Despite Law, Signs Still Plentiful on Ventura Blvd.

One year after enactment of Los Angeles’ sign law, the effect is difficult to see on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, even though the strip was subjected to the most intensive effort in the city to enforce the restrictions.

“It’s just as bad,” groaned Gerald Silver, whose bedroom is still bathed at night in bright white light from the illuminated Independence Bank sign a block away on Ventura Boulevard.

Silver, who is president of Homeowners of Encino, joined other community residents and their councilman, Marvin Braude, to lobby hard for sign controls last year. The 33 billboards and 1,500 smaller signs on Ventura Boulevard gave their upper-middle-class community a “honky-tonk Las Vegas look,” Silver said.

They got a law, if not exactly the one they wanted. They also got the city to enforce the law first in Encino, which was the only area in Los Angeles where all 10 city sign inspectors went door-to-door looking for violations. The result was 235 orders--almost half the citywide total--issued to Encino merchants to make their signs conform with the law.

‘Visual Pollution’

Despite all this, Braude and his Encino constituents say the law has failed miserably to achieve its goal of reducing the “visual pollution” created by billboards.

Originally, Braude and his constituents wanted a law that would ban new billboards and phase out many of the existing signs on storefronts after five years. But the council, under heavy lobbying from the billboard industry, adopted a weaker law restricting the location and size of new billboards and new merchants’ signs.

Before his death last August, Councilman Howard Finn, who had championed the citywide law, contended it would require the dismantling of many signs on Ventura Boulevard because, he asserted, they were put up without permits. He said, “I predict that, six months after this goes into effect, we’re going to have a new look in Los Angeles.”

But so far, only two billboards have been taken down on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, and no new ones have been erected since last summer, according to city officials.

To representatives of billboard companies, this shows that the law will be effective over time.

But Braude and Silver, complaining that the law allows twice the number of billboards that are up now on the Encino strip, say they want to ban new billboards.

“If a billboard is torn down, there is no protection to make sure a new billboard will not go on the same site” unless another one is nearby, said Robert Rome, an Encino homeowner activist who has been a leading sign-control proponent.

During last fall’s sweep, many of the Encino merchants cited were ordered to obtain permits for banners and small window signs that advertise sales. Sign permits have long been required, but the requirement was rarely enforced because of a lack of inspectors. Until last year, there was only one sign inspector for all of the San Fernando Valley. Now there are four.

The law limits permanent signs to 10% of a store’s window. Temporary signs can take up another 25% of a store’s window but can stay up no more than 60 days at a time.

Merchants Complain

The crackdown, however, caused an uproar among merchants over the requirement that they go to City Hall, stand in line for a few hours and pay $31 for a permit every time they wanted to put up a sign advertising a sale.

The protest prompted Braude to order city inspectors to “soft-pedal” enforcement of the law, Inspector John Plewe said. In the meantime, representatives of the Chamber of Commerce and homeowners have been studying possible changes, such as relaxing the requirement that merchants obtain permits for temporary signs.

In return, homeowners are hoping to win the support of the business community for tougher restrictions on billboards.

Braude already has introduced a measure that would prohibit new billboards within a 300-foot radius of homes. A city Planning Department analysis of the proposal says it would prohibit new billboards along 87% of Ventura Boulevard.