Cover Story: Under siege from signs

Billboard battle flares again in Topside as neighbors fight new state bill

Signs of North Atlanta’s rapid growth are popping up everywhere — literally. The billboard industry has, for years, maintained a strong grip on Georgia and, in particular, metro Atlanta.
In the city’s affluent northern suburbs, where residents’ buying power draws shopping center developers, grocery chains and outdoor advertisers alike, many Topsiders — and the cities where they live — feel as if they are under siege from billboards.
The latest evidence that the billboard industry’s grip may be tightening comes in the form of state Senate Bill 59, which seeks to ease some of the state’s complex sign restrictions. Having recently cleared the Senate Transportation Committee, SB 59 is now on its way to the Senate floor.
Coincidentally, Alpharetta renewed its 18-month-old moratorium on billboards earlier this month, refusing to accept applications to permit any more signs before May 1.
The temporary prohibition, directed at signs larger than 128 square feet or more than 12 feet in height, is designed to give the city’s community development department time to evaluate the impact of billboards on the community, especially in terms of public safety and property values.
One reason for the recent clashes between communities and advertisers can be attributed to the phenomenal growth of the billboard industry itself. Over the past 25 years, outdoor advertising has grown nationally from a $200-million-a-year industry to earn more than $4.8 billion in revenues per year. Georgia billboards take in $300 million a year, about 16 percent of the total national gross.
Signs line the interstate network in Georgia and have spread increasingly to state routes, major streets and former small-town roads and intersections.
Community resistance also has grown in reaction to recent technological advances that serve to put billboards more in drivers’ faces than ever before. One of the provisions of SB 59 would allow tri-panel billboards, which flash three separate ads in constant rotation, to change their messages more frequently — every six seconds instead of every 10 seconds, as current law provides.
Under the new proposal, the signs also could be wedged in nearly twice as tightly along roadways as is now allowed. Currently, the signs must be at least 5,000 feet — nearly a mile — apart; SB 59 would allow them within 2,600 feet of each other so motorists could see two of the signs per mile.
“Technology is going to allow [billboard com-panies] to provide as many ads as they want. They won’t be restricted to three ads in the future,” says Jay Litton, a Roswell resident who is helping organize a community letter-writing campaign against SB 59.
Even the wording of SB 59 has been subtly changed to play down the visual blight the signs represent, Litton says; tri-panel signs are redubbed “moveable message boards” in the bill.
“In this age of concern about driver safety and distractions as we drive down these highways, allowing these billboards to flash at us almost twice as much, twice as fast at interchanges when we’re entering and exiting onto these roads, just seems to go against what the Legislature should be doing for us, which is protecting the citizens where safety issues are in their control,” Litton says.
Litton and fellow Topsider Kent Igleheart are co-founders of historicroswell.org, a website dedicated to preserving and protecting the city of Roswell. A sales manager for an information technology firm, Litton predicts billboards are only the first of several upcoming issues that will threaten the tranquility and quality of life in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
“There is a definite passion that billboards generate in north Fulton,” observes state Sen. Rusty Paul (R-Roswell), a Transportation Committee member who voted against SB 59. “The other members of the Transportation Committee and many members of the Senate have been awakened to that passion over the past two weeks as the folks of Alpharetta and Roswell have flooded the Capitol with e-mails and letters.”
But critics of the bill were hardly surprised see it fly through the Transportation Com- mittee, where its author, Sen. Don Cheeks (D-Augusta), holds the vice-chairman’s seat. Cheeks has been criticized in the past for conflicts of interest in supporting billboard-friendly legislation while he owned several billboards. He reportedly now only leases land to a billboard company, a relationship that still has provoked calls for ethics reform. Cheeks could not be reached for comment.
However, despite the local opposition to SB 59, Paul says he believes the bill will indeed pass the Senate, but not without a fight.
“The problem is that [north Fulton] is where the passion has been localized, but it’s beginning to get out a little bit around the rest of the state,” continues Paul, adding that north Fulton residents have become one of the most protective and vocal groups in the state when it comes to preserving quality of life in their communities.
“The citizens of north Fulton do not want to drive home to billboards,” insists R.J. Kurey, a self-described watchdog of north Fulton government who also is mobilizing a campaign against SB 59. “The area north of I-285 on Ga. 400 has been well preserved with trees and it is a very nice, pleasurable drive home,” says Kurey, founder of www.friendsofalpharetta .com, a website that monitors Alpharetta city government.
Not surprisingly, northside billboard opponents Litton and Kurey have found allies in some of the state’s environmental groups, such as the Garden Club of Georgia. The group, which boosts a membership of 16,000, has emerged as one of the most powerful environmental lobbying groups in the state.
“The Garden Club of Georgia is very much concerned about this senate bill,” says Joan Brown, co-chairman of the group, who refers to the signs as a “visual pollution” in the area. “There’s a safety factor here: Allowing these signs to run every six seconds poses a tremendous danger and distraction level.
In foggy conditions, these ongoing messages are very distracting to motorists and we definitely oppose [SB-59].”
Club co-chairman Rachel Fowler says the billboard industry has gained its clout largely through effective lobbying of state lawmakers and recommends opponents follow suit.
“We’ve tried to mobilize our club by getting members to talk to their representatives and senators,” Fowler says.
“The best thing citizens can do to [fight billboard placement] is send letters to their senators and write and call local newspapers. Regardless of what some of the public thinks, the senators and representatives do pay attention to their own constituents. We try to tell our ladies to be sure and tell them that they are constituents because, after all, they are the ones who put them in office and they want to do what they can to please as many of them as they can.”
While the billboard industry may have the money to support its lobbying goals, Fowler says her group has power in numbers. “Our membership is 16,000, but you can multiply me by four because I can control four votes at anytime,” she points out.
In fact, public apathy may have played a role in helping the billboard industry gain power, she says. “A lot of people really didn’t realize what the proliferation of so many billboards in the area was going to mean.”
In addition, Fowler theorizes that the state Department of Transportation’s permissive attitude toward billboard companies has contributed to the problem over the last decade. “Even though we work very well with the DOT, they have been somewhat lax in granting and checking [sign] permits.”
Although former DOT commis-sioner Tom Moreland was protective of trees along state and federal highways, she says, his successor Wayne Shackleford — who served for most of the ’90s — allowed trees to be cut away so billboards could be more easily read. “Which is where we got involved,” Fowler notes.
While the fight continues on the state level, northside communities are grappling with how to handle the ever-encroaching billboard industry in their particular area.
The billboard companies “certainly want to get the biggest bang for their buck and the market in north Fulton area is very affluent,” says Alpharetta councilwoman Debbie Gibson.
“I hope that the Senate decides that there’s no reason to allow billboard companies to have any more leeway than they already have in the state,” Gibson says. The citizens have spoken on more than one occasion that they consider this visual pollution and a distraction for drivers.”
In addition to its current moratorium, the city is looking to strengthen its sign ordinance in the face of legal challenges from billboard companies seeking a foothold in the area.
Roswell saw its own billboard moratorium struck down in late April by a judge on the grounds that it didn’t allow for the same public notice and hearing requirements that apply to zoning applications. The city had enacted the moratorium in 1999 after its 20-year-old sign ordinance was thrown out after a judge determined it effectively banned political signs.
The ruling left the city with no sign ordinance in place for nearly a month as it prepared a replacement. As a result, Roswell saw nine new billboards go up, prompting anti-billboard demonstrations and a grassroots boycott campaign that scared away several potential advertisers, including then-state Senate candidate John Mitnick.
Last year, a war of words played out between Roswell Mayor Jere Wood and some of the area’s largest billboard companies for months. Wood was threatened with a lawsuit after he sent a letter to seven firms that leased billboards in Roswell suggesting they find another means of advertising; in other words, the billboards were not a welcome in the community.
Eller Media, which owns several billboards in Roswell, shot back at Wood, saying that his letters were government interference in free speech and if he didn’t stop sending the letters, he and the city could be sued.
Alpharetta officials are breathlessly awaiting a decision from the Georgia Supreme Court on Roswell’s appeal of the case in which that city’s billboard moratorium was struck down. Although a decision in that case is not expected until Alpharetta’s current moratorium expires, an adverse ruling could strip cities of the right to pass such temporary bans.
In fact, two companies are already vying to be first in line if Alpharetta drops its guard: 35 area sites have been leased by billboard companies — 26 by Action Outdoor Advertising and nine by Advantage Outdoor Advertising.
And Gibson doesn’t expect the billboard hoopla to die down anytime soon. The billboard companies “are not going to go away,” she says. “They are going to keep battling as long as they can find support at the General Assembly. They’re going to keep on pushing and pushing as far they can go.”
For activists Litton and Kurey, the fight will continue as long as necessary. Just last week, Litton says, Proctor and Gamble told him that public pressure has persuaded the company to pull a billboard on Alpharetta Highway advertising washing detergent.
“Lawmakers should be concerned about protecting the taxpayers of Georgia instead of trying to increase the revenue base for the billboard industry,” Litton says.