Pasadena City Councilmember Margaret McAustin pushed city officials to be  tough on massage parlors at the City Council’s Public Safety Committee meeting on June 27.
      “We should push it as far as we possibly can towards heavy regulation and heavier enforcement, and keep them as far away as possible from residential neighborhoods,” she said.
     Since May 3 the city has had a moratorium on new massage parlor permits until it fashions a new approach to the issue.
     “We need a means to be able to get in there more quickly when there are problems,” McAustin said.
     McAustin, who won her council seat in this year’s April run-off election, told the Pasadena Weekly during the campaign that “the proliferation of massage parlors” would be on her agenda during her first year on the council.
     But city officials reported to the committee that the number of active business licenses for massage parlors has decreased in the last two years, from about 62 to 53. And that number includes very expensive day spas, health clubs and even some whole food stores, they said.
      But City Zoning Administrator Dennis Miller, Assistant City Planner Kent Lin and Assistant City Attorney Frank Rhemrev, all of whom briefed the committee, added that the number tends to go up and down.
      There have been eight applications for new massage parlor licenses in the almost two and a half years before the moratorium. Of the eight, six were granted and two were withdrawn.
      Of the 53 businesses with active licenses, only eight conform to rules—which include a prohibition of blacked-out windows and a requirement that all massage technicians be fully clothed—adopted in 2005. The remaining 45 were in existence prior to the rules and are not subject to them.
      Councilmember and Committee Chairman Steve Haderlein suggested placing such rules outside the zoning code to make them applicable to all parlors.
      “If you can’t see what’s going on inside, you assume the worst, or at least, my constituents do,” he said.
      About half of the businesses are in the central district and not near residential neighborhoods, the officials said.
      In other matters, city officials reported to the committee on a survey of how different cities regulate the parking of recreational vehicles and proposed plans for a bicycle storage station near the Metro Gold Line in Old Pasadena.