BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor

After banning new billboards along Highway 101 years ago, the Redwood City Council now wants to put up a billboard of its own on the very same freeway.

In 2007, Redwood City banned billboards in the name of beautification. The city didn’t have the right to tear down existing billboards, but it stopped allowing new ones.

Last Monday, City Council voted 5-2 to move forward with placing a digital billboard on 350 Convention Way, near the Monterra Credit Union corporate office and Redwood Creek. Three cheers to councilwomen Marcella Padilla and Kaia Eakin who voted no. 

Digital billboards typically change messages every eight seconds, creating a distraction for drivers. You’d think the city’s police department, which hands out tickets for distracted driving, would speak out about this.

Follow the money

But this isn’t about distracted drivers or beautification. It’s about money. 

Removing billboards has always been about money. The movement to remove signs along interstate highways began as a pet project of first lady Lady Bird Johnson in the 1960s. Why did she want to remove the billboards around her Texas community of Austin? She owned the only TV station in the area, and billboards took away advertising dollars from the station.

It’s always about the money.

The city won’t operate the billboard. It will hire an outdoor advertising company that will build the lighted billboard and sell the ads. The city will get money from the company. Of four bidders, the city plans to negotiate a deal with Outfront-Foster Interstate, which offered to pay a minimum of $300,000 a year for 20 years or 50% of sales. 

An advertising company in 2012 offered the city of Palo Alto between $700,000 and $1 million a year if it would allow a billboard on Highway 101 near Greer Park. 

Not sure why a billboard in Redwood City would be worth less than one in Palo Alto since it would be on the same freeway. It might be that Redwood City didn’t drive a hard enough bargain with the suits at Outdoor-Foster. Or because 13 years have passed since the Palo Alto offer, it might reflect the notion that outdoor advertising has become passe in the media business. People have figured out that outdoor ads aren’t effective. Ask yourself, do you remember any of the billboards you saw on Highway 101 this morning? That’s the problem. 

Palo Alto residents thunderously rejected the billboard idea. I remember when Palo Alto resident Annette Glanckopf went to the microphone at a council meeting to describe the billboard idea with these words: “Ridiculous, clutter, sleazy, garish, useless, distracting, gaudy, annoying, eyesore, in poor taste, terrible idea, appropriate for Las Vegas.”

Another resident said that if the city needed money so badly, it should allow a brothel and tax the customers.

And the Audubon Society warned Palo Alto officials that birds from the nearby Baylands might fly into a lighted sign.

Creating a precedent 

Palo Alto City Council rejected the billboard proposal. If it had been approved, council would also have to change its own ordinances to allow highway billboards. Then other property owners would put up their own billboards. If the city tried to stop them, the property owners could go to court and argue they were being treated unfairly.

That’s what could happen in Redwood City. If the city puts up its own billboard, property owners will follow with their own — and what could the city do about that? Argue that the laws are for thee, not for me?

Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.

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