Billboards and Aesthetics

Last year, when the Anaheim City Council was considering an ordinance that would permit billboards along the city’s freeways, Mayor Don Roth disclosed that at every public function he had attended, people brought up the billboard issue and lectured him to vote against it. The council eventually killed the proposal.

Well, it’s time for people to start approaching Mayor Roth again.

The council, at the urging of Regency Outdoor Advertising Inc., has ordered the city staff to prepare a new ordinance that, if passed, would not only open the freeways to the outdoor advertising structures but would also adopt even less stringent regulations than the council rejected in 1984. One provision would reduce the space between billboards on both sides of the freeway from 1,000 feet to 500 feet, or one every seven seconds to a passing motorist.

It is not that billboards do not have their place. They do. They are fine in industrial areas, and in places like Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. They just don’t belong on non-industrial freeways every 500 feet.

The council reacted last year to public opinion and protests from Disneyland, several businessmen and its own planning directors. Another factor was the lack of unity from the billboard industry.

Once again the industry is divided. Although Regency wants the new ordinance, Foster and Kleiser doesn’t because it dislikes some of the proposed provisions, including one that would greatly increase business license fees charged for billboards.

Councilwoman Miriam Kaywood, who strongly opposes billboards along the freeway, is right in focusing on the “blight” the billboards would bring rather than the estimated $72,000 in license fee revenues. That amount is too insignificant in a city budget of $359 million to make any real financial impact. The billboards, however, would certainly have an aesthetic impact.

Last year when the city was considering relaxing its billboard controls, about 50 applications for new billboards along Anaheim’s freeways were filed by outdoor advertising companies eager at the prospect of such an opportunity. The council shouldn’t encourage a similar response now.

The idea of opening Anaheim’s freeways to billboards was a bad idea in 1984. It still is.