Commissioners may try to limit future billboards

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004 | 11:01 a.m.

An attempt to modify a much-debated ordinance governing billboards in unincorporated Clark County was defeated Wednesday, but the debate is far from over.

Commissioner Bruce Woodbury is proposing a new rule that would bar any new billboards from going up anywhere in the county.

His proposal came up at the Clark County zoning meeting during extended debate over an amendment that would have provided property owners 30 days to erect a new billboard if the company with the existing lease for the sign decides to take it out.

Under the terms of an ordinance passed last February and strengthened in November, property owners must take down billboards that are outside of limited zones along the major highways when leases expire. That means property owners, some of whom receive significant income from the leases, cannot negotiate new ones with other companies.

That also means that they have to take whatever the company now leasing the property offers, property owners argued.

But a majority of commissioners -- Woodbury, Rory Reid, Mark James and Chip Maxfield -- rejected the proposed amendment. They sided with those who argued the central point of the existing ordinance is to encourage signs to come down in areas where new signs are not now permitted.

The debate Wednesday is the latest in a three-year effort to pass new billboard rules in the county. The 2002 commission passed a billboard ordinance that was opposed by neighborhood activists and environmentalists. Last year, the new commission, with new members, passed a far more restrictive rule. In November, the commission voted 6-1 to deny any waivers to the rules.

The effort to weaken those rules received support from commissioners Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Myrna Williams and Yvonne Atkinson Gates.

Chuck Pulsipher, a planner with the county's Current Planning Division, which runs the land-use permitting process, said the number of billboards now in "nonconforming" areas is not known, but it is a "substantial majority" of the hundreds of billboards in the county.

Michael Bouno, president of the Chalet Vegas Homeowners Association, sharply criticized the commission majority. He said the existing billboard company, Viacom, has refused to negotiate a new lease in good faith because the company knows that if the existing lease is allowed to expire, two signs at his condominium complex will have to come down.

The income from the signs is essential for the complex's security and liability insurance, Bouno said. The complex is on Paradise Road across from the Hard Rock Hotel.

"We no longer have the right to control whose signs are on the property," he said. "This gives the existing billboard company the ability to pay lease payments based on 1993 values. It removes any leverage the homeowners association may have had to ever get an increase.

"This existing ordinance gives them this monopoly power over us."

Bouno said the complex now takes in about $48,000 a year from the lease and 20 percent of the gross revenue that the billboard company, Viacom, makes on advertising.

"I know I could increase our earnings right now to $70,000 a year," he said. Joining Bouno in urging the commission to adopt the new rules were family landowners and several smaller sign companies.

But the big companies that dominate the local market opposed the change because it would give landowners the ability to raise prices on leases.

Mark Fiorentino, representing industry giant Lamar Outdoor Advertising, urged the commissioners to reject the amendment.

With the existing rules, "You will see a gradual reduction in the number of signs in the community," Fiorentino said. "It's good for the community."

He agreed that the rule also would be good for Lamar, which has existing leases for signs throughout the urban area. But he said the company's interest mirrors the community's interest in reducing the number of signs throughout the urban area.

Lamar has removed about three dozen signs since the ordinance passed in February, he said, and the company also is willing to negotiate with any of the owners of land underneath the signs.

"If you adopt this ordinance today, you will create a financial environment that makes it impossible to ever take down a sign," he said.

Neighborhood activist Lisa Mayo-De Riso also spoke against the amending ordinance. Agreeing with Fiorentino is an odd position for Mayo-DeRiso, who fought the billboard industry to get the original ordinance passed in February.

Mayo-DeRiso noted that the debate "has gone on for such a long period of time."

But her concern is that parts of the county, areas that cannot now legally accept new billboards, are still dense with older signs.

Mayo-DeRiso and others who generally dislike the billboards -- usually arguing that they are aesthetically unpleasant -- could soon see another assault on the signs. In the course of the debate Wednesday, Kincaid-Chauncey said Woodbury is proposing a new rule that could bar any new billboards from going up anywhere in the unincorporated part of the county.

Woodbury, following the meeting, said he is considering such an option. He said the concern is partly based on an ongoing lawsuit launched by the billboard companies over the existing ordinance, which argues that the rule's application is uneven and unfair.

If the industry wins the lawsuit, it could mean many, many more billboards particularly in areas such as the western part of the Las Vegas Beltway, an area that the existing law was designed to specifically protect, Woodbury said.

"There's an awful lot of billboards out there now" on parts of the beltway already, he said.

"The billboard companies filed lawsuits against us to try to overturn denial of a number of billboards," he said. "It's like more is never enough. It seems to me that there is a possibility that we could have a major proliferation of billboards out on (Interstate) 215. We're talking saturation."