Planning Dept. must draft new ordinance
by Michael Clancy – Aug. 12, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
A committee established to recommend updates to Phoenix’s outdated billboard ordinance has disbanded, skipping its last scheduled meeting after the group took a pro-billboard stance in previous meetings.
Committee Chairman Jim Mapstead said the panel had covered the major issues, including the question of where billboards should be permitted. The matter is now with the Planning Department, which will draft a new billboard ordinance that should be ready by the end of August.
The committee was formed in February in response to growing controversy over new electronic billboards, efforts to convert static signs to electronic, and success by billboard companies at exploiting loopholes in the current ordinance.
Mapstead said the group, made up of neighborhood leaders, attorneys and industry representatives, favored opening all Phoenix freeways to billboards, except Loop 101 in north Phoenix and Arizona 51. The group also supported conversion of neighborhood signs to electronic displays and agreed that billboards may be allowed in planned urban developments.
But former Mayor Terry Goddard, who helped establish the current ordinance in 1986, called the committee “a farce.”
“It was industry-dominated,” said Goddard, who also is a former state attorney general. If a new ordinance reflects the committee’s consensus, he added, “it will be a feeding frenzy” to add billboards along most streets and freeways.
Goddard said no other city is as permissive as Phoenix in allowing billboard companies to convert older signs to electronic signs, which change messages every eight seconds.
Goddard said Phoenix should consider a complete halt to billboard construction and conversions or at least require billboard companies to tear down older signs in exchange for electronic signs.
Mapstead declined to criticize the committee’s work, but he said he had only one ally opposed to billboards on the group.
Another committee member, Bob Beletz, chairman of the North Mountain Village Planning Committee, said he favors billboards “as long as they don’t hurt the quality of life for residents.
“The billboard companies have as much right to do business here as anyone else. They have gone above and beyond the requirements,” he said, including removal of older signs and displays of public-service messages.
City Councilman Bill Gates, who made the request to update the ordinance, said he would be disappointed if a pro-billboard ordinance reached the council.
“It does not appear they addressed the concerns I have heard in the community,” he said. “If that (pro-billboard approach) is the consensus, that is not the direction I would like to take.”
Gates opened the possibility that a council committee might have to take up the question.
“This is an issue where we have to do it the right way,” he said. “Once billboards are allowed, we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
The issue of billboards arose in June 2010 with the approval of a new electronic billboard along Loop 101 in an area that the 1986 ordinance appeared to prohibit. Since then, other applications have sought several new sites and conversions, some approved and some not.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2011/08/12/20110812phoenix-billboard-committee-suspends-work.html#ixzz1UpWM1Usx
