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DURHAM -- After a two years of controversy, City Council members are scheduled to vote tonight on whether to change local land-use rules at a Georgia company's behest so it can replace some billboards on Durham's major road corridors with digital models.
The request, from Fairway Outdoor Advertising, comes to the council with a firm recommendation from the City/County Planning Department that members vote to deny it.
But planners also say if the council is inclined to loosen the existing controls, it should allow them to draft implementing legislation instead of just adopting the proposal filed by Fairway and the company's RTP-based lawyers.
Fairway's draft is fraught with legal pitfalls and "should not be adopted as submitted," City County Planning Director Steve Medlin said in his memo to the council summarizing the dispute.
He added that a staff-led rewrite could also allow officials to drive a harder bargain with the company.
Medlin further noted that the council and County Commissioners as recently as 2005 reworked their land-use policies and rules -- unanimously in each case -- without showing any interest in revising their governments' long-established opposition to billboards.
Tonight's debate comes a week before commissioners are scheduled to open parallel hearings that would address billboard installations outside the city limits.
Fairway's request has sparked an avalanche of e-mailed complaint to the council from neighborhood groups, countered by support for the company from some business and nonprofit groups.
The controversy has touched on a number of side issues where the evidence on either side is at best uncertain -- such claims by opponents regarding highway safety and Fairway's contention that it can help police catch kidnappers.
But the dispute, at bottom, has always focused on whether officials should still stand by the appearance-driven policy decisions their governments made in the mid-1980s.
The city and county at that time changed Durham's law to render all then-existing billboards "nonconforming" under local zoning standards.
That move combined with state regulations to make it impossible for companies to site billboards in new locations, limited how much they could spend on upgrades to existing units, and closed the door firmly on new technology like digital displays.
The idea was those restrictions would slowly act to reduce the number of billboards in the city and county, by limiting companies' ability to react to market changes, move billboards out of the path of road construction or replace units damaged heavily by wind and other natural disasters.
There are now just 94 billboards in the county, seven less than in 2000, Medlin said. The heaviest concentrations are on the Interstate 85 and U.S. 70 corridors, though there are some on U.S. 15-501, U.S. 501 north of town and along the Durham Freeway.
The city had to fight Fairway's corporate predecessor in court to establish that its rules passed constitutional muster, and spent somewhere between $1 million and $1.5 million along the way. Opponents argue that changing course now would amount to throwing away the fruits of that legal victory.
Fairway, however, says there's nothing more for officials to win, because it's not going away.
"The fact is that billboards are here to stay just as long as there is a demand for them," according to a memo for the company drafted by attorneys at the K&L Gates law firm.
Attrition, they added, "is over."
The company wants for itself another other companies the right to relocate some billboards, and to replace up to 25 percent of its total advertising space with digital displays.
Some council members have signaled that they'll vote to retain the existing restrictions. Others have said they're listening to the back-and-forth, to see which side makes its case.
One council member Fairway likely needs, Howard Clement, said last month that from where he sat opponents were having the better of the argument.
"I've gotten a pile of letters from nonprofits and other groups extolling the virtues of Fairway, but I have yet to figure out what good it is going to do for Durham," Clement said.
