City Council Delays Vote on Billboard Deal

Faced with widespread opposition, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday balked at a proposal to allow 140 new billboards along freeways.

The proposal would allow companies to erect the freeway signs if a total of at least 2,100 signs are removed from city streets.

The council delayed action for a week after council members Cindy Miscikowski and Mike Feuer proposed instead a ban on all new billboards and stronger action against illegal signs.

Miscikowski said her plan could bring down 4,000 illegal billboards without giving up the current ban on freeway billboards.

“Why shouldn’t we reduce the billboards that are now illegal without giving anything away?” Miscikowski asked her colleagues.

City officials estimate there are 9,700 billboards in Los Angeles. Because there is no regular inspection program, officials do not know how many are illegal.

Action was delayed after an hour-long hearing during which nearly a dozen residents and activists from Valley Village, Northridge, Silver Lake, Hollywood, Glassell Park and West Los Angeles testified against the plan, citing visual blight and traffic safety.

Some of the opponents noted that billboard companies have put $694,000 into campaigns for candidates in Tuesday’s city elections.

“A vote of ‘yes’ on this is a vote for big-money contributors,” said Richard MacMinn, a Hollywood neighborhood activist. “A vote ‘no’ is a vote for your conscience and for constituent wishes.”

Walter Prince of the Northridge Chamber of Commerce questioned how the city could agree to a trade-off without knowing for certain how many existing billboards are illegal and without studying the environmental effect of dozens of new billboards.

“We don’t know what the content is going to be, if school buses are going to be subject to topless bar advertising,” Prince said.

Lori Dinkin, president of the Valley Village Residents Assn., joined others in demanding a traffic safety study, saying additional freeway signs could cause more accidents.

“I think that’s all we need on the freeways is to distract our motorists,” Dinkin told the council.

Citing potential traffic hazards, the city Department of Transportation routinely denies permits for any billboard on private property that can be clearly seen from a freeway, officials said.

Councilman Hal Bernson said any new billboard would have to go through an approval process set by the California Department of Transportation that includes spacing requirements for safety reasons.

“The responsibility for freeway safety belongs with Caltrans and the state,” Bernson said. “It is not a city issue.”

Bernson and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said some sort of trade-off, including allowing freeway signs, appears necessary to significantly reduce the number of billboards in city neighborhoods.

“We need the ability to be able to get some of these other boards down,” Bernson said.

Ridley-Thomas proposed a trade-off formula requiring the removal of 15 existing small, medium and large signs for every new freeway billboard, which could result in 2,100 billboards being removed.

“We will take billboards down, which in my view is the objective we ought to be seeking,” Ridley-Thomas said.

That plan is supported by some members of the billboard industry as long as most signs taken down would be small- to medium-sized, according to Ken Spiker Jr., a lobbyist for the firms.

The Planning Department has proposed that 10 square feet of old billboards should be removed for every square foot of new freeway billboards, which could result in 7,700 billboards being taken down.

Miscikowski and Feuer submitted a substitute motion that would create a permanent moratorium on new billboards, with a provision for hardship exemptions. The proposal would require all billboard companies to produce permits for all of their signs.