Council Also Votes to Pay $10,000 Fine : Orange to Obey, Appeal Billboard Order

The Orange City Council has voted to appeal a federal judge’s order imposing a $10,000 fine on the city and requiring it to allow an advertising firm to erect 11 billboards within municipal boundaries, but meanwhile it will pay the fine and comply with the order.

The council’s decision came Tuesday, one day after U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. found the city in contempt of court for failing to obey his September, 1986, order requiring it to allow National Advertising Co. of Illinois to put up its billboards.

In addition to the $10,000 fine, Hatter ordered the city to pay $1,000 a day if it failed to comply with his new order within 10 days.

“(The city is) going to pay the fine and issue the permits,” City Manager J. William Little said Wednesday. “But we hope to get vindicated and get it all back.”

The decision to allow National Advertising to put up its billboards along the Orange Freeway and on Chapman and Tustin avenues was hailed Wednesday by Gary S. Mobley, who represented the advertising firm, as a victory for freedom of speech.

“We consider it a significant vindication of First Amendment rights,” Mobley said. It may take two or three months before the billboards are put up, he added.

A city ordinance banning billboards had been in effect since 1966 when it was challenged by National Advertising in July, 1985. It was declared unconstitutional in August, 1986.

The city continued to deny the permits, however, citing another ordinance that limits the size and location of signs. National Advertising argued that the sign ordinance was never meant to apply to billboards and sought a contempt-of-court ruling against the city.

City attorneys appealed the ruling, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused last week to set it aside and review the case.

Little said the city maintains that it has the right to control its own landscape and that the billboards pose aesthetic and traffic-control problems.

“We’ve found that billboards are not attractive and are intrusive on our landscape,” he said.