THOUSAND OAKS : Crossing Guards to Pull Up Illegal Signs

The Thousand Oaks City Council, frustrated by a plethora of illegal signs popping up around the city, has voted 3 to 2 to pay school crossing guards to drive around the city on weekends and remove the signs.

Council members said they were especially annoyed by signs advertising sales of housing tracts. Some developments, they said, were not even within the city limits. It is illegal in Thousand Oaks to post a sign on city property without a permit.

For the past six months, the city has relied on city maintenance employees--doing their usual morning rounds on Mondays--to tear down signs as they see them, said John Clement, the city’s director of public works. But on many occasions, the maintenance employees miss areas that are not included in their routes, leaving signs hanging for days, he said.

The city must pay maintenance employees their base wage of at least $15 per hour to go out on special, sign-ripping missions, he said. School crossing guards, however, cost the city only $6 per hour and, because they work only about 20 hours per week, do not need to be paid overtime if brought in on weekends, he said.

Council members Frank Schillo, Judy Lazar and Alex Fiore voted for the measure. Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski and Mayor Elois Zeanah voted against the proposal.

“This is a code enforcement matter,” Zeanah said. “If the staff would go out Monday and cite offenders, I think we would not have a problem.”

Schillo responded, however, that to turn the matter over to code enforcers would ultimately mean paying those employees extra to do the job, a step that would be more expensive than hiring the crossing guards on weekends.