The Los Angeles City Council is close to a long- sought ordinance that includes clear regulation for digital billboards and a way for the city to increase the revenue it collects from them, Councilman Jose Huizar said Tuesday.
Huizar is chairman of the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, which has been grappling with the issue for years and Tuesday approved without objection a crucial part of the possible new ordinance creating a framework for on-site digital billboards.
Due to turnover of the City Council’s membership and a series of lawsuits, the committee has struggled with the new sign ordinance for nine years.
“Our hope is that we move on this quickly,” Huizar said.
“This has been lingering for a very, very long time. We thought we had a plan in place few years back, but obviously went in different directions with different ideas as to what should be done.”
The debate over on-site digital billboards — where businesses can use the technology to advertise goods or services located on the premises — has not been as divisive as off-site ones which advertise things not available at the location, but is an important part of the new guidelines the committee has been struggling for years to craft.
“For one reason or another the issue of off-site signs has proven to be the most polarizing and controversial policy matter that I have been a part of on this committee,” Huizar said.
There are more than 8,300 billboards in Los Angeles and the city strictly limits the number and location of off-site digital billboards.
However, the guidelines approved Tuesday would allow for more on-site ones along specific and strict guidelines outside of the current districts which allow digital off-site billboards.
The new on-site guidelines would be part of a larger plan for the city to increase the revenue it collects from billboard owners while also reducing billboard blight with a policy that incentivizes companies to remove old billboards as part of the approval process for creating new ones, with new digital billboards requiring a higher takedown ratio.
Some organizations and companies objected to the proposed guidelines and argued they would be too restrictive.
“It is so restrictive that it would prohibit the use of on-site digital signs in most parcels in the city,” said Roy Flahive, executive director of the California Sign Association.
The budget for the 2017-18 fiscal year the City Council approved and Mayor Eric Garcetti recently signed assumes the council will approve a new ordinance for digital billboards, as it relies upon the anticipated increase in revenue to help balance the books.
The city collects between $580,000 to $700,000 a year from the owners of 8,300 billboards while Chicago collected $15 million just from 34 digital billboards in 2013 alone, Huizar said.
“The numbers seem to be staggering and the city certainly is losing out while we search desperately for resources to cover the most basic needs in the city,” Huizar said.
