Plan to Edit Pole Banners Called Bad Sign for Valley

Los Angeles city officials think it’s high time to revise the rules for hanging banners from street poles. But in the San Fernando Valley, the pending banner proposal is stoking the ire of a group of business leaders.

A year ago, the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley unfurled 600 star-spangled, black-and-blue banners as a way to raise money for the nonprofit organization and foster Valley pride. But under a proposed ordinance revision, city officials say the “Valley of the Stars” banners would have to be changed--or come down.

“Those banners help develop a sense of community out here,” said Marvin Selter, board member of the Economic Alliance. “Taking them down is just one more example of how City Hall has always viewed the Valley as a second-class citizen.”

Selter was among the 25 Valley business leaders who gathered Thursday morning in a Woodland Hills movie theater parking lot to launch a campaign to fight the banner proposal, scheduled to be considered by the council Oct. 22.

Several suggested the city’s efforts to regulate banners will fuel the Valley secession movement.

“This is a classic example of over-regulation and another reason why we need to run our own darn city,” said Ross Hopkins, chairman of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley.

But Ron Deaton, the city’s chief legislative analyst, dismissed the idea that the proposed banner ordinance was anti-Valley.

“That wasn’t our intent at all,” said Deaton, who is pushing for the new banner rules. “Our intent is to clarify the law.”

Under the proposal, only banners advertising specific community-oriented events, run by either a nonprofit organization or a city agency, would be allowed, and then just for 60 days.

The problem with the “Stars” banners is that they don’t advertise a specific event. Economic Alliance leaders say the goal is to promote the Valley and its historic links to the movie business.

City Hall began looking at the banner issue in August when CBS-TV executives complained that rival ABC was using poles to advertise. City bureaucrats subsequently learned ABC-TV had improperly been authorized to put up 2,000 banners, many across the street from CBS studios in Studio City.

Under the rules, the banners violated the no-commercial-advertisement provision. ABC was ultimately ordered to remove the banners but lawyers arguing its case pointed out that private companies, including the Lakers and Dodgers, also hung street pole banners.

The current rules aren’t clear on what is considered a commercial advertisement, said Lynne Ozawa, a legislative analyst at City Hall, so the city decided to revise them.

Another part of the proposal would limit the role of corporate sponsors. Company names would be allowed only at the bottom of the banner and could take up no more than 20% of the space.

That restriction presents a problem for nonprofits, civic leaders said. Nonprofit organizations often sell space on the banners to raise money, said Gene Waldman, chairman of Valley College’s nonprofit Fourth of July festival. This year, selling banner space helped raise $18,000 for the public festival, Waldman said.

“And if I told our sponsors their name had to go on the bottom, they wouldn’t do it,” Waldman said.

There are about 6,200 banners flying in the city now, Ozawa said, with more than half paid for by corporate sponsors.