A Sign of Progress : City attorney spurs neighborhood clean-up of illegal placards

Sometimes it’s the little annoyances that can make urban life intolerable. One small annoyance that can pile up, and become a part of urban blight, is the illegal sign. There are thousands of these all over town, hawking everything from real estate to computer chips. They show up almost daily on utility poles and lampposts. Until recently, though, frustrated residents who tried to rip down offending--and often outdated--signs risked running afoul of the law themselves.

In a letter to the Sherman Oaks Homeowners’ Assn. last month, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office clarified the local law regulating signs on public property. The bottom line: Private citizens can take down illegal signs posted on public property without fear of criminal prosecution. Although it stopped short of explicitly authorizing residents to take the law into their own hands, the letter said the signs should be considered abandoned property and are “not subject to criminal laws prohibiting theft of property.”

The opinion is especially encouraging considering that city budget cuts eliminated the six-person team of laborers that once patrolled the city in search of illegal signs. In theory, the city is tough on those who post illegal signs. Offenders can be fined nearly $200 for the first sign and $1.60 for every duplicate city workers find. In practice, though, few get caught. While some 90,000 illegal signs were collected by the city last year, only about 2,100 have been torn down this year. City workers can take down illegal signs on public property, but that usually occurs only when they stumble upon the signs as part of their normal work.

So it’s not just perception; there are more of the signs around. It’s unreasonable to expect that the city will hire back its sign patrols any time soon, but the city attorney’s opinion raises the prospect of promising alternatives. For instance, local residents associations could strike deals with the city similar to the freeway adoption programs sponsored by Caltrans, promising to sweep their neighborhoods a few times each month.

Such an arrangement would be preferable to less organized efforts because volunteers could be trained in what does and does not constitute an illegal sign, reducing the risk of tearing down perfectly lawful signs. The city’s blessing could also ease potential tensions between those tearing down the signs and those putting them up.

People who care about the appearance of their neighborhoods have been presented with an opportunity to clean them up--one sign at a time. Doing that effectively, though, requires patience, cooperation and, most of all, common sense. The city attorney’s opinion is not a green light to rip down every sign in sight, but rather a chance for neighbors to work with each other and with the city to get the job done.