Vigilantes Take Sign Law Into Own Hands : Residents Wage War Against Real Estate Advertising on Ventura Blvd. By

A vigilante war against illegal real estate and other signs along Ventura Boulevard that broke out a month ago in Tarzana has spread to Encino and has led to several shouting confrontations between installers and removers.

Beleaguered sign installers, who concede that the law probably is not on their side, have switched to sturdier fasteners for their placards and have tried to replace them as soon as they are removed.

The struggle, which a homeowner group leader called “full-scale war,” has focused on the forest of temporary signs advertising new condominium and housing developments. But some removers have expanded their efforts to signs advertising home-related services.

Common Practice

For as long as anyone can remember, the real estate signs have been erected each Friday night to catch the eyes of weekend house hunters and removed Sunday night.

The practice exists throughout the San Fernando Valley area, but sign installers say that residents of upper-income Ventura Boulevard communities are the only ones who have taken matters into their own hands.

A secondary target of the sign vigilantes has been placards put up by individuals advertising a host of services, including window washing, pool cleaning, gardening, shelf lining and wicker repair.

All signs on public property, including parkways and sidewalks, are illegal and subject to removal, a spokesman for the city Street Maintenance Bureau said. Erection of such signs is a misdemeanor but prosecution requires that a city employee catch the installer in the act, the spokesman said.

Enforcement crews seldom work on Saturdays and Sundays, the spokesman said.

In response to the recent street skirmishes, City Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents Encino and Tarzana, has asked the city attorney’s office for an opinion on a citizen’s legal right to remove unlawfully erected signs.

Joel Palmer appears to have fired the first shot in the sign war with an article titled “Rip ‘Em Off!” in the fall newsletter of the Tarzana Property Owners Assn., of which he is president.

He urged residents, upon spotting any sign on public property, to “stop your car, get out and rip ‘em off!”

Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, said he and other residents of the Ventura Boulevard area have rallied to action because of what he called the “worst sign clutter that I have seen anywhere, and it keeps getting worse.”

Silver, whose group is generally considered the most militant of the homeowner associations, said there was a “full-scale war going on out there, with the sign companies fighting back as hard as they can.”

He said he and other removers have exchanged heated words with sign installers on recent weekends.

Threatened With Arrest

In one case, Silver said, an installer threatened him with arrest as he walked down the boulevard with a handful of signs that had been removed.

Silver said he, in turn, threatened the installer with arrest.

“Eventually we both cooled off and decided to await the city attorney’s clarification of the issue,” he said.

Charles Castleforte, part owner of Directional Design, a Calabasas company that erects most of the weekend real estate signs along Ventura Boulevard, called it a “very unfortunate situation that I wish could be resolved with some sort of compromise.”

As for the vigilantes, Castleforte said: “They absolutely have the right to take the signs down. I’ll concede that.”

In fact, Castleforte said, he instructs his drivers to “take down lost-dog signs and rock group signs as they go along in order to reduce clutter along the street.”

To thwart the sign removers, Donald Roth, operations manager for Directional Design, said his crews have recently stopped using duct tape to erect signs.

The tape had been used to fasten pieces of wood to steel parking signs and light posts, he said, and plastic-coated cardboard signs were then stapled to the wood.

Henceforth, installers will fasten the wood to the steel posts with wire, Roth said.

Silver said several sign removers have acquired wire cutters in response to the new practice.

Palmer, of the Tarzana group, said he and others have used wire cutters to remove several signs. He predicted that Tarzana homeowners would be out in force this weekend with wire-cutting tools.

Brad Rosenheim, Braude’s field deputy, said sign companies are “guilty of flagrantly violating a city ordinance, and it’s not hard to see why these homeowners are frustrated.”

He said city crews “can’t even keep up with the window washing and pool cleaning-type signs that stay up for quite some time, let alone remove all the real estate signs on weekends.”

Rosenheim said Braude requested the city attorney’s opinion “to find out if residents were doing anything that could get them into trouble.”

Castleforte said the real estate signs were needed by developers to “capture the drive-by traffic. There’s no other way to get it.”

He said homeowners should realize that, “if new homes sell in their neighborhood, their property values will be increased, and, if the developers can’t sell their units, then their values will be hurt.”

Cities such as Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, which limit such signs and charge those who erect them a fee, “have the right idea,” he added. “I wish Los Angeles would follow suit.”