Crackdown Voted on Illegal Signs

Twelve new city street maintenance employees will be hired to rid Los Angeles of the tens of thousands of signs--ranging from political campaign posters to “lost pet” notices--posted illegally on city property and parkways each year.

The City Council Tuesday appropriated $603,000 to gear up the clean-up program, designed to eventually be self-supporting via a series of fines assessed to residents and businesses illegally posting signs.

However, the council voted 10 to 1 to have the city attorney’s office draft an exemption for real estate agents who post signs advertising open houses on city-owned parkways (between sidewalks and curbs). Agents may post such signs at least 30 feet apart from each other as long as they remove them by sundown and have permission from adjacent homeowners, the council decided.

City Councilman Joel Wachs urged the real estate exemption, terming it “an established business practice of an industry that just about touches everybody.”

City Councilman Marvin Braude, on the other hand, was bitterly opposed. Braude unsuccessfully urged fellow council members to reject the influence of the real estate industry and “bite the bullet and say we are going to clean up the city.”