Digital billboards are signs of the times

Software automatically controls sensors that adjust thousands of LEDs in digital billboards to keep images and text clear regardless of clouds, fog or glaring sunlight. At night, the signs are dimmed so they appear no brighter than they would during the day. [Photo: Mark Wemple]

Some communities, however, haven't been as eager. In St. Petersburg, opposition from the city's Council of Neighborhood Associations, activists with Scenic St. Petersburg and other community members pressured the city commission into scuttling a proposed deal with Clear Channel in which the billboard company would have agreed to put up six digital billboards in exchange for tearing down 80 — and agreed to replace them with static boards after 20 years.

At one public hearing, citizens spoke of being "startled" by digital billboards while driving. Trudy Barker, a community activist fighting billboards, showed the council a photo of a billboard featuring Tampa radio personality Bubba The Love Sponge sitting on a toilet. She reminded council members that they can't choose the content of the ads. Others complained that the city would be opening a Pandora's box by welcoming digital billboards and said the city should stick to its no-new-billboards policy.

"These battles are often fought between the industry through their lawyers and lobbyists and others they bring to the table to influence elected officials versus neighborhood associations and garden clubs and beautification organizations." Local citizens are "simply overwhelmed." — Bill Brinton, attorney representing Scenic Jacksonville

The city council's 5-3 vote against the proposed deal shocked council member Leslie Curran, who voted in favor of it. The city, she says, "missed an opportunity" to get rid of a large number of older billboards that the city essentially has no other way of eliminating.

Clear Channel's lobbyists were equally perplexed. "It's the darnedest thing I ever saw — people who didn't like billboards fighting to keep more billboards in town," says Todd Pressman, a lobbyist in nearby Palm Harbor who helped clear the way for electronic billboards in neighboring areas of Tampa, Pinellas County and Pasadena.

Meanwhile, in Jacksonville, anti-billboard forces are up in arms over Clear Channel's recent push to put up eight digital billboards in the city. A 1995 settlement between the city and billboard companies resulted in the removal of 1,000 billboards and established strict rules about where billboards could be erected.

The agreement left Clear Channel with some leeway after it exceeded the minimum number of required removals, however. And in 2010, Jacksonville City attorneys approved the company's plan to erect a handful of digital boards in places where replacement boards were allowed. The move outraged billboard opponents, who viewed the installation of the digital boards as a step backward. Bill Brinton, a Jacksonville attorney who represents Scenic Jacksonville, indicated that opponents plan to challenge the digital billboards in court.

So far, local governments remain mostly in control of their communities' billboard future. But state legislators passed a law in 2002 that requires local governments to reimburse billboard companies for their full investment if they force a company to remove a sign — potentially, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars for each sign.

And Curran is among those who worry that the Florida Legislature may get involved again — and pass legislation pre-empting local communities from strictly regulating electronic billboards and giving the companies free rein to convert their billboards to the digital format. Lawmakers in North Carolina rejected a similar proposal earlier this year, and the digital billboard industry has been actively lobbying other state legislatures to pass laws that override local restrictions on digital signs.

St. Petersburg "had an opportunity to limit them," says Curran, "and now my concern is that it will be the state that will be dealing with it."

Pete Dunbar, a billboard industry lobbyist, says he doesn't think that will happen in Florida. "If we were to choose to go up to Tallahassee and say, 'Here's the new deal. We're pre-empting everyone' — I'm going to have 463 local governments saying, 'You're pre-empting our home rule.' We don't want to be in their face. We want to work with local governments and hope they'll be reasonable."

As digital billboard battles play out in city council meetings and courtrooms, there's a potential wild card in the form of a study by the Federal Highway Administration. The agency has been researching whether digital signs cause drivers to take their eyes off the road for unsafe periods of time. It completed the study in November 2010 but hasn't released the results — for reasons that remain unclear.

The study's conclusions could have big implications for both government and the sign companies, says Jerry Wachtel, a consultant who worked on it and a previous study published in 2009.

If the agency imposes regulations, many state or local governments may be unable to comply because they'd have to compensate the companies for their signs and the income stream from the signs projected over their life expectancy.

Meanwhile, the companies worry that the agency could impose a moratorium on building the signs — or create regulations that might make them far less profitable.

"That's why companies are racing to get these billboards built as fast as they can," says Wachtel.

[Photo: Mark Wemple]