Recommendation to declare ordinance amending and restating Chapter 21.54, related to billboards, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
I don't know. Five is a report from Development Services recommendation to declare ordinance amending and restating Chapter 21.54 relating to billboards read and adapted as read. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Any council comment on item number five? Which is just to clarify to city management. This is the item we heard last week, correct? Yes. The move forward on this week and as I understand it, the city attorney had some issues with us on a couple of different fronts that you want to elaborate on those now or did you want to hear council comment first? Councilmember O'Donnell, members of the city council, as you know, or as was explained, this is actually back to you on second reading. It was here last week. You had some suggested changes to the ordinance which we made on Wednesday morning and presented to the city clerk. And those changes, as I thought that they were articulated, I think, by Councilmember DeLong, who made the motion, were presented to the city clerk, and that was what was out for circulation. Since that time, the city attorney's office and I think maybe most of all the council people received a copy of a letter from one of the attorneys that represents one of the billboard companies who took issue with the way it was done procedurally, number one. And number two took issue with the way that we formulated what I thought was council's direction relative to posting of a cash bond in the event that they were going to take down billboards. We there was a concern that if the wards were removed and the new billboard was going to go up, that the old billboards go down first. We made it the language more flexible so that they would they had the option of either removing the old billboards first before constructing a new billboard, or the city would impose a cash bond after consideration during the copy process by the Planning Commission and then the City Council on Appeal. At any rate, the attorney took issue with the procedure, and I have to admit that the attorney is correct. And what our municipal code says is that if changes or substantive changes are made on the floor, those substantive changes have to be in writing and specific reference made to the line in page number where changes are made. That was not done. So our suggestion is that either tonight be treated as a first reading if you have no further changes to the ordinance, or if there are further changes to the ordinance from what is in the text in front of you that the matter be put over, I believe till February 4th we would bring it back for first reading and incorporate any changes that you might make or direct us to make tonight. And that concludes our staff report. Okay. Great. Thank you. And I know other council members want to comment, but I do have a comment. I think my concern is in hearing the different companies and knowing that our goal is probably twofold. It is to take down billboards mostly in the inner portion of the city, not so much along the freeways, I would think, but mainly along the inner parts of our city. And maybe to if we can even achieve some revenue generation here. And that would be done through a development agreement, I assume. Is that correct, mister? Cities are really the only way that it could ever be. Revenue generating for the city is if there were development agreements. The way the ordinance is currently drafted, in some circumstances a development agreement would be possible, and that is if one of the involved companies could demonstrate to us that it was infeasible for them to comply with the cap and trade portion of the ordinance and that there were no other non-conforming billboards left in the city for removal. So the possibility is there. But what we anticipate, if the ordinance works correctly, is that the companies would participate in cap and trade. In other words, they would take down billboards in exchange for being able to put up a new billboard or an electronic billboard rather than participate in a development agreement. The cap passes is the trade part. That's that's a little more difficult. Difficult because we can't compel the companies to trade among each other. Correct. And you can't compel them to do that. But it's our understanding, I believe staff's understanding that that it does happen in other jurisdictions. But that goes into the factor of feasibility. I think what we discussed last week is let's say you had a company that didn't have enough billboards available to participate in cap and trade. What we anticipate they would do under the ordinance is contact their competitors, see if the competitors had any interest in selling billboards or partnering with that other company to do a cap and trade. If the other billboard companies said, No, we're not interested in that, we would expect that that. Would be reported back to us, hopefully in writing, and we would take that into consideration in determining whether or not it's in feasible and if if no one wanted to participate or allow the sale of their billboards, if they had a large inventory, staff could make the recommendation to the Planning Commission that it was infeasible and they should therefore be allowed to apply for a development agreement. Okay. So my concern is that one company might be locked out of participating in this in the trade component. So if they couldn't trade does the current language that sits before us now, does it allow them to go to the planning commission and say, we couldn't we couldn't find an avenue to take down other signs? Right. If they if they do not have an inventory that would allow them to participate, then they could apply for a development agreement that would be put before the Planning Commission. Planning Commission would make a finding on whether or not it was feasible for them to comply. They'd have to demonstrate that they didn't have an inventory and that they reached out to other carriers to see if the other carriers would sell them inventory or, like I said, partner with them. And if they reported back to the Planning Commission that they tried to buy inventory or trade for inventory and it wasn't successful, then the Planning Commission would be in a position to at least make a finding that it was infeasible and recommend to the city council that a statutory development agreement be entered into. Mm hmm. Could that include revenue sharing? Most definitely. With a with a development agreement. It's a quid pro quo type situation. The one that comes to mind that the council is probably most recently familiar with is Douglas Park, where we entered into a statutory development agreement with Boeing. On Douglas Park. They provided money for our housing trust fund and did some other things park related that made it worthwhile for the city to do a development agreement. Well, given that those signs along the freeway are quite valuable. Well, how does the trade system work? Is it is it based on value or is it based on number of signs? Why would someone trade a freeway sign away? I think that's the challenge that we're hearing is out there. There's a company that owns a limited number of signs. Are they going to be able to participate? Well, the. Way the ordinance the way the ordinance was brought back to you in the way that it was presented to you for first reading all of those signs along the freeway would be considered nonconforming signs. And the goal, the overarching goal of the ordinance, as stated in the ordinance, is to remove nonconforming signs. So if you adopted the ordinance as it's presently constructed, then the folks that own those signs along the freeway, if they wanted to build a new digital billboard, for instance, in some allowable place in the city, we would first require them to remove those billboards that they have based on the formula that's currently in the ordinance, either 6 to 1 or eight or. Yeah, either 6 to 1 or 8 to 1, depending on what they were doing. Thank you. Councilmember Sheepskin. Yes, thank you, Mr. O'Donnell. I think the question again needs to be discussed, and that is, is there any way particularly and I think that's what Mr. O'Donnell was getting at, is that you've got our goal this here on the council is to get rid of billboards, quite honestly. And so I think any way that we can fashion this ordinance to do that with all the parties involved, I think helps everybody. And so what I get back to that that item that I think we talked about last time, and that was the issue of being able to make some provisions in the language. I think it's Section 21.50 4.12 development agreements. Mr. MAYES. And I know we have this back and forth on it, but again, I would ask the question, could we not put language in there that would exclude billboards and landscape freeway segments because that obviously targets a particular company and then provide that the they have to remove at least one billboard within the city to be able to participate in this development agreement process. Councilwoman Sheepskins It's very difficult for us to analyze because quite frankly, we don't know what the business practices are of all of these companies. We've certainly received contact from all of the companies that we're aware of that operate within the city. I spoke with the attorney for one of the companies today who indicated very clearly to me just before the meeting started that if we did anything to the ordinance that gave one company a competitive advantage over another company, that they would sue and challenge the ordinance that it was being unfairly administrated because we have actually carved out something for one company that that is not available to other companies. Now, whether that would happen or not, I don't know. But that's what they represented. Realizing that. Mr. Mays, what about if we had the option of a development agreement or the cap and trade so that there's the two possibilities because that way that that is actually equal in terms of the pool of available companies. So yes, we could probably we could fashion an ordinance where you could have a situation where they could choose to voluntarily participate in cap and trade or enter into a development agreement. But that really is a policy decision for the city council, because what's staff's investigation determined and Amy can elaborate on this probably better than I can , is that the companies would prefer to keep their signs and enter into development agreements. So if that were the case, then the goal that you mentioned at the beginning of your discussion of removing billboards, it's possible that that would not occur. If both scenarios were provided so that they could participate under it. Either way. I mean, how do they know that? How do we know that? Or if just we focus in. With. The majority of the ones that we obviously want to remove are in the residential areas. I think that's the policy consensus. What about the ones that are just simply along the freeways? That's an entirely different landscape. Council members, we've structured this ordinance and have focused the ordinance on treating this as one single land use. As I said at last week's meeting, we deal with things on a land use basis irregardless of where they're located. So when we deal with drug stores, we don't treat Walgreens differently than Rite Aid is, regardless of whether they're located on an arterial corridor in North Long Beach or an arterial corridor in East Long Beach. So this would be a policy decision and of the council if it decided to. Has Mr. Mesa give us the opportunity to have people or companies participate, either under a cap and trade or a development agreement? Is that correct? That is correct. What we're suggesting is that since the ultimate goal is the removal of non-conforming billboards, that there is a situation written into this that allows development agreements to occur. It does allow. It does require a little bit of due diligence by the billboard companies. But it is feasible for them to enter into development agreements. But it still allows a company who does not wish to be in a development agreement situation to just move on to the cap and trade. A development agreement is going to take an extensive amount of time. It does require its own seek law review, whereas the cap and trade would not. So the expectation that a development agreement would be a quicker avenue is not likely to be realized because of the difficulties in negotiating a development agreement. Okay. Before I make a motion, is it possible there's other council members, but then we can come back and maybe hear a response from the public. Thank you. Any further council comment? See? No further council comment. Why don't we go to the public? Any public comment on this item? Councilmember. Mr. Dale, do you mind if I have a moment for the public talks, if I may. Yes, you can have a more. I'm sorry. Short on the trigger there. Mr. Mayes, two questions. One is I understand that there's been some conversations with the city attorney's office and perhaps development services staff, but some modifications to the spacing might be appropriate. I'd just like to hear that before public comment. So if there are any comments that the billboard companies would like to make, I'd like to hear what they have to say. I think Amy can run through. We've had a request from one of the companies who basically believes that the way the ordinance is currently structured, you can have a situation where you would actually have billboards that were too close to one another. And one of the companies suggested that we have some spacing requirements and Amy can run through what those requests were. Great. Thank you, Mr. Potter. Certainly councilmembers. If you turn to table 54.1 excuse me, 54, dash one. On page 14 of your revised ordinance, there is a table called Billboard Development Standards. Under the fourth column spacing between billboards, we would leave the spacing requirements the same for item number one. For item number two, we would change the spacing to be at least 300 feet between poster size boards and at least 500 feet between bulletin size boards. The same change would be made for row three, the conversion of existing billboards to electronic and the same change would be made for row four. So it would be a 300 foot minimum spacing requirement between posters and a 500 minimum foot spacing requirement between bulletins. This issue was also raised last week by one of the companies during the public comment. Thank you. That's it. Okay. Let's hear from the public. Good evening. My name is Mike Murchison. Council member. Other council members. I used to call on the mayor or the council member now, but I'm here tonight on behalf of Regency and I just want to clarify a couple of things that may have been a little bit confusing from last Tuesday. One of the things that you have to understand with Regency. Is their whole all the. Billboards that they have, which are nine structures, are all on the freeways. That's their entire inventory. Okay. In one scenario, whereas the other major companies are in Long Beach, have also along the freeway and in the residential area. So in the scenario that you're talking about, if you're asking Regency to remove them, you're asking Regency to remove the ones that are most valuable to them and that wipes out half of their inventory. But again, that's all they have. They're not in the residential areas, whereas if you ask the other billboard companies, do they have freeway adjacent billboards? The answer is. Yes, at least for most. Of them. Okay. So it's not an ordinance that's focus just on one company. It's an ordinance. So when you look at the proposed draft language that you all have talked about, it's something where you're basically saying that freeways are not our focus. Our focus is the residential communities. So I'm asking you to consider that very strongly tonight. When you look at that. That you look at what the impact would be, freeways versus the residents. The residents are not the ones that complain about freeway billboards. They're complaining about the billboards are in the residential communities. Thank you. Thank you. A question for city attorney. And again, I agree. I don't want to talk about one company, two companies. Three companies. I want to talk about location. So could you address only those signs on freeway landscaped areas or or whatever definition you might have separately from those and the and the other portions of the city? We'd have to legally you may be able to do that, but the ordinance, the way it's structured. Tonight, I realize tonight does. Not do that. But if you want us to to give us direction to look at that, we certainly could or look at a situation where you're only focusing on residential billboards. You could do that. But we have to have a rational basis for doing that. And without knowing what the what the relative stock is, as between the freeway oriented ones and the residential ones I couldn't give. Amy may have an idea, but. It depends on whether you're talking those prohibited in the landscaped buffers or those along all freeways. There is a difference and we would need to understand what the crux of the issue is for the city council. There are areas along the freeway that can be developed with billboards now. There are also areas along the freeway where companies who would have a non-conforming billboard can use Caltrans credits and go around the city's policy and create digital billboards using their Caltrans credits and not having to deal with the cap and trade or a development agreement at all. So the way the ordinance is structured, we would need a little bit of input on whether you're talking about the landscape buffers along the freeways or whether you're talking about all freeway billboards. Why don't we talk about landscape freeway areas? If we just address that portion. If we just address that portion. We may have. Somewhere around 20 billboards out of 350 within the city. So not a large portion? No. And again, we're not speaking about one company here. So. Okay. Thank you. I believe this further is a further public comment. So please. Come forward. Any members of council? My name is Richard Montgomery. I'm government affairs director for Lamar Advertising. As most of you know, Lamar has the majority of billboards in the city. That is 143. 95% of those are all in residential neighborhoods. We have no billboards or zero along the freeway. Make that clear from a get started. We also completely support the staff proposal as written. However, any deviation, any changes that would benefit one company and the other, we completely oppose. So tonight we're talking about equality all the way around. We simply ask that you treat all the companies equally across the board. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Montgomery. Man. I don't believe there's any more public comment, sir. Come down. This will be the last speaker on this topic. Unless there's anybody else who needs to speak. No, this will be the last speaker. My name is Lee Chaucer. And I have to confess, I'm sort of a newcomer to this issue. And I was wondering, what is your main focus? I notice sequel has to do with. Environmental protection for the public, and I was wondering whether your criteria was whether or not. These billboards. Along the freeway were. Distracting. To motorists who might get involved in a car accident because possibly. The glitter. And the glamor of the new electronic. Billboards is in effect, or. Whether. It's just in the communities themselves. The old type of billboards seem to. Be rather passé and. Don't make the community look as hip and Vegas. Like or. Whatever. So I'm just asking. Kind of like four criteria. In regards to. These proposals and these. Laws. And so forth. Okay. Thank you, sir. Well, the council directive, in short, was to have staff develop a policy wherein we could take down billboards across the city. So that's what we're trying to shape here tonight and stay within the bounds of the law. So what what are the. Criteria for taking them down? Well. You know, to we can't have a give and take right now, but I can direct you to city management after after the council discusses this matter and go to you can have further conversation. But right now, you and I can't it's not a place for you and I to engage in, give and take discussion. We discussed this last week for about an hour, probably more than an hour. So I invite you to always watch that on my record as well. Thank you. All right, there. Thank you. Thank you for coming down. Council membership scheme? Yes. And actually, sir, that's this ordinance that we're trying to get through would set out those requirements as to how billboards, wire billboards would be taken down and where. I'd like to make a motion and ask that this matter be referred back to the city attorney to come back to the council with. Wording that can be placed into the ordinance that takes into account that there are billboards and landscape freeway segments. And I know, Mike, if I can just regression, you can help me with the motion to be of of be mindful of the fact that we do not in any way want to craft anything that favors or dis favors any particular business that we're what we're seeking is to get the billboards removed predominantly out of the residential areas. But certainly any new billboards that would be along these areas obviously have to conform with the requirements that we're going to set. So I know. The motion would be to refer this matter back to the city attorney because you said you'd have to look at you'd have to look at the language. You said there's 20 potential billboards this. He's his. No, no, no, no. But the landscape. Yeah. So. Councilwoman Chayefsky, if I understood you, one of the things that we could look at, if it's the desire of the city council not to focus on those 20 billboards, I think Amy said there were 20 in the landscaped areas of the freeway. One way to address that, although it would defeat to a certain extent the overarching purpose of the ordinance, but you could do it would not would be to not count those signs as being non-conforming. So they would not factor into the equation when we say you have to remove nonconforming signs. None of one way to approach it is say, okay, for purposes of this ordinance, they are not non-conforming. So we wouldn't say, okay, you've got six non-conforming there. You need to take them down like individually. But but well. They could they could in theory upgrade them to digital if they were located in an area that they under the criteria. That that's the danger when you do that there's because someone overnight drop a digital in. That's right. So we don't want that. Well, that's why I think her approach was for that area. Have a dual. Yes. Does it be able to have that dual way of also publishing our goal, and that is to remove barriers. You know. So so not require them to factor it into the non-conforming status, but also have a prohibition against converting those 20 billboards to digital. Is that. No, no, no, no. That's not the two opportunities to be able to participate in the program. One would be cap and trade and the other would be through a development agreement. So for those 20, they would be eligible to apply for a development agreement and they would not count towards non-conforming. Yes. It would. You know. I think you take the non-conforming piece and cut it off right there. I don't think we need to speak to non-conforming. I think I think what she's saying in Miami is she wants a dual track for those signs that are in freely landscaped areas. Absolutely. I think and and best motion with you coming back, because obviously we want to make sure it's legally sound and it would would pass muster. So we can't craft this obviously on the floor. So that would be helpful if you could then bring that back. May I ask a clarifying just to make sure that we understand the direction and I do apologize for this. So we would we as staff would go out and verify the number that are within the landscape, freeway buffers. And we're only talking about the landscape freeway buffers and we would determine whatever that number is, regardless of who owns them. And we would we would make it so that they are still non-conforming billboards, but that those are they are specifically eligible for a development agreement for conversion to electronic. Is that your direction? Excellent. Absolutely. And is there a minimum take down ratio that would be a minimum floor. Thing, at least one. And certainly we can get some guidance on that from staff. But I think, you know, at least one. At least one within the same landscaped freeway area. And one non-conforming. And councilwoman ships key. Does your motion include the spacing that we talked about earlier to certainly increase the spacing. The other components in place, simply figuring if we can do this. Those were the spacing that was brought up by Councilmember DeLong and Amy. ARTICULATE Exactly. And I understood we were going to have that in there anyway. Yeah. Regardless of the motion. Yes. Okay. So as I understand it, we will survey and make sure we know what the universe of freeway landscape buffer billboards are. Those billboards would still be considered non-conforming. They would have the right to enter into a development agreement with a bare minimum removal of at least one of those non-conforming billboards for the benefit of conversion. And the spacing that I read into the record would be included 300 feet between poster size and 500 feet between bulletin size in table 54. Dash one. Anything else? No, that sounds. And certainly in returning that to us with an analysis as to if you can, the impact, it's hard to do this on the floor about really getting a sense of what the impact would be by making that change. So if we could have that as well, when you returned to us with the language. So that would be my motion. Thank you. Sir. Any further council comment. Oh, you need you need a second. And Mr. Larson. Son of Mr. Neal seconds seconded by Neal. Motion by Chayefsky seconded by Neal. Any further council comment? Council members alone. Thank you. Okay, a couple of things. First of all, you included the space requirements. Is that correct? Okay. Thank you. Mr. Mace, I know that one of your concerns had to do with legally defensible and so forth. Are you comfortable with this approach? I know you need to spend a little more time with it, but is this something that you think you can work with? Yeah. What we'll be looking at is if by doing this, does it give one company some sort of a competitive advantage? And if it does not, I'll be comfortable with it. Okay. And you'll let us know when it when it comes back? You know, the other issue that we didn't discuss and maybe you could give us direction on it tonight is one of the things that you included last week, which we did make this change was there was the discussion about the cash bond. Performance bond yet. And let me just say that I know that your response wasn't exactly what I requested, but but I think that it certainly met the spirit of what I was looking for and probably was a little bit better. So I could tell you I fully support what staff is recommending for the performance bond approach. I would add that to the motion. All right. So we'll bring that back as well. And then the last item I have and Councilwoman, this could be either a friendly amendment or a substitute, depending on your preference. But as you talked about, requiring one science structure at least to come down through the development agreement. This small change, small to me, perhaps not to you, so you can give me direction here would be that at least one science structure with an equal or greater amount of display square footage that shows to a freeway has to be removed. So not necessarily landscaped area, but freeway adjacent. So it needs to be in that area and it needs to be at similar square footage and it stand. STAFF Does that cause any concern on your hand or city attorney Does that make it less legally defensible or more? We can look at it, but there could be a potential problem in that. The number of billboards in the landscaped area, I think is considerably smaller than the overall freeway oriented build. And I'm looking. Overall. So I am not minimizing that the landscape just I'm saying the face of the freeway. So it could be freeway adjacent, but you can't for example, you wouldn't take one say from residential, but you could replace it along the freeway corridor. So I'm not restricting it to the landscape area. That. Councilmember DeLong, if I may, you're just expanding the definition. Exactly. Obtained council, physically expanding? Well, I'm I'm doing two things. One is I'm expanding the display square footage to make sure it's apples to apples. All right. Get replace a very small board with a very big one. Correct? Right. So and then the second thing is that it shows to a freeway. Right? Yeah. So when you say close to a freeway, we will interpret that as within the landscape adjacent the freeway adjacent area. Correct. Okay. So we will have to do some analysis to see whether or not that does provide a competitive advantage. At this point, I can't answer that, but that is something that we will definitely look at. If it does not provide a competitive advantage to one company or the other, that is the direction we will go. Yeah. And certainly the goal is not to provide a competitive advantage to one or the other. So being tackling, I would add that to to the motion. And when you when you come back, is it your expectation when you come back with something that hopefully it would qualify for first reading? We will make our best effort. We will definitely bring back an ordinance that's suitable for first reading. Then if you decide to tweak it some more, we may have to go through that same analysis and put it over for another first reading. It's possible. Let's try to make it work the first time. And the last portion is, I don't understand how much effort needs to go into this, but could we get first reading next week as opposed to the first week of February? We can check with Amy, but I doubt that we could get this done by the first week in February, to tell you the truth. No, I really know. All right. First we get February. We should. Do our. Best never to ask it. Okay, if I may, I think they need to take as much time as they need to do it right. Oh, we've done it right. They're aiming for the first week of February. I get it. But listen, if you need another week, then you need another week. That's that's that's my opinion. Mr. DION If I can just add it, Mr. Mays what would be helpful to me, and I think the other council members, if your analysis could come to us before we get it on the council agenda item so that we've had some time to understand what it is you found by crafting that language. And that when we're here for the for the first reading, you know, we're a little bit more prepared than just the day of that would be very helpful. Yeah. We will we will definitely try to do that if we get it out in time, if not in the regular course, you get it eight days before the meeting. So if I can get it earlier than that, that portion of it, I will definitely do that. I appreciate that. And I also want to thank Ms.. Burdick and her staff. This I know this has been a a long, long process. And hopefully by the time we're done or have it right and we can move on to other big, long, long processes. Thank you. Item number five, council members cast your vote on item number five on a yes. Motion carry. Thank you, madam. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Item number six.