Mayor Wants to Disown ‘Adopt-a-Highway’ Signs : Laguna Beach: He calls litter-cleanup signs trashy. Caltrans obliges with a smaller size for the arts colony.

The blue “adopt-a-highway” signs that announce who is keeping that section of road clean may signal a tidy trend to some motorists, but they look like garbage to Mayor Neil G. Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick, who contends the 7-by-4-foot signs are just another type of litter cluttering scenic roadways such as Coast Highway and Laguna Canyon Road, has spearheaded a drive to have the signs removed.

“I’d rather have the litter,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think the litter has less negative impact than the signs.”

In response, the state Department of Transportation has begun erecting signs about half the usual size in Laguna Beach, the only Orange County city to officially complain about the program so far, a Caltrans supervisor said.

“We’re in the process of removing the large signs within the city proper and installing the smaller signs,” said Tom Almany, Caltrans chief of maintenance. “We’re trying to work with everybody. We want the program to work.”

Almany said the smaller signs, which don’t cost any more than the larger version, have been used in other areas of the state, particularly around planned communities.

Participants in the adopt-a-highway program are assigned a 2-mile stretch of highway that they agree to keep litter-free for two years in exchange for having their name emblazoned on the roadside sign in areas where billboards are normally prohibited. In some cases, volunteers pick up the litter, and in other instances trash collection companies are paid to do the job.

About 1,500 groups are participating statewide, with 50 in Orange County, Almany said. The program has become so popular that most sections of highway now have groups waiting for a turn at trash collecting, he said. The additional manpower has freed Caltrans workers to complete other work, such as cleaning drainage ditches and trimming and weeding landscaping, he said.

Laguna Beach, however, has grumbled about the signs for about a year. Six signs have sprung up in or around the city, four in the canyon and two beside Coast Highway. When the latest signs were erected closer to downtown, the city appealed to Caltrans.

Fitzpatrick said no signs should be posted on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach because the city keeps that section of the road clean. When the two-year agreement for cleaning up Coast Highway expires in October, 1992, Almany said Caltrans will not seek a new group to pick up trash between Broadway and Crown Valley Parkway.

“It’s their city and if they feel they can take care of the litter, we’re perfectly happy to let them do that,” he said.

So far, Corona del Mar is the only other area in the county where a small sign was posted instead of the larger variety. The switch was made there after a resident complained, Almany said. Since sponsors like the larger signs, they will be used unless complaints are lodged, he said.

Fitzpatrick called the shrunken signs “a fair compromise.”

“I’d just as soon the city not have any of them,” he said, “but if they’re going to have them, I’d rather they have the small ones.”