Officials Target Ads Posted on City Property

The next time you have a garage sale, do yourself a favor: Run a classified ad.

City officials have started cracking down on people who tack those tattered advertisements on telephone poles and light posts in the San Fernando Valley.

The signs, which offer everything from herbal weight-loss plans to stay-at-home get-rich-quick careers, are being targeted by deputy city attorneys, Caltrans workers and private citizens fed up with the clutter.

“Frankly, they’re an eyesore,” said Richard Schmidt, supervising attorney for the Van Nuys branch of the city attorney’s office. “They add to an already messy environment.”

Recently, Schmidt prosecuted Woodland Hills resident David Paul Desaegher, 37, after a Caltrans supervisor alleged that he saw Desaegher posting signs advertising the “Diet Magic” plan and a “Work from Home” job offer about 1:30 a.m. Jan. 16.

Desaegher was charged with nine counts of posting signs on city property.

“People doing this kind of advertising are maintaining an unfair business advantage, as opposed to businesses that pay for advertising,” Schmidt said. “I have no problem with people trying to make a living in Los Angeles, but you’ve got to do it by the rules.”

According to the rules, anyone who posts a sign illegally on public property is subject to a fine of $1,000 and 30 days of community service for each sign, Schmidt said. Community service typically includes taking signs down or covering graffiti.

Illegal sign posters must also pay restitution to the city to cover the cost of taking down the signs--Caltrans is seeking $5,315 from Desaegher.

Schmidt said Desaegher’s signs had been showing up at Valley on- and offramps to the Foothill, Reagan, Golden State and San Diego freeways for six months before charges were filed. Hundreds more were posted along main Valley streets, Schmidt said.

Valley residents have taken an active part in keeping their neighborhoods free of clutter. “If I see them on my way to the market I will pull over, get out, tear them down and put them in the back of my truck,” said Gloria Woods, a retiree and board member of the Studio City Residents Assn. who has been tearing down signs for three years.

Then she calls the numbers on the fliers and warns them to keep their signs out of her neighborhood.

“I just tell them that it’s illegal to post the signs on public property,” she said. “They’re usually not too happy with me.”

“It’s unsightly and it’s nothing different than graffiti,” said Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. board member Jules Feir, 63, who does the same.

Schmidt said that officials are investigating several other flagrant commercial violators, and that even individuals’ signs for garage sales or missing pets are illegal.

The city’s priority, however, are those who put up commercial posters such as Desaegher, who disseminated hundreds of signs throughout the Valley.

“We are continuing to investigate the origins of signs as they come out,” he said.

The Department of Public Works’ street use division supervisor, Ron Berenson, has put together a two-person team to take complaints and take down signs. Berenson also said the problem is less the garage sale signs than the “identical, mass produced signs from one end of the Valley to the other.”

“Sometimes they’re put so high that we can’t get them,” he said. “They are ugly when they are first put there and they just get uglier as time goes by.”