Digital billboards will arrive in town in the near future as part of a settlement reached between the city and Clear Channel Outdoor on a long-running battle over billboards. Tacoma City Council approved the settlement on July 29.
The communications giant will be allowed to install 10 of the modern billboards, which can display multiple images and be controlled from a remote location. In return, it must remove 53 signs now posted around Tacoma. Once it applies for permits for the new billboards, it must remove 25 more of the old signs over the next five years.
The agreement settles a dispute over a city ordinance aimed at removing signs determined to be too big or disruptive by Aug. 1, 2007. Close to 200 signs would have been affected. The council granted billboard owners a 10-year period to recover money invested before the ban took effect. Each sign not in compliance after that date faced a fine of $25 per day.
Shortly before it took effect Clear Channel sued the city, claiming the amortization period was not just compensation under the Fifth Amendment and that the ban violated its First Amendment rights.
Mayor Marilyn Strickland called the settlement a worthwhile compromise. She said the city will benefit because it can chose areas where billboards will be torn down.
“It allows the city going forward to regulate billboards in a meaningful and deliberate way and put them in places that the city approves of and where they are more appropriate.”
Over a period of five years, about 85 percent of the existing signs will come down, she noted. She added that the city had to reach a compromise because the ban was being challenged on constitutional grounds.
Clear Channel will give up 169 permits it now holds for billboards.
Strickland said the digital billboards will not be intrusive. She described them as digital picture frames that morph images and are not “the loud, flashing neon, Vegas-style billboards you see on I-5.” She added this is a new technology that all billboard companies are adopting.
Strickland noted they could be used to provide information to the public, such as the “Amber alerts” used to get the word out about abducted children.
R.R. Anderson was the only member of the public to testify prior to the council’s vote. He described digital billboards as “perpetual psychic attacks on our citizens.” He predicted they will be installed near low-income neighborhoods. “Do not sell out the hearts and minds of our citizens.”
Where the digital billboards will be installed has yet to be determined.
