BILLBOARD UPGRADES A SIGN OF COUNCIL HASTE.

Byline: Walter N. Prince

IF the City Council has its way, certain sections of Los Angeles freeways will soon sport brand new double-faced billboards that will carry signs 14 feet tall by 48 feet wide, which is taller than an elephant and more than twice as wide as your standard two-car garage.

The signs will be part of billboard structures that are 60 feet high and spaced as close as 600 feet apart, which allows each driver to see nine of them in less than one minute of driving time.

In exchange for the right to install the 140 behemoth sign faces in industrial areas next to freeways, the sign companies will have to agree to tear down thousands of smaller billboards across the city.

The exchange of old for new is the brainchild of Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, and is backed by Valley Councilman Hal Bernson, who apparently is looking forward to getting some of the giant freeway signs in his own sprawling Northwest Valley district.

At first, it might seem like a good idea to trade 10 or 15 old signs for each new one, even if the new ones might block the views of scenic corridors and historic buildings that are actually enjoyed by tourists and some daily freeway commuters.

But at second look, there are dozens of questions that should be answered before the City Council moves forward with the proposal.

For example, what kind of advertising will be prohibited? Will ads for topless bars be allowed in areas that are traveled every day by busloads of schoolchildren, or where parks, playgrounds, churches or schools are in plain view of the monster signs?

Are the signs a distraction hazard to drivers, especially when they are spaced only 600 feet apart?

No studies have been done to answer these questions.

As for the old signs, will the removal of thousands of signs eliminate an important advertising venue for local merchants who cannot afford to advertise on the huge new signs?

Will local stores lose sales because of the loss of available advertising space? And how much income will be lost by local advertising firms and their employees?

Nobody has bothered to talk to the merchants to learn how they will be affected.

Landlords are next on the list of losers. Many small landlords depend on the income they get from billboard companies who rent space to install the signs. The income will stop when the signs are demolished, but no study has been done to determine the effect on small or large landlords.

The city itself also stands to lose important revenue if thousands of signs are removed. The city collects annual license fees and taxes based on the income generated by the signs, and that income will now be lost forever.

But nobody in the city knows how much.

Finally, there are the potential lawsuits. The first ones will be filed by land owners who are entitled to install signs on their property, but who feel the city has performed an unjust ``taking'' of their property rights by telling the billboard companies to tear down the signs that bring them income.

Next, there will be lawsuits from owners of buildings whose own signs have been blocked from view by the new signs, and from drivers who have crashes that only happened because they were distracted by the huge signs.

It is apparent that the city has not done its homework on this issue. It should hold off on any decisions until it can gather and analyze information concerning the current inventory of signs in the city. How many are there? Where are they? How large is each one?

The city should decide which signs will be removed and the proposed location for each new sign. The city has a terrific GIS mapping department that can display this information on a map that even the City Council can understand.

The city should also conduct a ``what if'' study of the economic effects of the proposed program on businesses, small advertisers and landlords. Or it can ask the sign industry to conduct the study. After all, they deal with these folks every day.

Finally, the city should ask its own affected departments to conduct a financial analysis to see how much revenue the city will lose if thousands of signs are removed. The city attorney should be consulted to determine if the program might have the unwanted effect of causing hundreds of lawsuits in which the city is a defendant.

The City Council should hold back on this proposal until it gets answers to these questions and others that have been posed by concerned residents and businesses. It should also ask itself if it is really doing a good thing, or if it is merely moving visual blight from one area in the city to another.