No Digital Billboards in La Mesa

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TELL LA MESA CITY COUNCIL:

No Digital Billboards in our Community!

We need your help to prevent the approval of new, illegal digital billboards in La Mesa!

The La Mesa City Council will be meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, September 26, to once again discuss the issue of digital billboards. This comes after the City Council voted 3-2 against digital billboards, so why is the issue coming to the surface again?

Despite being illegal by letter of the law, the proposal presents several other issues:

The proposed location of these billboards on I-8 is one of the busiest sections of highway in the city, presenting a dangerous level of distraction to drivers not used to seeing these illuminated signs.
This proposal seems to ignore the due diligence and fact finding necessary for such a project. The City Council should commission a study to investigate the implications on traffic, safety, land ownership, as well as the established laws preventing digital billboards.
By submitting the proposal through an RFP process, the ad hoc subcommittee is effectively selling the beauty of La Mesa county to the highest bidder.

Please use the form attached to this page to submit a public comment to the City Council stating your opposition to this proposal. Comments will close 24 hours prior to the meeting, so please submit your comments by 6 PM Pacific on Monday, September 25.

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La Mesa, CA City Council

Subject: No Digital Billboards in La Mesa County

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I am adamantly opposed to the recommendation of this Council's ad hoc committee directing staff to issue an RFP for digital billboards in La Mesa. This recommendation ignores the fact digital billboards are illegal under the City’s Municipal Code, section 15.10.040, including subsections (2), (10) and (18). La Mesa should not abandon decades of precedent established by past City leaders, who recognized that new outdoor ads diminish the aesthetic character of the City and pose traffic hazards to the public. Reject the recommendation of the ad hoc committee. At a minimum, direct staff to fully brief this Council on the steps that would be required to even consider digital billboards in the City, before voting on a RFP. Beginning in the 1960s, then First Lady, Ladybird Johnson, pioneered a nationwide effort to reduce sign pollution along the nation’s highways. Ultimately many jurisdictions, including every city in San Diego County, and the County itself, enacted strict sign laws to abate outdoor advertising blight and preserve natural and urban vistas against threats of sign pollution, light pollution, and traffic hazards caused by distracting signs. La Mesa was among those cities approving these progressive laws. It would be profoundly regressive for this City Council to retreat from decades of enlightened governmental policy that protects and enhances important public benefits. I urge this Council to preserve La Mesa’s strict off-site outdoor advertising limits which banned new billboards in the City for more than two decades and which entirely prohibit digital billboards. As elected City leaders have done numerous times in the past, this Council should reject solicitations from outdoor advertisers to sully the City’s vistas with garish, illuminated, moving ads in exchange for negligible financial returns. In addition to the City’s Municipal Code prohibition on new billboards and any digital billboards, three of the four locations proposed for digital billboards are barred by state law protecting designated landscaped freeways. The sole location arguably permitted is only potentially eligible because outdoor advertisers filed and received an exemption for that location a year ago, without any public notice or awareness. This Council should reject nontransparent maneuvers by an industry solely interested in private profit making, without any concern for public benefit.

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TELL LA MESA CITY COUNCIL:

No Digital Billboards in our Community!

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