TITLE
Recommendation to request the amending of the Long Beach Municipal Code related to Billboards as follows:
A) Request City staff to prepare an Environmental Impact Report to study the aesthetics, land use, energy usage, and traffic safety impacts of digital billboards, with a particular emphasis on understanding how light trespass could impact residents' homes and sleep should this ordinance take effect; and
B) Department of Development Services to report back on every possible monetization tool available to the City from billboards.
DISCUSSION
Billboards have the potential to create significant environmental impacts on our residential neighborhoods and communities. Although the new digitals would for the most part be located on major arterial streets, in many areas these billboards would nonetheless still light up private residences.
We can learn from the City of Los Angeles mistakes. An article in the L.A. Weekly about the disturbance that ensued in the City of Los Angeles when digital conversions were allowed to take place is instructive. It quotes one Venice resident, Mindy Taylor-Ross, who had to live with the impacts of a digital billboard: "It flashes through my window all night long. . . . My bedroom and bathroom change color and intensity with the billboard. I can see it every night in bed."
The then-President of the Los Angeles City Council, Eric Garcetti told the New York Times, "It was probably a mistake." A week later, he went further, telling the L.A. Weekly," It was a really bad decision," in which he was "blinded" by a promise that some illegal billboards in his own arE~a, Echo Park, would be removed. In short order, residents of Los Angeles demanded environmental review of these digital billboards and the Los Angeles City Council took a step back and banned digital billboards altogether.
Given what we know about the Los Angeles experience, the fact that Los Angeles is now embroiled in costly litigation with Clear Channel and CBS to ha...
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