bruce A. Nahin.

“From parades to throwing out the veterans,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Nahin said the council’s decision is probably invalid because two of the five council members--Jan Heidt and Howard P. (Buck) McKeon--live in the area and belong to the homeowners association seeking the post’s ouster. Both Heidt and McKeon voted to close the post.

City Atty. Carl K. Newton said Tuesday that neither council member had a conflict of interest because both live more than half a mile away from the post.

McKeon said in an interview earlier this week that he would have preferred excusing himself from the vote, “but I couldn’t see taking the easy way out morally.”

The issue was a no-win situation for the entire council. If it had sided with the VFW, it risked alienating residents of the city’s most affluent neighborhood, where horses and sheep graze behind white picket fences on small ranches worth $400,000 to $4 million.

But shutting down the post ran counter to Santa Clarita’s reputation as a highly patriotic community.

The VFW needed permission from the city to continue operating because Los Angeles County allowed it to function without the proper zoning permit, despite long-running complaints from neighbors of noisy parties, litter and public drunkenness at the post, said Rich Henderson, a principal planner for the city. Neighbors said their complaints did not stem from the veterans’ use of the hall, but from use by people who rented the two-story building for weddings and other parties.

The VFW needs the income from rentals to pay its $800 monthly mortgage, said Skip Johnson, a Vietnam veteran and commander of the post.

The council made its decision after the Sand Canyon Homeowners Assn. presented photographs of litter-strewn streets taken after one of the parties at the post and of signs advertising large parties there. More than 600 people signed petitions supporting the veterans, but the council said the neighborhood had a right to peace and quiet.

“I’m a veteran myself, from the Vietnam era,” said Heidt, who was a lieutenant in the Navy for seven years. But unlike the veterans at the post, she said, “I don’t feel my neighborhood owes me anything because of it.”