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ACCORDING TO LIZ - It used to be that DWD meant Driving While Drunk. With texting and in-car TVs, today’s dangerous drives are more likely to be Distracted While Driving.
For years our elected officials and their staffs have been pressured by the power of the billboard industry that wants to flood the City with seductive signage for their clients’ products – the larger, the more numerous, and the more distracting the better.
In 2018, the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, aka the PLUM committee (and not for being the choice assignment where its members could make a little – or a lot – on the side), was chaired by José Huizar who, earlier this year, pled guilty to racketeering and tax evasion charges.
Huizar’s four PLUM colleagues included Mitch Englander, who was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison in connection with bribes while on the City Council; the booted-out-of-office Gil Cedillo; Felipe Fuentes who resigned from the City Council to work as a lobbyist; and then Vice Chair, now Chair of the Committee, Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
And, as of June 20th in the wake of yet another scandal, this one outing Curran Price, Jr., Harris-Dawson was elected President Pro-Tem of the full City Council.
As recently as last year, he was actively supporting the discretionary permit system that gives individual City Councilmembers discretionary power over land-use decisions. Not a good look for a governmental body theoretically striving for transparency in the wake of a tsunami of corruption.
Los Angeles County has long since succumbed to the seduction of Allvision, the folks that have been bringing more and more digital billboards to County residents for years. And Allvision has its sights on the far more profitable City of Los Angeles.
Early in 2017 multiple Neighborhood Councils submitted Community Impact Statements on a Council File exploring signage options saying loud and clear that any expansion of billboards outside the then designated areas was NOT acceptable. Especially digital billboards and those being erected via waivers and Conditional Use Permits, taking undue advantage of and unfairly impacting economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
One CIS stated: “There is no corporate blandishment, no community benefit, that can make up for the loss of quality of life for someone who has a flashing billboard outside their window instead of a view of the Arroyo by day or the dim outlines of trees and buildings by night. Nothing that will return the power to walk to someone hit by a driver distracted by an advertisement glowing above them.”
Despite vociferous opposition from Neighborhood Councils across the City, the PLUM Committee and their buddies on the City Council ignored the wishes of the electorate in favor of substantial contributions to their campaigns by those who stood to benefit from the proliferation of such signage.
Prior to the pandemic, 200 firms employing 442 lobbyists were registered with the Ethics Commission and were paid $58 million the prior year to promote the interests of 1,400-odd clients including Clear Channel Outdoor, the multinational corporation that owns some 1,600 billboards in the City, and other companies pushing for the relaxation of the current ordinance.
The Ethics Commission does not have the funding to oversee the details of these lobbying firms which raised almost a BILLION dollars for candidates for City election plus over $300,000 from individual donors. Although registered lobbyists are prohibited from contributing directly to candidates, it is not difficult to determine the source of these funds.
Despite PLUM members having been bought by the digital would-be profiteers, Angelenos kept fighting back. Even when City Council claimed to misunderstood Community Impact Statements from dozens of Neighborhood Councils as supporting the expansion of digital billboards when, in fact, it was the reverse, those opposed fought on
And won.
But it was only a brief respite while the forces seeking to impose a Bladerunner-esque nightmare over the glamor of Tinseltown regrouped before attempting an end run with another tactic.
In February of 2021, the Los Angeles City Council approved Version B+ of the proposed Citywide Sign Ordinance, as originally adopted by the City Planning Commission on October 22, 2015 which was supposed to keep billboards in their existing districts and protect the interests of residents.
The devil being in the details, the City also pushed forward on comprehensively revising, consolidating and updating Citywide sign regulations but by building on the 2017 version of that was so vociferously opposed by the stakeholders.
Protections for residents and commuters were tap-danced around but not explicitly documented, thus allowing more wriggle-room for those open to the allure of entities which stand to profit from opening the door to the superficial glitz of a Las Vegas skyline.
The City Council then authorized a Memorandum of Agreement to develop a Transportation Communication Network (TCN) Program between the City and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) that would revamp the City’s Municipal Code to allow Metro to implement this incursion, and provide the City with 50% of net revenue from outdoor advertising on TCN structures located within the boundaries of the City.
Of course, including all the new noncontiguous Sign Districts located on Metro-owned parcels in the City and for a period of twenty years, long after the perpetrators have retired.
That net revenue? After the shysters extract their expenses, how much will remain for us?
This whole program seems to be just an extension of Metro’s existing Allvision agreement bolstered by Metro’s desire to pursue lucrative contracts in the City of Los Angeles. Provided it removed restrictions on digital billboards.
Money, money, money.
Once the fix is in, folks, it’s hard to stem the tide.
Can there be a deus-ex-machina ending? An eleventh-hour reprieve?
Not if we don’t speak up.
There still exist a few opportunities to stop this travesty: For it to move forward, the City must enact an ordinance that allows off-site advertising to be displayed on the Transportation Communication Network (TCN) structures.
Council File 22-0392 which instructed the City Planning Department to prepare and present this ordinance to allow digital off-site signs to be displayed on TCN structures is unacceptable since it is working from a fallacious premise – that Angelenos have authorized the City Council to move ahead on this project. Certain City Councilmembers may have voted for this but those who elected them have consistently and vociferously argued against it.
It also assumes that the revenue-sharing framework is actually beneficial for both the City and its residents. Given the quality of the deals the City has made in recent years with the trash haulers and its own unions, it’s more likely that the proposal just another exercise in ripping off Angelenos.
The Planning Department will hold one public hearing, on July 12, 2023 to solicit comments to include in a staff recommendation report including all public comments at which point the City Planning Commission will consider the recommendation and (theoretically, based on the comments as well as their wisdom) make a determination in August to be referred to the PLUM committee for review and consideration this fall.
Following which, if PLUM continues its history of bending over for those with money and power, they will advocate its passage by the full City Council.
The parties all CLAIM that they will create a process for permitting the structures including administrative review, provision of detailed plans and renderings, and a project compliance process.
But who actually will have input... other than those with their hands in the till?
Since when did any City bureaucracy act in a manner to protect people when there was profit involved?
The whole issue of digital signs and displays MUST be re-evaluated, contracts put on hold, revoked or allowed to run out, and quality of life for Angelenos placed ahead of corporate interests.
So, in January of 2023, the LA Metro Board approved the installation nearly 100 new digital billboards on up to 49 Metro-owned parcels throughout the City of LA, ranging in size from 300 square feet to 1,200 square feet per sign. Although the largest are to be freeway adjacent, that does not stop them from interfering with the lives of thousands of Angelenos living nearby.
Proposed placements include the two East Hollywood Metro stations on Vermont Avenue, beside the 101 Freeway across from Angeleno Heights, and on either side of the 5 Freeway in Cypress Park. They are 30 to 48 feet wide, costly to erect and maintain, will primarily display aggressive advertising.
These will block visibility, attract eyeballs without an appropriate reduction in speed, and otherwise distract drivers leading to increased accidents and injuries. A study comparing stretches of highways with digital billboards in Florida and Alabama without indicated teens were more easily distracted, that all road users perceived the risk of digital billboards as more dangerous and requiring stricter regulation and… there were 25% to 30% fewer accidents, especially multi-vehicle collisions, in areas with only static signage.
Digital billboards’ flashing lights and changing images contribute to urban blight, aggravate light pollution overall, disrupt our peaceful neighborhoods, hurt property values, harm the environment, and negatively impact the physical and mental health of those living within range of their electronic humming and flickering lights.
What else does this deal include? Freeway adjacent displays, billboard permitting along major streets, welcoming corporate profiteers into more neighborhoods, threatening the unique visual character of our communities…
Oh! But one out of eight images on these boards could be used to display traffic information, such as roadway hazards and emergencies.
Wow. Aren’t our freeways already so posted, and doesn’t the City have portable sign for street closures? Both of which generate their own dangers as thousands of drivers try to exit all at once or find detours?
What the digital signs deal does NOT address is how they will be regulated, leaving lots of lovely loopholes for their purveyors to disregard consumer protection and allow waivers for everything else including location, hours of operation, and light pollution.
Oops, it also proposes removing 200 static signs (probably now blocked by trees) from Metro-owned lots (probably illegal), plus three more static signs for every flicking, light-polluting, motorist-distracting monstrosity they erect.
Whoopee!
But, if these folks think that removing static billboards – ones that do NOT flicker, that do NOT distract motorists, that do NOT use unnecessary energy, that do NOT disturb birds – is an acceptable trade-off, they are out of their f*#ing minds.
Do your own research. Peruse the documents. Read the fine print and don't let City employees "interpret" them. Too much data not provided to the public these past years has proved to be diametrically opposed to what the City says. ESPECIALLY with regards to billboards.
Does anyone REALLY want more advertising?
Where is the oversight and accountability which is part of the unspoken contract the City must maintain with all of its residents?
Given the ethical stains on the City Council at the moment, it needs to walk back all current and proposed billboard regulations and start again with their electorate’s desires as a primary consideration.
Maybe it’s ok for capitalist cronies to pick a pocket or two with our elected officials’ eyes averted. But four million pockets when the populace has strenuously opposed these billboards for years?
Straight up B.S.!
Angelenos need to act NOW. Before the Planning Department can make further commitments from which the City will have difficulty extricating itself, before those who stand to profit can funnel more funds to decision-makers at all levels, before the new Councilmembers can become beholden to the same old tricks that ensnared their predecessors.
WRITE the Planning Department c/o Terri Osborne at [email protected].
ATTEND the TCN virtual public hearing on July 12, 2023 and encourage everyone you know to join you and submit feedback on the proposed ordinance to ensure the Planning staff KNOWS there is STRONG public opposition, and FOLLOW UP to make sure the staff report submitted to the City Planning Commission documents the OPPOSITION to the proposed ordinance.
GO to any LA City Planning meeting: if the TCN issue is not on the agenda, speak up in public comment, be HEARD.
DEMAND your Neighborhood Council and other community groups including churches and businesses stand up against the proposed ordinance
Do NOT allow those in City Hall whose votes were bought to allow the City to RAILROAD this through.
CALL your Councilmembers’ offices, both local AND at City Hall
CONTACT the City Attorney about what can be done to stop this. Permanently.
TELL your neighbors to join you. TELL your friends and family. TELL those standing in line at the drugstore and supermarket and the DMV.
Be PERSISTENT, FOLLOW UP.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
