Bus Stop Shelter Firm Will Relocate Ads : Graffiti: Company is ‘very sensitive’ to problem and has already moved Tag Rag posters 40 times.

The president of a bus stop shelter firm said Tuesday that he is prepared to move controversial Tag Rag clothing advertisements to new locations to satisfy county transit officials, who say the colorful ads promote graffiti and taggers.

The Orange County Transportation Authority board on Monday had threatened to relocate bus stops away from shelters that carry Tag Rag advertisements.

“We are very sensitive to the graffiti problem,” said Scott Kraft, chief executive officer of Tustin-based Metro Display Advertising Inc., the firm that puts up the shelters. “Our own costs for removing graffiti have tripled over the past three years.’

Kraft said he has already moved the ads about 40 times. “We get complaints from high schools or residents, and we move them, in cooperation with the advertiser,” Kraft said.

But the head of the billboard company said his firm is in a difficult position because it cannot simply refuse to accept advertising for the clothes without violating Tag Rag’s First Amendment rights.

“Tag Rag has been doing everything it can to help us relocate its posters to areas not affected so much by graffiti,” Kraft said.

Tag Rag officials said Monday that their clothing line has no connection with graffiti. Clothing designer Michele Dahan has described the clothes as “the Brady Bunch meets the streets.”

And Metro Display’s Kraft observed that the Tag Rag controversy is not the first nor will it be the last for his company. The firm recently moved posters for Coors Lite beer when residents complained about a scantily clad woman shown in the ads.

“We are in daily contact with cities and residents, and it’s been our policy to work things out to everyone’s satisfaction--usually within 24 hours,” Kraft explained.

But Kraft said a bus boycott of bus shelters would be fruitless, since the ads are aimed at street traffic, not passengers waiting to board buses.

“They misunderstand how the advertising works,” Kraft said of OCTA officials. “People in buses aren’t even counted in the effectiveness of the ads. The best thing you can do for the advertiser is not have buses stopping there, because that detracts from other people paying attention to the ads.”

Kraft said he talked briefly Tuesday morning with Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, an OCTA board member who raised the ad issue at the close of Monday’s OCTA board session. But Vasquez, who chairs the county’s anti-graffiti task force, declined late Tuesday to discuss the conversation.

Vasquez did participate Tuesday afternoon in an anti-graffiti media event in a Santa Ana neighborhood.