The Los Angeles City Council decided to revise its sign ordinance last July as billboards, super-graphics and digital signs became more prevalent in the city. The revised ordinance will apply to all types of signs in Los Angeles and is intended to decrease visual clutter in the city by regulating more heavily on signage, the city's planning department said.
    
The four-member committee will address concerns from the most recent sign ordinance proposal, which did not pass when the planning commission voted last week. Issues include how on- and off-site signs will be treated, how murals will be affected and how sign districts will be enforced.

"There are a number of issues that would benefit from further instruction," said William Roschen, president of the city planning commission.
    
A top concern is whether to distinguish off-site signs, which are advertisements for products that are not sold on the premises, from on-site signs. According to the Department of Building and Safety, there are up to 10,000 off-site signs in Los Angeles.
 Several members of the Planning Commission expressed a fear that removing the distinction will result in more off-site signs.
    
"I think there is an unofficial understanding that we're going to keep the distinction between on- and off-site signs," said Michael Woo, who will chair the ad-hoc committee, said. Woo, along with fellow commissioners William Roschen, Diego Cardoso and Sean Burton, will make up the team.
    
The committee will also look into how murals will be dealt with in the sign ordinance. Though the rejected proposal limited murals to the same restrictions as wall signs, some commissioners expressed discomfort in defining murals that way.
    
"Murals, in my opinion, are not signs," said commissioner Ricardo Lara. "To see them as signs doesn't do murals justice."
    
The Planning Commission said it might look into separating murals from the sign ordinance completely.
    
Mural conservator Shakuntala Zakheim says she is hopeful that the expressed concern might lead to a less restrictive avenue for murals, which have been prohibited in Los Angeles since 2002.
    
"Whatever gives muralists the most rights and leeway to put art back up is ideal," Zakheim said. "L.A. used to be the mural capital of the world. I'd love to see that happen again."
    
The enforcement of sign districts, which are specified areas in Los Angeles where signs would be allowed, is also a topic for the committee. The city wants to make sure that it's not "giving a bonanza or give-away to sign owners and companies," Woo said. The proposal up for debate last Thursday suggested that less than one percent of Los Angeles be designated as "sign districts," which is about 13 percent less than the current sign ordinance allows.
    

The committee said it also wants to address the need for more enforcement staff. The Department of Building and Safety said it currently has three inspectors overseeing the legality of all off-site signs and super-graphics in Los Angeles.
    
"I want to give those three people a hug," said Regina Freer, vice president of the commission. "I can't imagine what their job would be like."
    
There was an overarching consensus at the sign meeting last Thursday that the ordinance was not yet ready to pass.
    
Several different organizations and members of the public, from muralists to business owners, voiced concerns about the proposal and said that it was not ready to be adopted.
    
"I think there is an overwhelming cry from the public that we need more time," Spencer Kezios, another city planning commissioner, said.

Despite the myriad issues that need to be addressed, the newly appointed committee is under a strict time constraint. The city's current billboard moratorium, which puts a halt on the erection of new off-site signs and supergraphics in Los Angeles, expires March 26. The moratorium, or Interim Control Ordinance (ICO), was adopted last December in part to give the city more time to draft a new ordinance.
    
"A new ordinance needs to be effective and in place before the ICO terminates," Chief Assistant City Attorney David Michaelson said. "Otherwise, there will be a stark period of time where no ICO and no new law is in place and it's going to be the Wild, Wild West."
            
The Los Angeles City Council can extend the ICO for another three months if it chooses to. It can also step in 75 days after the sign ordinance was first discussed, which would be sometime early April, and take over the decision-making process.
     
"The Planning Commission is going to have to move relatively quickly at this point," Michaelson said.
    
Still, Freer said that the proposal has come a long way and there are now a "narrower set of concerns that need vetting."

The newly formed committee will present its findings to the city planning commission on March 18.