Dumps Compromise, Blesses Vigilantes : County Gets Tough on San Dieguito Signs

San Diego County supervisors rejected a compromise plan Wednesday that would have allowed developers to replace illegal advertising signs with smaller ones. The supervisors instead voted unanimously to adopt stricter sign laws and to form, in effect, a legal vigilante committee to combat the proliferation of real estate signs.

Supervisor Susan Golding took the lead in dumping the proposed compromise, which would have allowed developers to place a limited number of signs in the unincorporated San Dieguito area along the North County coast. The board ordered county employees to tighten enforcement laws on illegal signs that have proliferated in the unincorporated communities of Solana Beach, Cardiff, Encinitas, Leucadia and Olivenhain.

Golding chastised county officials who reached the tentative compromise with building industry representatives for failing to ask her opinion of the proposal.

“It is my district and I am not in favor of the compromise agreement,” Golding flatly told fellow supervisors. “I think that any illegal signs should be taken down.”

She proposed that the county sign ordinance be revised to contain the stricter standards imposed by the City of San Diego. To aid the county with enforcement, Golding proposed “establishment of a pilot project to allow volunteer community groups to aid in legal enforcement of the sign laws.”

Planning officials were instructed to bring the strengthened sign legislation back to the county board in a month for approval.

The compromise, which died with the supervisors’ vote Wednesday, would have allowed developers to place four directional advertising signs along San Dieguito roads for each subdivision they were promoting. The signs would be limited to 15 square feet in size, 8 feet in height and to an area within 3 miles of the subdivision.

Robert Macfarlane, attorney for the Cardiff Town Council, attacked the compromise proposal as “an outrageous deal” which, “in exchange for a promise by those violating the law that they would violate the law less frequently, the county proposes to modify our local coastal plan to allow the placement of currently illegal signs, limited only by the number of developments times four.”

“The justification for bargaining with these lawbreakers apparently is the inability of the county staff to accomplish the task of enforcing their own code,” he added.

“Rather than relying on the promises of individuals who have already demonstrated and admitted their contempt of the law, enforcement could be achieved by bringing our county codes into conformance with state law.”

He cited 11 state sign law provisions to which the county ordinance does not measure up and noted that it is illegal for local governments to enforce laws that are weaker or less stringent than state statutes.

Olivenhain activist Marjorie Gaines warned Wednesday that if fines imposed on companies erecting the illegal real estate signs were not increased “enough to make it unprofitable to put up the signs,” the proliferation of roadside signs in the unincorporated area would continue by what she termed “a multimillion-dollar enterprise of white-collar crime.”

Supervisor Brian Bilbray expressed concern about the cost of enforcing a strengthened sign law and requested that a cost estimate be provided.

Last week, representatives of the Building Industry Assn. met with county officials and a representative of the San Dieguito community to iron out details of the now-defeated compromise, which had been recommended by Clifford Graves, chief county administrative officer.

The yearlong sign war has included a raid by sheriff’s deputies which netted 33 illegal signs and a number of unauthorized raids by resident vigilantes. One sign company owner, Al Wylie, has filed suit against an Olivenhain man and other unnamed vigilantes seeking more than $1 million for damage to his signs.