Freeway Billboard Battle
By Dennis Hathaway
We’ve probably all read 1984, Orwell’s famous dystopian novel in which people were conditioned to hold beliefs in direct contradiction to reality.
 Hence, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” So
let’s keep that in mind while reading the City Attorney’s summary of an
ordinance passed by the city council last week to allow digital
billboards in an MTA bus yard along side the Interstate 10 freeway
downtown. To quote:
“The draft ordinance would establish a sign supplemental use district
to establish design guidelines to limit visual clutter in the area by
regulating the number, size, and locations of signs. The proposed
ordinance would further the objectives of the Central City Community
Plan to create a pedestrian-friendly environment by requiring the
planting of street trees in conjunction with the erection of the
signs. In addition, the regulations are designed to protect street
views and scenic vistas of the Downtown skyline.”
But before you ask exactly how two 76 ft. high billboard structures with double faces of nearly 700 sq. ft. where no billboards now exist will limit visual clutter or protect scenic vistas of the Downtown skyline, or why pedestrian-friendliness is at issue in an industrial area beside a bus yard, read further into the body of the ordinance itself. There you learn that the sign district not only provides the above protections and enhancements, but that it will “minimize potential traffic hazards.”
Yes, read that twice. Two billboard faces with brilliantly-lighted advertisements changing every eight seconds, 24 hours a day less than 100 ft. from a section of freeway traveled by more than 300,000 cars a day. The kind of billboards now being studied by the Federal Highway Administration to determine if they compromise highway safety. The kind of billboards that would have had to undergo a traffic hazard evaluation by the city’s Department of Transportation except for the fact the sign district ordinance contains an exemption from that requirement.
Are we living in Oceania, the fictional state of Orwell’s novel? Did the 13 city council members who voted for the sign district actually read the ordinance? And if so, did it cross any of their minds that an open, democratic government doesn’t try to tell its constituents that black is white, that night is day, and so on.
And there is more. The freeway sign district is part of a complicated deal involving a wetlands park in south L.A. and the settlement of a lawsuit Clear Channel brought against the MTA six years ago over the forced removal of billboards to make way for widening of Santa Monica Blvd. between Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Because 14 billboard faces owned by Clear Channel were removed there, giving the company the right to put up four billboard faces in the MTA bus yard represents a “net reduction in billboards” in the city and is thus consistent with one of the objectives of sign districts.
Or so claims the ordinance passed by the City Council, with councilman Jack Weiss the only dissenting vote. The logic of this not only breaks down but dissolves into dust when one recognizes that a billboard on a major freeway is far more valuable to a sign company that one on a city street, because rates are calculated on how many cars pass the sign in a given amount of time. And a digital billboard, with multiple advertisers, is far more valuable than a conventional billboard in any location.
In fact, in 2001 the City Council considered allowing sign companies to put up one freeway billboard for every 10 billboards removed elsewhere. Billboard companies apparently thought that was a good deal, because they lobbied heavily for it, and it was defeated only because of anti-billboard sentiment on the council at that time.
And making the 4-for-14 swap look like even a worse deal for the city, a state legislative analysis calculates the value of a digital billboard at ten times a conventional one in the same location, so doing the math brings one to the conclusion that Clear Channel should have been required to remove at least 100 of its billboard faces on city streets to offset the four it gets to put up on the freeway.
But the Orwellian logic embodied in “newspeak” and “doublethink” has no place for such analysis, or even discourse, but requires one to sit and listen and regurgitate what one is told. The leading voice in this has been that of Councilwoman Jan Perry, with assistance by her council colleague, Ed Reyes.
Perry has consistently pushed the “billboard reduction” fallacy, even going so far as to imply that her work on behalf of the wetlands park/freeway sign district has been instrumental in removing the billboards on Santa Monica Blvd., even though they were taken down in 2002, and the park project didn’t hit the drawing boards until almost two years later. She has claimed that constituents of two Westside council districts—5 and 11—should be grateful for her efforts, although the Santa Monica Blvd. billboards were on the far edge of District 5 and nowhere near District 11.
As for the issues of visual blight, traffic safety, and the establishment of precedent by allowing freeway billboards, Perry has dismissed all these by repeatedly stating that the billboards will be in an industrial area away from any residences, as if they will have no effect on the hundreds of thousands of people from all over the city who will be forced to see their advertising images every day as they drive that section of freeway. At best this is disingenuous, and at worst it is consistent with Orwellian logic—black is white, night is day, and so forth.
Perry has also done her best to promulgate the idea that Clear Channel’s freeway billboards will be paying for the 9-acre park at 65th and Avalon in south L.A. In fact, not a single public document regarding the park or the freeway sign district makes any reference to revenue from the billboards going for construction or maintenance of the park. The city’s public works department has listed all the sources of funding for the estimated $20 million needed to develop the park. Among them are Proposition O clean water bond funds and Proposition K park and recreation funds. Clear Channel or billboards are not mentioned. Perry did manage, however, to slip a last-minute provision into the sign district ordinance that requires Clear Channel to give surplus spots on the digital billboards free of charge to businesses in the downtown Fashion District.
The park property is now owned by the MTA, which has agreed to sell the property to the city only on the condition that the city approve the freeway sign district. This will allow the settlement of a lawsuit Clear Channel brought against the MTA over the removal of the Santa Monica Blvd. billboards six years ago. Perry claims that the MTA is selling the property at below market value--$3 million—which perhaps is her basis for some convoluted claim that the billboards are helping pay for the park, although she has never cited actual documents supporting this evaluation.
But most disturbingly, Perry, with help from Reyes, has not only argued on behalf of the freeway sign district, but has made repeated attempts to quash public debate on these issues by calling into question the motives of those who think that traffic safety, visual blight, and the precedent established by allowing billboards are legitimate issues of concern, independent of whether or not people in Perry’s district deserve a park.
Thus, billboard opponents are “outsiders” whose daily concerns are trivial compared to those of people in Perry’s district who have to deal with gang violence and the lack of places for their children to play. Opposition to the freeway billboards, according to Reyes, is based on “technicalities” and therefore hardly worth listening to.
Is this the way democracy is supposed to work? Aren’t citizens supposed to be given all the facts in an unvarnished state and then allowed to participate in a full debate of the issues? Or is that a utopian ideal, as improbable and unrealistic as the “double-think” and mind-control apparatus of Orwell’s dystopian novel? (Wetlands Park motion is back before City Council for second vote on Tuesday.)
(Dennis Hathaway is a community activist and a political observer. Hathaway is a member of the Venice Neighborhood Council Land Use and Planning Committee and a contributor to CityWatch.) _
CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 33
Posted: Apr 21, 2008
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