La Verne re-establishes regulation of massage businesses - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

[massage]

LA VERNE >> Now that it can, the City Council passed two urgency ordinances this week to re-establish regulation of massage businesses in town.

The ordinances won unanimous approval Monday and set an immediate effective date of Tuesday, but one of the two ordinances will still go through conventional review and approval by the Planning Commission and council to avoid any legal challenges that might arise.

Council members, like their counterparts in other California cities, have complained about a 2008 California legislative action which wrenched control from local hands to regulate and control massage businesses.

Principal Planner Eric Scherer noted that after passage of Senate Bill 731 which created the California Massage Therapy Council as a nonprofit providing voluntary certification of massage therapists and practitioners, cities lost the ability to have a say in what kind and the number of massage businesses allowed anywhere in any city.

“Once a person had that (therapy council certification) paper, he or she was not subject to any regulation and cities could not require conditional-use permits or impose any other regulations on massage businesses,” Scherer said. “This prompted an unprecedented growth in massage businesses.”

As an example, Mayor Don Kendrick cited the problem faced by Huntington Beach, a city that had only nine massage businesses under its old regulation requiring conditional-use permits to operate. After the state action, the number drastically leaped to 73 in 18 months and a “number of them were totally illegitimate with things going on you would not think is good business,” he lamented.

Councilwoman Donna Redman, who also chairs the La Verne Youth and Family Action Committee, and Kendrick led local concerns when the number jumped from three day spas with minor massage as part of their operations to 10 more with no local control. Councilman Charlie Rosales, anxious for the new controls to become effective, asked “When does the clock start?”

“Tomorrow,” Scherer answered at the council meeting on April 20. Establishments without conditional-use permits and not meeting new regulations limiting blinds and tinting on windows, hours of operation, the amount of floor space allowed for therapeutic massage and other conditions of use must comply within 60 days or shut down business, he added.

Kendrick said “The state in its wisdom gave us back the ability to regulate this through CUPs.”

Scherer reported the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 1147 during its 2014 session and Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill which “restored the ability of cities and counties to regulate massage establishments and establish land-use controls as of Jan. 1, 2015.”

Advertisement

Three day spas in La Verne - Wild Earth Spa, Massage Envy and My Health Massage - are already operating with CUPs under the pre-2008 local ordinance and adhere to the urgency regulations while 13 massage businesses do not comply. The three spas are exempt from obtaining a new condition use permit, operator’s permit and certificate of operation as long as their massage services occupy less than 20 percent of the business floor plan. But other aspects of the new regulations must be met. The permit can be revoked if any violation occurs under the new regulations.

The second urgency ordinance, restricting massage businesses to the Foothill Boulevard and Old Town La Verne specific plan areas, will be traditionally reviewed and approved after public hearings at the Planning Commission and City Council. Massage businesses outside of those specific plans must close or relocate.