Group Threatens Sign Initiative if L.A. Fails to Toughen Measure

A group of homeowner, civic improvement and architect organizations threatened Monday to push for an anti-billboard initiative on next year’s municipal ballot if the Los Angeles City Council fails to add tougher provisions to a proposed sign and billboard restriction ordinance.

Leaders of the group said they worked hard to promote the ordinance, only to have it weakened earlier this month when a council committee removed its prohibition on cantilevered billboards, the kind suspended over buildings on large steel poles.

“We feel that the citywide sign ordinance is an ill-conceived effort by the City Council to impose minimum restrictions on citywide signs in an attempt to appease the long-standing public criticism of sign blight,” said Brian Moore, a spokesman for the Citizens Sign Control Committee. “And, yet, it is not restrictive enough to offend (the) politically powerful sign industry.”

The billboard industry supports the ordinance, which is scheduled for council consideration today.

The group demanded that the council further strengthen the ordinance by banning all new billboards and reducing the allowable size of merchants’ signs to two square feet per foot of building frontage, instead of the four-square-foot limit in the ordinance.

Moore said the cities of San Jose, Dallas, Houston and Little Rock, Ark., have banned billboards altogether.

The Citizens Sign Control Committee consists of representatives of more than 60 homeowner associations in the San Fernando Valley and on the West Side and in the Harbor area. The group also includes Los Angeles Beautiful, a civic improvement organization, and the Los Angeles chapters of the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Leaders of the group said their members have gathered thousands of signatures on petitions to show the council that they can qualify an initiative for the April, 1987, ballot.

If adopted, the ordinance, would affect only new signs and billboards, leaving untouched all those that are already up, backers of sign controls said.

A state law adopted during the administration of Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. prohibits cities from phasing out existing signs after passing more restrictive rules, said Cindy Miscikowski, chief deputy for Councilman Marvin Braude, a strong supporter of tough sign restrictions.

Pay the Owner

The only way the city could get rid of an existing billboard would be to pay the owner for both the cost of the sign and also its future earning power, Miscikowski said.

Moore said the Citizens Sign Control Committee plans to lobby for a change in the state law, so that the city could begin phasing out thousands of signs and billboards that would not be allowed under the proposed ordinance.