Welcome to El Paso

An ongoing saga.

Billboards.

Last year, City Council was alerted to the fact that one of the billboard companies had put up 17 digital billboards, even though our current city code does not allow it. This is what I call policy making through the back door.

So we had to answer the question: do we want to allow digital billboards in El Paso, Texas, and if so, under what conditions?

Digital billboards are a new technology that allows sign companies to broadcast many more advertisements from a single board. Many of us, myself included, saw this as an opportunity to open up the debate about how we address billboards in general. We have too many billboards, too much visual clutter, too many roadway distractions. Not great advertisement for our city. Especially when what you want folks to remember is our mountain, our Downtown, our neighborhoods. Having done some marketing in my life, all the sign clutter also diminishes an advertisers ability to effectively reach their audience.

Our current billboard ordinance which has been in place for several years requires billboard companies to take down billboards every time they put up a new one. It is referred to as a cap and trade program. Problem is that it hasn't significantly reduced visual clutter, especially along those corridors that are saturated with signs.

Our planning department looked at what other cities are doing that is effective in reducing the number of billboards but still provides ample opportunities for businesses to advertise. Their research showed that many cities like Houston and Phoenix had effectively reduced billboards with a prohibition on all new sign construction. Based on the City Council direction to look at ways to reduce sign clutter in El Paso, they recommended that we adopt a similar prohibition and allow billboard companies to switch out existing static boards for digital boards in those cases where they were willing to remove 16 signs of equal value.

When the billboard company threatened to sue, City Council (in a vote that I did not support) asked that rather than establish policy through a public process, that we establish the policy through a negotiated settlement. Not surprisingly that negotiated settlement did not do much in the way of significantly reducing sign clutter in our community. It stuck with the cap and trade system and in the instance of digital boards only marginally increased the number of signs that a billboard company would need to remove in order to use a new technology that significantly enhances the value of their signs.

Last Monday at the urging of Representative Lilly, the Planning and Development Legislative Review Committee heard the issue again. We recommended that instead of setting policy under threat of lawsuit that we stick to our guns and go with the prohibition. We also recommended to City Council a cap of 15 digital signs citywide and that in order to trade out a static sign for a digital sign that a billboard company would need to take down 16 billboards of equal value. I added an ammendment that would require that all adjacent property owners and neighborhood associations would be contacted and that a public hearing would be held prior to a permit being awarded.

This issue will be heard by the full council in May. Don't forget to weigh in with your thoughts and ideas.

For more information on what other Texas cities are doing to keep Texas scenic, visit http://www.scenictexas.org/.