Santa Clarita ordinances changed to include fines of up to $1,000 per violation.

Bandit signs. We see them everywhere in Santa Clarita these days, advertising anything from "cash for your home" and carpet cleaning to City Council elections and the latest diet and fitness crazes.

The Santa Clarita City Council has been in an uproar over these signs for a few months now, likely because some people saw the need to blanket the City with seemingly gazillions of signs at a time in an effort to get the word out about their new business. At one point, one Realtor had launched an aggressive campaign that had these signs placed about every 10 feet in the Valencia NorthPark, Northbridge, Creekside and Alta Vista areas.

Why are they called bandit signs? Because that’s the nature of these cheap plastic signs that are either hung on utility poles or stuck in the ground with cheap wooden stakes or wire stands. They are put up in areas that are generally in the public right of way, they are cheap enough to buy that there’s not much financial risk in getting them stolen or taken down, and the people who put them up generally know that they technically aren’t allowed to put signs in their chosen locations.

The new Santa Clarita bandit sign ordinance will impose a $250 fine for the first violation, and $1,000 per violation for any subsequent offenses. These $1,000 fines will be enforceable by the court, rather than being administrative fines as before. City staffers are supposed to photograph offending signs and notify the businesses involved that their signs are illegal before issuing any citations.

Of course there will always be ways to get around ordinances like this, and some bandit advertisers have already figured this out. The new ordinances only apply to areas within the Santa Clarita city limits, which do not include the Valencia Copperhill area, Tesoro del Valle, Castaic, Westridge, Stevenson Ranch and other areas in the northern end of the Santa Clarita Valley.

The City’s efforts will likely have the effect of your neighbors spraying for ants - the signs will just migrate to the areas without the toxic ordinance. We’re already seeing this in the Copperhill area, especially at McBean and Copperhill and across from the exits for Rio Norte Junior High and Valencia High School.

Even our prospective Santa Clarita City Council members have figured this out, with their signs plastering the non-City areas. Seems their favorite location at the moment is the corner of McBean and Copperhill, a high-traffic location just outside the City limits with lots of chain link fencing to hang signs from.  

Shouldn’t the Santa Clarita City Council be the first to remove offending bandit signs from the local fences, lightpoles and other public areas, since they wrote the new ordinance? So far, the only candidate that has had signs taken down has been Bob Kellar.

If you’re wondering where the Santa Clarita City Limits are, the Streets Map of Santa Clarita is a good place to start. But please don’t use this map as a resource for "safe" places to hang your bandit signs. I’m sure those just outside the City limits are tired of seeing these ugly signs littering up our roadways as well.

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