Coalition Joins Mayor in Calling for Billboard Ban

Decrying the “sign wars” being waged for consumers’ attention, a coalition of business and homeowner groups joined Mayor Tom Bradley on Friday in calling on the City Council to ban billboards as part of a move to strengthen Los Angeles’ sign-control law.

The Sign Coalition of Chambers and Homeowners said at a City Hall news conference that the 1 1/2-year-old law has not reduced sign clutter along the city’s major thoroughfares. The law restricts the location and size of new billboards and storefront signs.

Leaders of the coalition, which is made up of dozens of chambers of commerce and homeowner associations from across the city, include homeowners and merchants from Encino. That group has long sought to reduce the 33 billboards and 1,500 smaller signs along a 3 1/2-mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard that traverses its community.

Previous efforts to win council approval for a ban on new billboards have been thwarted by lobbying from the billboard industry, a major contributor to council campaigns.

However, Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino and a spokesman for the coalition, said he is encouraged by changes in the political environment, including 1986 voter approval of a slow-growth initiative and last year’s defeat of Council President Pat Russell, an opponent of stronger sign controls, by environmentalist Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

“There is more concern about the qualify of life,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, who has waged a 20-year fight to ban billboards.

Besides a prohibition on new billboards, the coalition called on the council to seek repeal of a state law prohibiting cities from removing existing billboards without compensating billboard companies; phase out over 10 years existing storefront signs that do not conform to the law, and require owners of high-rises to turn off illuminated rooftop signs that face residences.

But Braude, who said he will introduce the proposed changes at Tuesday’s council meeting, said he has yet to poll the 15-member council to see if he has the required eight votes to ban new billboards.

Joy Picus and Zev Yaroslavsky were the only council members other than Braude present for the news conference. Bradley sent a letter endorsing a ban on new billboards.

But none of three council members elected since the council last considered sign controls in early 1986 was ready to jump on the bandwagon. Gloria Molina said she would oppose the proposal. Nate Holden said he was undecided, and a spokesman for Galanter said the councilwoman would have no position until she could review the proposal.

And a spokesman for one of the billboard companies was not ready to concede that the political environment has swung the other way. “Look what happened on Occidental,” he said, referring to the fact that Braude has been unable to kill the controversial oil-drilling project in Pacific Palisades, despite the changes on the council.

Existing law requires new billboards to be 200 feet from homes on the same side of the street. It also requires new billboards to be 100 to 600 feet from each other, depending on size, except at intersections, where as many as four are permitted.

The city Planning Department said 388 billboards were removed between July, 1986, when the law took effect, and last November. And 268 new ones were put up, for a net reduction of 120, the department said.

But sign-control advocates contend the existing law would permit thousands of new billboards to go up in the city. If a billboard is torn down, there is little assurance that a new one will not go on the same site, they say.

The Los Angeles County-Orange County area ranks first in the nation in billboards, with an estimated 22,000, nearly twice the number in the second-ranked New York-New Jersey area, an industry source said. Of those, about 9,500 billboards are in the city of Los Angeles, the Planning Department said.

Fred Guido, vice president for public affairs and real estate for Gannett Outdoor Co. Inc. of Southern California, said the billboard industry will fight any effort to ban new billboards. “We have a right to be in business,” he said.

Silver said the coalition’s proposed changes would resolve a controversy that led the City Council in 1986 to suspend enforcement of a provision in the law relating to temporary signs, such as those advertising sales.

The move came after merchants on Ventura Boulevard complained about a requirement that they go to City Hall, stand in line for hours and pay $31 for a permit every time they wanted to put up a sign advertising a sale. They also complained about a 60-day limit on temporary signs.

Notification by Mail

The proposed changes, worked out after a year of negotiations between the chambers and homeowner associations, would allow merchants to simply notify the city by mail when they install a temporary sign. The proposal also calls for allowing businesses to put up temporary signs for as many as 90 days at a time.

Although Silver said the coalition’s proposal represents a broad-based consensus needed to win council approval for a tougher sign-control law, not all homeowner groups were represented at Friday’s news conference.

Louise Frankel of the Tarzana Property Owners Assn. said the group took no position on the coalition’s proposal because of the provisions that allow merchants to keep up temporary signs longer than is now permitted.