Another Round Waged in Billboard Bout : Pomona: Sign companies urge council to allow 10 new billboards along freeways. Opponents say the ads are no better than graffiti.

Sign companies described billboards as works of art and opponents derided them as no better than graffiti at a two-hour hearing before the City Council this week.

After listening to the arguments Monday night, the council referred the issue to the Planning Commission. The battle over billboards has been flaring up periodically since the ‘60s.

The sign companies seek to erect 10 new billboards along freeways and to relocate existing signs whose legality has been the subject of lengthy litigation.

Brian Kennedy of Regency Outdoor Advertising Co. said his firm would like to put 10 signs along the Pomona and Orange freeways and the Corona Expressway. “This would conform to your zoning map,” he said. “It would have no impact on the city.”

John Standiford of Gannett Outdoor Advertising Co. said his company wants to relocate existing signs, as proposed in a model ordinance submitted to the city last year by another sign company, Patrick Media Group. The proposal would allow companies to move existing billboards to new locations in manufacturing and commercial zones.

J. Keith Stephens of Regency told the council that today’s billboards have little relationship to the unsightly wooden signs of the past. He described them as “high pictorials.” Raymond Haynes, an attorney for Regency, said his company installs attractive signs that would not harm the city’s appearance.

But Ted Radamaker, executive director of the Mt. San Antonio Gardens retirement home and a director of the Pomona Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber “does not want any more billboards in the city of Pomona. . . . Billboards represent a form of graffiti.”

Radamaker said he surveyed 26 billboards in one area of Pomona and found that seven advertised cigarettes, five advertised beer, and few advertised local businesses.

Resident David Jacks urged council members Nell Soto and Mark A. T. Nymeyer to disqualify themselves from voting on the billboard issue because they received at least $500 each in campaign contributions this year from billboard companies. “I have a real concern with the ethics involved here,” Jacks said.

Soto refused, saying she wasn’t influenced by a couple of campaign contributions of $250 each. “I don’t think Mark and I would sell our votes for $250,” she said. “This is so ridiculous.”

Jean Todd, who runs a reading clinic in Pomona, said she has been battling billboards in the city for 26 years. She was part of a citizens movement that persuaded the council to restrict billboards to manufacturing zones in 1964 and defended the restrictions at a referendum eight years later.

Now, Todd said, she is defending the ordinance again, as billboard companies seek to expand their business. She noted that former Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant in March proposed that the city adopt, without hearings, an ordinance written by a billboard company.

The council deferred action, and the proposed ordinance subsequently underwent several revisions. But Todd said the city still has “mishandled” the matter and seems intent on enacting changes that will increase the number of billboards in the city.

But Nymeyer, who urged the council to revamp its billboard ordinance to meet the desires of billboard companies, said the council has been considering the issue for months and has moved too slowly.

Soto praised the billboard companies for reducing the scope of their requests and for providing public service advertising.

Mayor Donna Smith said she opposes any increase in the number of billboards. “Some of the existing billboards are atrocious,” she said.

Councilman Tomas Ursua, the apparent swing vote in a council reduced to four members by the June 5 recall of Bryant, suggested that the matter be handed to the Planning Commission.

“There appear to be too many unresolved issues to make a proper decision tonight,” he said.