Crescenta Valley Takes Aim at Billboards

Irate over what they call a visual blight on their rural community, members of the fledgling Crescenta Valley Town Council have picked billboards as the target of their first attempt to flex their untried muscles.

The nine-member council is an elected county advisory body with no direct legislative powers. It was formed in March in a grass-roots drive by residents of La Crescenta and Montrose to gain greater say over their community, an isolated, unincorporated island of Los Angeles County sandwiched between Glendale and La Canada Flintridge.

The council’s key goal is to maintain the rural atmosphere of the mountainside town, which has changed little in the last 30 years, except for a row of billboards, including four of the large freeway size, that recently sprang up on Foothill Boulevard, the main commercial strip.

One resident complained to the council last week that the billboards “look like huge dinosaurs in the sky.”

“I have to pass two of those eyesores every day,” said Councilwoman Judy Tejeda. “I’m really sensitive to it.”

At the council’s request, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors this month approved an urgency ordinance by Supervisor Mike Antonovich to temporarily halt construction of billboards. There are seven along a 1.7-mile stretch of Foothill between Briggs and Pennsylvania avenues, said Councilman Bill Beavers, chairman of the billboard committee.

Supervisors will vote on extending the 45-day ordinance to one year after a public hearing on Dec. 21, said John Schwarze, county zoning administrator.

Despite local objections, the billboards in La Crescenta are likely to remain. “The chances of taking down any boards are probably slim to none,” said Beavers, who won his seat on the council as a billboard opponent.

Typically, billboards are controlled only in a one- or two-block area or in remote rural locations, said Ollie Blanning, senior deputy to Antonovich.

La Crescenta wants to ban all new billboards, Beavers said. “This is somewhat new ground,” Blanning told the council last week.

The outdoor advertising industry usually fights vehemently for the right to erect billboards, charging that restrictions beyond the county’s strict rules are a restraint of trade. Yet, even though the town council is only a quasi-government board, members have discovered a new-found clout in dealing with advertising companies.

This is the first issue on which the council has tested its uncertain strength, which consists of the ability to make recommendations to the county supervisor representing the area, Antonovich.

Representatives of three of the largest billboard companies attended last week’s council meeting to answer questions from members and an antagonistic audience. Ron Cipriani of Gannett Outdoor Co. said his firm has agreed, at the council’s request, not to accept new alcohol and tobacco advertising for billboards in La Crescenta, where children pass the signs daily en route to and from school. Those now standing will be replaced as contracts expire.

Representatives of two other companies operating in the area, Patrick Media Group and National Advertising, said they will consider the request.

But company executives said they are pressing for the community to consider concessions. They want to keep the signs they have now, which cost up to $55,000 each to erect, and to be able to replace them when they become old or to relocate billboards to a new site if a billboard site lease expires.

Hard-line residents and council members would phase out signs over the years or require that replacement billboards be smaller.

A few residents have threatened to boycott businesses that lease land to billboard companies. They were encouraged by Councilman Don Hogue, who said, “You can still do business in this community and not shop under a billboard.”

Council members said they plan to meet again with advertising executives to try to work out a compromise before supervisors act next month.