Pick Your Poison : Environment: The choice is signs or wires. Agoura Hills merchants want to pay for removal of utility lines, but only if their advertising poles remain.

On the theory that one wart is prettier than two, Agoura Hills merchants have offered to pay $500,000 to bury unsightly utility lines, hoping that will so improve the looks of the Ventura Freeway corridor that they won’t have to tear down tall advertising signs.

Merchants are under orders to remove the signs, which city officials consider an eyesore in their carefully planned community. But the merchants contend that getting rid of their pole signs--so named because they sit atop poles--would kill their businesses, and are fighting the 1985 ordinance that ordered the signs torn down by last month.

Under the plan proposed at Wednesday’s City Council meeting, a dozen business owners would donate $500,000 to bury the utility lines, which a city report said residents consider as much an eyesore as the towering signs. The city would also contribute $500,000, and the combined sum would be enough to get rid of about a mile of above-ground lines along the freeway.

In exchange, the merchants said, the city should allow all existing pole signs to remain.

“We think this is a situation where everyone wins,” said Larry Golub, an attorney for the McDonald’s at Kanan Road and Canwood Street. “We’re doing something constructive to clean up the corridor.”

To demonstrate his point, Golub distributed a retouched photograph depicting what the Ventura Freeway corridor would look like without the business signs and another showing the area without the utility lines.

Wednesday’s proposal is the latest attempt by merchants to persuade the city that they want to reach an agreement that allows them to keep their signs without suing, which they have promised to do if the City Council refuses to budge.

“How much would we all spend pursuing lawsuits?” asked Terry Herrick, owner of the Jack In The Box restaurant near Kanan and Agoura roads. “We figure this is a better use of our money than giving it to attorneys.”

City Council members greeted the plan with silence. Councilman Ed Kurtz, the council member most willing to negotiate with the merchants, said Thursday he was encouraged by the proposal.

“I’m glad we’re still talking at all,” he said.

But Councilwoman Darlene McBane was less enthusiastic. “I don’t know where they think we are going to get $500,000,” she said. McBane also said any proposal that would not eventually eliminate the signs would be unacceptable to her.

In the three weeks since the ordinance went into effect, the council has relaxed its strict stand on the signs coming down. Late last month, council members allowed merchants to appeal their cases on the basis that the seven years they were allowed to take down their signs was too short.

And on Wednesday, the council approved a plan that would waive the fees for demolition permits required to knock down the signs and for construction permits to build new signs that conform to city regulations.

So far, however, only two signs have come down since the March 19 deadline, leaving 40 signs in violation. Senior Planner Joyce Parker said another six merchants have promised to remove their signs soon, and 14 others have applied for exemptions from the Planning Commission.