Naked City

Places exist in the world – Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and even Vermont – where billboards never besmirch the skyline. Austin, however, is not one of those places, nor does it look like the city will be a billboard-free Xanadu any time soon.

Billboards last forever. Just ask the industry, which pushed a law through the Texas Legislature back in 1985 that all but ended the removal of existing billboards. Once a billboard is up in most cities, it stays. In Austin's case, that's been particularly cumbersome given new development that has sprung up along Austin's urban highway corridor. Nothing ruins a pristine office view like a rum ad.

As a way to fix the problem – and City Council has tried to fix this problem more than once since 1982 – Council members Betty Dunkerley and Brewster McCracken proposed a relocation ordinance, a one-for-one exchange of billboards from a less-desirable-for-billboards-but-ready-for-development area of town to a more-desirable-for-billboards-but-not-yet-developed part of town. Billboards, with the owner's permission, would be picked up and moved to other areas of town in order to avoid "billboard blight."

What stymied the Council, which passed the first reading of the relocation ordinance on a split vote last week, was the scope of these two zones – the zone that would be getting rid of these billboards and the zone that would eventually be stuck with them. Mayor Will Wynn, who had hung in the balance on the billboard issue most of last year, said he would only entertain a motion if the scope were narrowed.

"I would like to explore a far more targeted approach and also analyze where we want to push them," Wynn said. "I want to be supportive of the concept, but at some point there should be some feasibility for very targeted relocation of signs."

The question, of course, is who would be willing to take these billboards. Mayor Pro Tem Jackie Goodman tried to dangle one carrot during the discussion – a limit of seven years of "life" at any new location – but Dunkerley was unwilling to accept the amendment. The ordinance will come back on second reading with more on "give" and "take" zones.

The organization Scenic Austin and its parent, Scenic Texas, have recommended removing billboards by attrition. Over the last six years, 59 Austin billboards have gone down this way. Houston, one of the few Texas cities grandfathered under the state law, has yet to force a single billboard out of existence, but has seen the city's 10,000 billboards dwindle to 6,000 due to attrition over the last two decades.

Margaret Lloyd, policy director of Scenic Texas, says she is unaware of any city that has tried relocation as a measure to reduce the number of billboards. She also added that cities could spend the money to remove billboards under current state law. The downside is that the tax roll value of the billboard is minimal, but the "buyout" value is based on the value of lease-term left on the useful life of the billboard. That total puts the cost of billboard removal out of the reach of most cities, she said.