One of four new digital billboards approved earlier this year by city officials now looms over Interstate 80 east of Northgate Boulevard.
Clear Channel Outdoor built the billboards on city-owned land in exchange for multi-year leases that will earn the city more than $700,000 in rent each year.
The billboards, approved unanimously by the City Council in May, are illegal elsewhere because the changing messages can be a distraction to drivers.
Well money spent Sacramento…NOT!
Ugly ugly ugly. They would probably put ads on the sky if they could figure out how.
Actually, if you’re suggesting the city paid money (taxpayer funds) for these billboards, they did not — rather, the city will earn $700,000 in rent each year.
The real question is why the City Council considered it appropriate to allow these signs to be placed on property it owns while denying the right of private property owners to do the same thing.
It seems our city council shows a pattern of enacting laws and restrictions that it expects its residents, property owners, and businesses to follow, while exepting itself from the same laws — i.e., “Do as we say, not as we do.”
Another case in point: water use restrictions — residents are prohibited from washing their own cars in their own driveways using their own garden hoses or watering their lawns except on certain days of the week, while the city continues to wash its vehicles and water its lawns whenever it darn well chooses.
Personally, I hate the signs, but that’s beside the main point for me. What I hate more is the arrogance that our city exercises at times, and this is a textook example of that. We need to demand common sense solutions and fair and competitive business practices, and most importantly, we need to hold our city accountable and require them to follow the same rules they place upon us.