Costa Mesa to let political signs stay up longer in election stretch run

Costa Mesa City Council members voted unanimously this week to adopt new regulations allowing political signs to be up longer during the upcoming election season.

Under rules reviewed at Tuesday’s council meeting, political signs can be posted in the public right of way at any time during the six weeks before any city, state or federal election.

The rest of the year, political signs can be put up in those areas only Fridays through Sundays.

The signs must be removed within 10 days after an election.

Those rules don’t apply to signs on private property.

The council also eliminated a cap that limited sign owners to 10 at a time citywide — a rule that city officials said earlier this year was impractical and virtually impossible to enforce.

The changes approved Tuesday are meant to help the city comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an Arizona case that requires cities to equally regulate any temporary sign, whether it’s commercial or political.

The new rules also “will reduce the staff time expended to enforce rules on campaign signs,” according to a staff report.

During the 2014 election season, more than 1,800 illegal signs were removed, mostly because they were placed in the public right of way outside the permitted time period.

Other sign-related skulduggery — such as signs being stolen or vandalized — also has been reported in recent elections.

“Overall, I think this is much better, because for the past years I know you folks probably just dread the election because everybody’s calling and everybody thinks you’re being unfair to their side and you’re picking on them and the other side is getting away with whatever they want to do,” Councilwoman Sandy Genis told city staff at Tuesday’s meeting. “So I’m really glad that we’re going to try to at least take poor city staff out of being caught in the middle.”