Huizar Shepherds New Mural Ordinance as Head of PLUM Committee

Among the more interesting developments in the freshly structured Los Angeles City Council is the chairperson status conferred on Councilmember José Huizar as the head of the powerful Planning and Land Use Management Committee, usually referred to just as PLUM.

In his first meeting serving as PLUM chair Tuesday, Huizar led the committee’s efforts to bring before the full city council a new mural ordinance that could change how murals have long been regulated in the city by allowing them to flourish alongside commercial advertising.

The proposed mural ordinance that Huizar helped push through with the support of his PLUM committee colleagues—CD 1’s Gil Cedillo and CD 12’s Mitch Englander—will likely be voted upon on Aug. 20.

“Today’s vote on the PLUM committee put us one step closer to allowing murals to once again flourish in the City of Los Angeles,” Huizar was quoted as saying in a news statement by his office. “I want to thank the committee members, but especially our artists who for more than a year have come from all over the City to make sure their voices were heard and to lend their artistic expertise on crafting a mural ordinance that worked for them and our communities.”

The proposed legislation enjoys considerable public support and is much-awaited in that it will allow artists to legally create murals on private property, with the consent of property owners. Mural-based signs are currently banned in the city, and the issue is mired in litigation.

“The new mural ordinance will be separate from the sign law by identifying murals as something other than signs,” Huizar’s communications director Rick Coca said in the news statement. Instead, the new ordinance will view murals as “original works of art.”

Huizar has asked for a full report on the pros and cons of two options to include or exclude so-called R-1 single-family homes in the mural ordinance before it is presented to the city council.