Not Her Kind of Candidate : 21 Years of Billboard Alley

As the streetwalkers parade on Sunset Boulevard, soliciting business and paying little in taxes, so stand the billboards of the Ventura Freeway corridor through Calabasas and Agoura Hills.

Both the prostitutes and the signs, with skinny legs, sell their bodies while avoiding legitimate taxation.

It was ironic that you published “Billboard Alley Blues” on Feb. 7. Exactly 21 years ago you published a huge picture and a caption that “Agoura blossoms . . . with signs.” In that story about billboard alley, there were statements by Herbert Grosswendt, Chamber of Commerce president, and the late Agoura pioneer, Judy Kanan, about how the wall-to-wall signs were destroying the scenery and landscape. Judy and her sister, Pat Kanan, had mounted an attack on the billboards in the mid-1960s. But, because of escalating property taxes before Proposition 13, the sign companies prevailed, and state officials looked the other way on taxes.

To this day most of the 25 huge billboards in Agoura Hills are on property classified as “unimproved.” All the county assessor can charge the landowner is for undeveloped land. What an injustice!

So, over 21 years, while much has changed in Agoura, much stays the same. Special legislation has allowed freeway harlots to solicit, and with special tax treatment under the state revenue and taxation code.

ERNEST DYNDA

Agoura Hills

Dynda is president of United Organizations of Taxpayers Inc.