By Ray Gronberg
gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648
DURHAM -- Now that the City Council has rejected a Georgia company's quest to legalize digital billboards, members want Durham's zoning inspectors to crack down on any existing displays that violate local and state appearance standards.
City/County Planning Director Steve Medlin on Thursday confirmed for council members that he'd have his staff examine the billboards now in place on Durham's major road corridors to "identify any that aren't in compliance" with the rules.
The owners of any they find in violation will have to bring them up to par, or take them down, he said.
Planning Department staffers had previously said at least 34 of the 94 billboards in the city and county currently violate state requirements. Six look "dilapidated or abandoned," they said in the report they drafted on Fairway Outdoor Advertising's request for the legalization of digital billboards.
But Medlin cautioned that the law doesn't given him any authority to regulate the messages that appear on billboards.
That means elected officials like Councilman Howard Clement just have to live with the advertisement for the Dixie Gun & Knife Show that Fairway placed on a billboard overlooking a new pedestrian bridge across the Durham Freeway.
The Dixie Gun display aggravated Clement on the eve of the council's 7-0 vote on Monday against Fairway's request to legalize digital billboards.
Its placement next to the R. Kelly Bryant Jr. bridge rankled the councilman and other critics of the company because the east Durham neighborhoods the crossing links have the reputation in some quarters as being crime-ridden.
The juxtaposition "I just think is obnoxious -- reprehensible," Clement said during Thursday's council work session.
Medlin and other officials advised council members during and before Monday's debate that free-speech protections bar them from regulating the content of a billboard's message.
But an owner's poor maintenance practices are fair game.
On that front, there are provisions in Durham land-use law that give administrators latitude to use violation notices and fines to prod owners to bring substandard boards into compliance, Medlin said.
Medlin also told council members he'd learned that officials had fielded a request that they postpone for a month or so this coming Monday's scheduled County Commissioners hearing on the digital-billboards issue.
Fairway had asked both governments to change their rules, as both now effectively bar companies like it from moving billboards or using digital displays.
The commissioners' decision would only apply to areas of Durham outside the city limits. Medlin's planners say 45 of the 94 billboards in the county are in rural Durham.
Should the commissioners opt to legalize digital displays in their jurisdiction, their government would have to bear 100 percent of the local costs for regulating them, rather than sharing it with the city, Medlin said.
Clement on Thursday prodded administrators to come up with some way to keep Fairway and other billboard companies from someday renewing the push with city leaders.
"In my 27 years on the council, there's one issue I think has been dealt with fairly consistently and comprehensively, and it's [this] issue," Clement said. "I don't want to hear it again, at least until 2013, if and when I seek re-election to this august body."
He likened the situation to Durham's stance on rezonings. Both the city and county say rezoning decisions that go against an applicant have to stand for at least a year before they'll accept a new request, unless sponsors modify it significantly or circumstances change.
But City Attorney Patrick Baker said it's not possible to keep legislative requests off the agenda indefinitely.
"You know how democracy works, and sometimes you ask over and over and over again," Baker said. "You really can't prevent it from coming back again, particularly to another council."
