Anaheim Continues to Wrangle on Billboard Law

A decision on a proposal to allow freeway billboards in Anaheim inched closer Tuesday, as the City Council agreed to consider a new ordinance at its next meeting.

While all of the council members have indicated a willingness to revamp existing billboard regulations, they have failed to agree whether the city’s 20-year ban of freeway billboards should end.

A motion Tuesday to consider a new billboard law that would continue the ban on freeway billboards failed on a 3-2 vote, with council members Miriam Kaywood and Irv Pickler supporting the measure and Mayor Ben Bay and Councilmen Fred Hunter and William D. Ehrle opposed.

Pickler and Kaywood have argued that allowing new billboards along the city’s freeways would mean more blight and that the public is opposed to such construction.

“All of the comment I have received from the public indicates that freeway billboards are the problem, not the ones located in the interior of the city,” Pickler said. “We need to cut down on the numbers of billboards, but you don’t do that by adding more.”

Bay, Ehrle and Hunter, however, said they are willing to consider lifting the ban on freeway billboards if ad companies in return pay higher business license fees. The additional revenue, they argued, could be used to buy and demolish inner-city billboards.

Billboard companies pay Anaheim a $100 license fee, no matter how many signs they own in the city. The city estimated that it receives about $600 per year in billboard fees.

In the ordinance that will be considered in the next meeting Tuesday, companies would pay fees based on the size of the billboard, up to $2.50 per square foot. All freeway billboards, however, would be assessed at $8.34 per square foot.

City officials estimated that if such license fees were charged for each panel (typically two per billboard), annual revenues would climb to more than $255,000.

The license provision has already raised objections from some billboard firms that contend the proposed fees are too high.

“It’s confiscatory . . . and seems like a punitive attack for what this council failed to do in past years as part of its fiduciary responsibility--namely to come up with a reasonable fee schedule,” said Fred Guido, vice president for public affairs for Gannett Outdoor Advertising Inc., a Los Angeles-based billboard firm.