Merchants to Take Freeway Sign Issue to the Voters : Agoura Hills: Negotiations over the city ban have not produced a compromise. Shopkeepers say they’ve collected enough signatures to force a special election.

Merchants fighting an Agoura Hills law banning tall, unsightly business signs along the Ventura Freeway are taking their battle to the ballot box, despite cries from local officials that they are using extortion as a campaign tool.

A coalition of shopkeepers fighting the 1985 law that ordered the pole-mounted signs torn down by March, 1992, is collecting signatures to force a special election with just one issue: Should the signs hawking everything from Super Unleaded to Big Macs stay up?

The merchants say their businesses will suffer--may even close--if they are forced to tear down the signs. Despite hundreds of hours of negotiations over the past year, merchants and city officials have been unable to compromise.

“This is the only way we can get this resolved--to take it to the public,” said Terry Herrick, who estimates that 90% of the customers at his Jack-in-the-Box restaurant are lured off the freeway by his sign.

But City Council members complain that the public is being duped by the petition drive, which they characterize as a misleading, underhanded way to circumvent beautification laws.

For instance, a flyer circulated throughout the community asks residents whether they would rather have their tax dollars spent on public improvements such as parks and more police protection or on a legal fight between city officials and the merchants.

“The Business Owners want to keep supporting the residents . . . rather than lawyers,” the flyer reads. It also cautions that if no election is held, “the businesses will go to court and they will win. . . . These legal fees and court settlement costs will total millions of dollars the City does not have.”

But if the residents vote that the signs should come down, the merchants concede that they will likely sue to overturn the law anyway--forcing the city to defend itself in court.

“If they are suggesting to anyone they want to hear the voice of the community, that would put that misperception to rest,” Councilwoman Louise Rishoff said. “If they are looking for a compromise, there are no signs of it in their discussions.”

Linda Harmon, a local political consultant coordinating the merchants’ campaign, countered that it is the City Council that is not paying attention to the public. She said that volunteers have already collected enough signatures to qualify the initiative for a special election, and that 85% of the people approached sign immediately.

“The City Council is not very open and upfront about what this issue encompasses,” Harmon said. “We are letting the community know the impact of this decision.”

According to a 1990 report commissioned by the city, merchants would lose an estimated $5.7 million in the first year after their signs are removed. That’s about $300,000 more than the city’s 1992 budget.

If approved by a majority of the voters, the merchants’ initiative would allow signs erected before the 1985 ordinance to remain. Where possible, taller signs with a single logo would be replaced with “cluster signs” listing two or three businesses.

Harmon said that having a special election is necessary because the merchants cannot afford to wait until the next regular municipal election in November. The special election would cost the city about $25,000.

Under terms of the 1985 ordinance, merchants had seven years to remove their signs, but only 10 have done so over the last year. The 33 signs still standing are in violation, but city officials have held off enforcing the ordinance because they want to continue negotiating with the merchants. Those negotiations have made little progress.

Over the last year, one side or the other has rejected proposals to allow the merchants to keep the signs in exchange for paying to put unsightly utility lines along the freeway underground or to cluster the signs atop two or three poles.

Agoura Hills and the merchants went so far as to hang three giant banners from a crane to test how a cluster sign might look. All to no avail. Both sides claim that the other is stonewalling negotiations.

Mayor Ed Kurtz, who has been spearheading the talks with the businesses, said he hopes that the city and the merchants will be able to come to some compromise before a special election is held. But if not, he said, the shopkeepers should promise to follow the wishes of the voters.

“If the city loses, we have to live with that,” Kurtz said. “If the businesses lose, they should have to live with that, too. But that ain’t going to happen.”

NEXT STEP

Supporters of the proposal to keep pole-mounted business signs in Agoura Hills must collect signatures from 15% of the city’s 12,425 registered voters--or about 1,864 people--to force a special election. The City Council then has the option of adopting the proposal outright or holding an election within two or three months. If a 1985 law banning the signs is overturned in a special election, future councils would not be allowed to make further changes.