Here are your responses to this week’s Q-Line question: “Are city officials justified in cracking down on businesses with illegal signs or are they diverting valuable resources away from the city’s bigger problems?” ■ “I prefer gold lettering on business windows and a small sign of professional taste on the front of the business. Signs should lend to the aesthetic beauty of the community. If the city does not monitor the installation of signs, who will? Certainly not the signmakers.” ■ “I don’t know why the city officials... made these signs illegal. It had to be a City Council member. I cant believe that, once again, they are concerned about something ridiculous. They are not bothered by the constant urinating, defecating and panhandling going on. Get them out.” ■ “I think this is much ado about nothing. Typical response from the left. I think this is ridiculous. We have bigger problems to deal with. Look around.” ■ “I believe that city officials have nothing better to do but sit on their asses and waste money. They are bothering businesses that are trying to provide jobs and money to the community. Waste money, that’s all they do. They should be thrown right out of office. They are not, nor have they ever been, concerned about the citizens who actually live here, work here and raise families here.” ■ “This is not justified and our valuable resources are being wasted. How about these bums everywhere? I don’t even shop here anymore because it is such a hassle to sidestep these people every day, everywhere you go or look. I think it’s about time the City Council got its priorities straight.” ■ “If businesses want to have their signs up without getting a hard time from city officials, they should just fasten them to all the bums. It seems the bums are the only thing in the city that the city won’t hassle.” ■ “Once again, the only thing I have to say is what the hell are they doing over at City Hall? Furthermore, I think Bill Bauer should run for mayor. Perhaps he can get the city back toward what it used to be, not this stinking pigpen with criminal mental cases, vagrants and drug addicts. There is a woman living in a makeshift tent in the park, nuts as can be, and nobody does a thing about it. It is so obvious that the City Council never takes a walk around the city. We need people like Bill, Jeff Shepard and David Pisarra running for office here. If one of them just ran on the platform of cleaning up this city and getting the vagrants out of here, I can promise them votes.” ■ “The clown Council is definitely not justified here. It’s just the latest pathetic diversion pulling attention away from all the ridiculous decisions this City Council has made. The powers that be have driven the tourists elsewhere, enraged the working population by the lack of enforcement of the homeless and vagrancy problem and made it impossible to get around the city with their grid-lock traffic patterns. It’s time to go after the businesses that made this city great. I can’t wait to see what’s next.” ■ “Once again, the city has found another way to avoid dealing with the major problems of vagrancy, traffic and parking issues. Who do they think they are fooling? Certainly not the citizens who live here. What’s with the “aesthetic and safety reasons” for the crackdown on sig-nage? The aforementioned are much more of a hazard to the poor citizens — victims of the ongoing incompetence and stupidity of City Hall.” ■ “The city needs to take the sign Nazis and train them to be poop-and-urine troops. I don’t know any citizens that are concerned about signs. We have bigger things to worry about. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could keep the businesses here in Santa Monica instead of chasing them away with our silly City Council?”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.