Freeway Billboards Rise Up Again as Issue in Anaheim

The decades-old battle over billboards will be fought again in Anaheim, after the City Council on Tuesday agreed to consider an ordinance that would allow billboards beside some freeways in the city.

The new sign ordinance is being proposed by Regency Outdoor Advertising Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that proposed a similar ordinance nearly two years ago.

The council considered and narrowly rejected that proposal after dozens of residents voiced opposition to lifting the city’s 20-year ban on new freeway billboards.

But several council members said Tuesday that the city should consider a new ordinance as a way to increase revenues. Under the proposal, billboard companies would pay a fee of $2 per square foot of sign area.

Floyd Farano, an Anaheim attorney who is representing Regency, said the fee would generate nearly $200,000 per year in city revenues.

Companies that built their signs before the 20-year ordinance was enacted pay just a $100 business license fee, no matter how many signs they own, zoning administrator Annika Santalahti said.

Even Councilwoman Miriam Kaywood, who opposed the previous ordinance, called the current fee policy “an absolute giveaway.”

Farano said the new ordinance would lead to an overall reduction of the number of billboards in the city within 10 years and said fewer billboards will temper the public’s “negative attitude” toward the industry.

“It is our belief that signs have become unpopular in the last 20 years, and the reason is that they inundate every area of the freeways and communities,” he said. “In those cities that regulate and control signs, a negative attitude does not prevail.”

Under the proposed ordinance, a limited number of billboards would be allowed along certain areas of the Riverside, Orange and Santa Ana freeways. In addition, the maximum number of inner-city billboards would be lowered from eight to four per intersection.

Farano said that a study conducted by Regency found that, of 206 billboards within the city, 90 do not conform to current building standards.