ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : An Issue That Should Stay Dead

Like the hard-to-kill villain in the first of the “Terminator” movies, the freeway billboard issue in Anaheim keeps coming back to life, year after year. It’s time for the City Council to give a final, firm “no” to continued efforts to overturn the city’s billboard ban, which has been in place for 15 years and enjoys wide support in the community.

This week Regency Outdoor Advertising Inc. canceled a presentation it had planned to make before the City Council. The Los Angeles company would have proposed paying Anaheim $30,000 annually in return for being permitted to put up 15 billboards along industrial sections of the Riverside, Santa Ana and Orange freeways within the city.

The withdrawal came after The Times reported that several of the recommendation letters that Regency had gathered from local charities and businesses were outdated or had been solicited with misleading information. The charities, including the Anaheim Family YMCA and the Salvation Army, had been promised free billboard space; local businesses had been told that they would receive preferential treatment.

If past is prologue, Regency’s withdrawal is only temporary. Regency, which has contributed $55,000 to City Council members’ election campaigns since 1984, can be expected to use its political clout to present another proposal at another time. It lost in similar efforts in 1986 and 1988, so there’s no reason to expect it to give up because of this most recent setback.

In addition, another company, Adams Advertising Inc. of Santa Ana, has announced that it will submit a proposal for 15 freeway billboards, for which it proposes to pay the financially strapped city a tempting $420,000 annually.

Many residents already complain that Anaheim is not as pretty as it could be. Adding billboards--even along the freeways--would only detract from the city’s appearance. What’s more, the city’s comeliness is important to the entire county. As the home of Disneyland it attracts tourists to the rest of the region. Now that Disney is proposing a major expansion of the theme park, the city’s look will be even more important.

More to the point, however, is that residents have spoken clearly on this issue over the years. They have said--repeatedly--that they view freeway billboards as unsightly and that they don’t want them.

Their wish must be respected.