City to Prepare Anti-Tall-Sign Ballot Measure : Environment: The initiative would oppose a merchant-sponsored one that supports 100- foot-high freeway advertisements.

Hoping to end nearly two years of debate over tall, pole-top advertising signs along the Ventura Freeway, the City Council Wednesday ordered legislation prepared that would allow voters to choose in November between pro- and anti-sign initiatives.

The council directed its staff to write an ordinance that would place its own initiative on the ballot, opposing a merchant-sponsored initiative that would allow freeway businesses to retain 100-foot-high pole signs.

The council’s plan calls for alternatives, such as monument signs, which are broader and shorter than pole signs, or cluster signs, which display clusters of business logos. The proposed ordinance also would limit advertising to roadside services such as food, gas and lodging.

Although a 1985 ordinance called for pole signs to be taken down within seven years, only about 10 have been removed. Merchants have won extensions of the deadline in a series of negotiations with the city, and about 25 tall signs remain.

Officials of the upscale community regard them as eyesores, but have been unable to persuade merchants, who say the signs offer the only way to attract prospective customers moving rapidly on the busy freeway.

“We’ve spent two years across the negotiations table talking about this and they’ve dug in and wanted the signs grandfathered in forever,” said Councilwoman Louise Rishoff.

Ann Stires, a spokeswoman for Concerned Tax Contributors, a group formed by merchants who own the signs, countered that “They think they’re tacky, we think they’re necessary.”

Merchants contend the loss of the signs could translate into millions of dollars in lost revenue, which would reduce city sales tax revenues.

In a last ditch effort to avoid a duel between contradictory initiatives at the ballot box, Concerned Tax Contributors offered the council a compromise, under which sign owners would agree to replace pole signs with cluster signs if the city conducted tests to determine whether the cluster signs can be seen clearly from the freeway, Stires said.

In the past, merchants offered to pay one-half of a $1-million tab for burying power lines now carried on utility poles next to the highway in return for keeping the pole signs.

Rishoff said the city was more than fair in offering to accept 35-foot-high signs in previous negotiations, arguing that height is taller than allowed by any other city on the freeway corridor.

Height limits in Thousand Oaks, for instance, are 30 feet for existing signs with a moratorium on new signs, she said. Camarillo limits sign heights to 25 feet and Oxnard 32 feet, she said.

Any compromise before the November election seems unlikely because merchants still want signs more than 50 feet tall, and at least some city officials are dissatisfied with even a 35-foot limit.

“We’ve had dozens of meetings with our subcommittee and theirs, and we’ve never gotten anywhere,” Rishoff said.

Stires predicted that residents concerned about the city’s tax base will support the merchants at the ballot box.