Tacoma’s digital billboard opponents tried to turn up the heat on the City Council on Tuesday, arriving at City Hall with what they said were 1,400 names of people who back their cause.
The names, gathered at farmers’ markets, festivals, businesses and neighborhoods in the city and on Facebook, don’t carry any legal weight but are intended as a show of support for banning digital billboards.
The city Planning Commission has recommended banning the electronic signs and making other changes to the city sign code that anti-billboard activists largely support.
A different draft proposal that the council also is considering would allow digital billboards – with as-yet-undefined caps on their number, size and location – in exchange for their owners’ removal of some traditional billboards.
Neighborhood activist Erik Bjornson said he sees three sure allies on the nine-member council, with others’ votes still in doubt.
“That’s why everybody’s turning out today,” Bjornson, the chairman of the North End Neighborhood Council, said of the uncertainty. “They understand there’s a threat to bypass the public’s will on the matter.”
The council could decide in the next couple of weeks. For the most part, members aren’t publicly committing to one proposal or another.
“All of our options are still open,” Mayor Marilyn Strickland said.
Following the petition dropoff and an anti-billboard rally outside City Hall, more than 30 people testified at Tuesday’s council meeting, most of them in favor of the Planning Commission’s proposed ban.
Others, from businesses and nonprofits and from a national trade group for billboard companies, showed up to oppose an outright ban.
Myrle Carner, the director of law enforcement services for Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound, said digital billboards are critical for alerts about missing children, fugitives and other cases when time is of the essence. It can take weeks to update a traditional billboard but seconds to update an electronic sign, he said.
“There are times when we’ve got to get that information out within a minute or two, particularly when we’re dealing with a life issue,” Carner said.
Kerry Yoakum of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America said he was in Seattle for another matter and stopped by Tacoma to tell city officials they should line up with what he says are at least 400 communities that allow digital billboards.
“These are well-accepted in the country, and accordingly, I believe Tacoma should join the rest of the nation,” Yoakum said.
An ordinance passed in 1997 was intended to phase out many signs, but Clear Channel Outdoor sued the city before the law fully took effect Aug. 1, 2007.
The council last year unanimously approved a settlement with the company allowing it to erect up to 38 electronic billboards in exchange for removing about 250 traditional billboards and giving up permits for about 170 more. But council members handed the issue to the Planning Commission amid public backlash.
City officials have found that as many as 193 billboards operated by Clear Channel don’t comply with city code. The petition delivered Tuesday calls for removing all of them.
“We’re just trying to show how the people of Tacoma feel,” said Susan Cruise of Scenic Tacoma, who collected many of the signatures.
Tricia DeOme, the chairwoman of the Central Neighborhood Council, rattled off statistics to the council about the advertisers that use Tacoma billboards. Her surveys show larger companies dwarf nonprofits or local businesses, she said.
“Be brave. Stand up to Clear Channel,” said one speaker at the hearing, Julie Turner. “We are all behind you.”
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