The City Council asked code enforcement staff Monday to persist in its efforts to uphold Simi Valley's sign ordinance, and place a renewed focus on nonresponsive repeat violators.

The ordinance sets forth guidelines for posting temporary noncommercial or political signs.

Council members want the city to continue to document illegal signs and to speed up their removal, and they gave code enforcement permission to seek from sign owners repayment of the city's costs for taking them down.

In addition, the council said that violations by sign owners who are nonresponsive to the city's requests and continue to abuse the law will now be forwarded to the city attorney's office for criminal prosecution.

Councilmember Michelle Foster said this kind of enforcement policy is critical to upholding the law the council fought hard for.

"We went through a huge process to come up with the sign ordinance," Foster said. "If we don't have the ability to enforce it, then what's the point? So I think that doing this makes a lot of sense."

When violations are reported, city staff notifies the sign owner or representative via a telephone call or letter describing the violation and options for meeting compliance.

Violators are then given 24 hours to remove the sign prior to any further action, such as civil fines or legal remedies, which are used only as a last resort.

Staff found that while most owners of temporary signs are responsive to initial notifications, others knowingly disregard the ordinance—particularly for events of short duration, such as a political campaign.

Because of this, during election cycles the city works particularly hard to educate the community about the sign ordinance, even sending courtesy letters to registered candidates with pertinent information.

At the council's June 28 meeting, Councilmember Barbra Williamson suggested taking a harsher line with violators instead of first allowing them to remove the sign themselves.

"When they get their campaign packets, it tells them what the sign ordinance is," she said. "If they are going to run for public office, I think they can read what the sign ordinance says."

Public works currently removes all illegal signs posted in the city's right-of-way, and code enforcement has another 323 waivers on file signed by private property owners that authorize the immediate removal of signs on their property.

Nevertheless, the city has continually struggled with repeat offenders.

The expanded enforcement code will now allow the city to seek recovery of costs for signs that can be legally taken down, and to forward documentation of illegal signs that cannot be removed to the city attorney's office.

"This will give staff the ability to begin ratcheting down very quickly, within a 24-hour period, to those who, private or campaign, choose to abuse the process," city manager Mike Sedell said.

Though the city is still refining the sign ordinance through this enforcement policy, Councilmember Glen Becerra said the city has come miles from where it used to be.

"I applaud both the new laws and the city's efforts on enforcing this," he said. "It's a much better process than it was 10 years ago."

The council asked that staff report back after the general municipal election period is over to discuss what worked and what did not so that the council can then make modifications to the enforcement policy.

In a Nutshell

Noncommercial/political signs are defined as any message that is not commercial speech. A permit is not required for noncommercial signs, but they must meet certain standards:

•Cannot be posted in the city's public rights-of-way

•Cannot exceed 12 square feet in size

•Can only be placed on private property with the permission of the property owner or leaseholder

•Are subject to specific placement criteria

•Can be displayed for only 120 days

•The date of posting, the name, address and telephone number of the person or organization installing the sign must be affixed to the sign