INC NEWS - flashing, changing, bright, electronic, new, improved, special treatment billboards

[Joshua Allen]

I must agree with Tom who seems to certainly have lived through this saga he
details for us.  I can't imagine how a digital billboard, or any billboard,
is good for Durham.  Not only do they create blight and driving
distractions, but these new billboards will consume and waste energy.  I'm
certainly willing to listen to what they have to say, but I just can't even
imagine an argument that would cause us to support digital billboards,
flashing or not.  Thanks, Tom, for this detailed history.


On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Tom Miller <tom-miller1 at nc.rr.com> wrote:

>  I for one am against what the billboard people are asking for, i.e.,
> special treatment for a non-conforming use.  As a community, we decided that
> Durham would be a billboard-free zone and we adopted zoning regulations to
> prevent new ones from going up.  Those rules also required the old ones to
> come down at the end of their useful life (amortization).  The billboard
> industry fought like tigers against Durham in court, but Durham won.  As a
> result, a lot of billboards came down over time.  Then the billboard
> industry got a bill passed to stop amortization as a way of getting rid of
> unwanted uses and the remaining billboards got to stay as nonconforming
> uses.  Under the law, the owner of a nonconforming use can keep it and can
> even keep it repaired.  He loses it if it's destroyed or if he lets it go
> for a period of time.  The one thing he can't do is increase it, improve it,
> or make it bigger or better.  So if my garage was legal when it was built,
> but is now too close to my neighbor's property line under the UDO, I can
> keep it.  I can paint it.  I can put a new roof on it.  But I can't add on
> to it.  I can't replace it with a new one.  Why is the billboard industry so
> special that they get a bye on the rules we ordinary citizens have to follow
> and which we ordinary citizens count on to protect us?
>
>
>
> These are the same people, the exact same people, who did everything they
> could to make downzoning illegal in NC.  They fought us for years in the
> legislature.  By us I mean INC.  Once upon a time INC kept a mailing list of
> hundreds of neighborhood organizations across the state.  We hosted a couple
> of meetings with neighborhood groups from other cities, like Raleigh,
> Henderson, Chapel Hill, and Winston-Salem.  Throughout the 80s and 90s when
> the inevitable billboard bill would be introduced in each session of the
> General Assembly, we would work with the League of Municipalities and
> environmental groups to stop or blunt the billboard industry's hateful
> legislation.  INC mailed out hundreds of letters informing and enlisting
> neighborhoods all over the state to help in the fight.  We were pretty
> successful too.
>
>
>
> These are the same people who used litigation as a stalling tactic every
> time our zoning rules required them to take down a billboard.  It cost the
> city thousands of dollars in legal resources, but I'll hand it to the city
> attorney's office, they didn't give up and they didn't lose.  That's when
> the billboard people, one of which was the predecessor of the very firm
> making Tuesday night's presentation, attacked the amortization tool in the
> legislature.  We, again I mean INC, fought against them.  Eventually,
> however, they got their way.
>
>
>
> Now they're still not satisfied.  They have a new product which even they
> say is the advertising we can't "choose to see", but "have to see" and they
> want special treatment in our zoning ordinance to put it up and make us look
> at it.  Well in Durham, we have a choice.
>
>
>
> I am against it.  I would even be against it if what they wanted was to put
> up one new improved and flashing billboard up in someone else's neighborhood
> and pay me $500,000 to sit by while they did it.
>
>
>
> No one should get to replace a nonconforming use with another
> nonconformity.  When Durham decided to be a billboard-free zone, INC was
> part of that decision.  Flashing or just flashy versions of the thing we
> worked so hard to get rid of won't convince me to go along with any proposal
> that replaces old billboards with new ones or which treats the billboard
> industry as a special case.
>
>
>
> Tom Miller
>
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>


-- 
--Joshua
allen.joshua at gmail.com
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