Anaheim : Use of Billboards Along Freeways to Be Discussed

The City Council today will consider an ordinance to allow billboards along freeways in the city.

The ordinance would permit billboards along about 4 1/2 miles of freeway and reduce the allowable distance between billboards from 1,000 to 500 feet. It also proposes limiting the number of inner-city billboards from eight to four per intersection.

The city banned freeway billboards as part of the national beautification program in the mid-1960s, although six signs remain on land annexed from the county. In exchange, billboard companies were allowed to erect signs at the intersections of city streets.

An ordinance to allow freeway billboards was voted down in May, 1984, but the issue resurfaced last September when Regency Outdoor Advertising Inc. approached the council with a new proposal. After discussing it last Tuesday, the council ordered the city attorney to draft an ordinance based on the proposal.

Councilwoman Miriam Kaywood, an opponent of freeway billboards, said she expects the ordinance’s first reading to be approved today, 3 votes to 2. She said that billboards are ugly and that the companies “give nothing to the city.”

The five companies operating in Anaheim presently pay an annual fee of $100 each, no matter how many billboards they have in the city. The ordinance does not include a change in how much the city taxes billboard companies, said City Atty. Jack White. The council will probably wait until a study of the city’s business license fees is completed before addressing the issue, he said.

Regency, basing its estimates on 50 cents per square foot for small billboards and $1 per square foot for large, said the ordinance could bring the city up to $72,000 a year in taxes.

Kaywood countered that taxes for billboard companies will increase nearly that much whether the ordinance passes or not.