Troubling Signs

By Teresa Rochester

Feb. 17 -- Nearly two years after the City was scheduled to begin enforcing its 15-year-old sign ordinance, not one of the more than 1,000 illegal signs has been cited by code enforcers, The Lookout has learned.

In fact, not only is the City failing to crack down on the illegal signs inventoried more than two years ago, it is doing nothing when it comes to new signs cropping up that are in clear violation of the 1985 ordinance, which bans rooftop, projecting and stand-alone signs.

And City officials say that it will likely be another year before sign enforcement is deemed a planning department priority by the City Council, which spent several meetings in 1999 debating the issue before it was taken up by the Meritorious Sign Review Board with the help of hired consultants.

"It relates to resources," said Suzanne Frick, who heads the City's Division of Planning and Community Development. "At this point in time, given the volume of complaints, we don't have the capacity to take on proactive sign enforcement."

So far, all the City has done is to send out letters alerting businesses that their signs were in violation, an effort that shows no sign of being effective. The dearth of enforcement has riled some appointed and elected City representatives, who have in some cases publicly complained that new illegal signs are proliferating across the City.

City Councilman Herb Katz, for example, has been trying to get the City to crack down on a huge yellow sign on the rooftop of Flint's restaurant on Pico Boulevard near Centinela Avenue that can be clearly seen from the freeway.

"I turned Flint's in two and a half months ago," said Katz, who pushed for the sign ordinance when he was on the Council in 1985. "They (City staff) said they are taking care of it. I called one and a half months ago and then a week and a half ago. [They said] 'We're taking care of it.'"

Members of the City's Architectural Review Board -- which is charged with approving sign programs for businesses -- also are frustrated. The board members have aired their complaints during public hearings and one wrote a letter to the Planning Commission expressing displeasure with the lack of sign enforcement.

"Why have an Architectural Review Board if the decisions the board makes are not implemented or enforced?" asked ARB member Iris Oliveras, a co-owner of Surfsantamonica.com. "Non enforcement sets up an unfair environment for the applicants who are complying and abiding by the code.

"Right now we have applicants who are investing significant money and time in removing no-conforming signs and in creating new signs, while slick operators completely ignore the law," Oliveras said. "It all seems futile."

Oliveras and some of her colleagues have pointed out flagrant violations of the law. One hotel operator, they note, came before the board with renderings for a new sign that were so poorly drawn the project was sent back several times. The hotel owner then stopped showing up and the illegal sign is still standing.

Another business owner who had a sign program approved thumbed his nose at the City and illegally hung more than 20 signs and banners on its facade and in its windows.

"Essentially every week we bring it (sign enforcement) up at the ARB," said board member Joan Charles.

City officials note that their hands were initially tied by a lawsuit by U-Haul that froze enforcement of the ordinance, which covered 1,010 of the City's 8,126 signs.

Now planning officials say they are held back by a lack of resources and a growing list of priorities that must be addressed.

Instead of enforcing the sign ordinance the planning department is gearing up for an extensive sweep of sandwich boards and other items businesses illegally put on sidewalks, which are part of the public right of way.

Letters have already gone out to businesses describing what can and cannot be placed in the public right of way, and the City ran an article in the Chamber of Commerce newsletter.

"The next step is to start citing," Frick said. "That we intend to do in six months."

But Planning Commission Chair Kelly Olsen balks at Frick's assertion that resources are to blame for the lack of enforcement, which he sees as a chronic, longstanding problem.

"I do not believe the main issue is resources," said Olsen, a former City Council member. "I believe the main issue is the political will of staff and their unwillingness to do their job. There has been a lack of interest and willingness to enforce virtually any section of the zoning code, whether its conditional use permits or the sign ordinance.

"I talked about this ten years ago when I was on the City Council and I'm still talking about it ten years later when I'm chair of the Planning Commission," Olsen said. "We need to see some concrete evidence that they (City staff) are committed to this."

Angered by Cellular Fantasy, the business with more than 20 signs, Olson has put on the Planning Commission's agenda an item to initiate a permit revocation hearing.

Katz agreed that the City staff's handling of sign enforcement is troubling.

"We talk a good game and we don't enforce," Katz said. "We pass ordinances, and we don't do anything about it. We have a City that is dysfunctional. I'm very disappointed."