Thousand Oaks Shows Signs of Getting Tough on Placards

Not only is this city tough on crime, it’s also tough on signs.

City officials this week announced creation of a “political sign enforcement task force,” a group of city employees who will aggressively seek out violations of the city’s law governing campaign placards.

“The public is tired of seeing the proliferation of political signs that are clearly in violation of the political sign ordinance--which is designed to prevent the very blight that’s occurring,” said Deputy City Atty. Tim W. Giles, who will head the four-person task force.

City Council candidate Wayne A. Possehl, however, questioned why the city is taking this step now. Possehl said he just received a notice in the mail informing him he has an illegal sign at his house, which he says he never placed.

“What . . . are they doing inspecting my private residence?” Possehl asked.

Since the first of this season’s political signs went up days ago, the city has fielded a number of phone calls complaining about illegal placards, Giles said. Four signs placed illegally on public property have been removed so far and five candidates--Possehl among them--have been sent notices about improperly placed signs.

For the duration of the campaign season, political signs in the public right-of-way found to violate the city’s laws on size and placement will be removed, Giles said. When offending signs are placed on private property, city staff members will knock on the owners’ door, tell them of any violation and give them up to 72 hours to fix the problem.

If any candidates do not cooperate, Giles said he intends to file criminal complaints against every offender.

Public concern about violations of the sign ordinance, which dates back to the early 1970s, was recently heightened when Assembly candidate Rich Sybert was caught on grainy video shredding the illegally placed signs of his opponent, Giles said.

Giles filed a civil complaint against Sybert, which was later settled out of court.