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City Council and Delgadillo bend over for billboards
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1901 Reads
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Thanks to the City Council, doing something about visual blight in the city as part of the CDO process may become that much harder.
An agreement to settle a lawsuit brought by Clear Channel and CBS, both of which maintain billboards on Lincoln, gives these multi-billion dollar outdoor advertising companies carte blanche to convert up to 450 existing billboards to double faces, digital displays, and something called "tri-vision", which consists of rotating electronic prisms in three different panels on one billboard.
Hello Las Vegas and Times Square ...
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This agreement, in which Clear Channel and CBS will dismiss their lawsuits challenging the city's right to inspect billboards and levy a fee for that inspection, was negotiated by none other than our ethically-challenged city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, who was the recipient of $450,000 of free billboard advertising from Clear Channel and other companies in his 2001 campaign againt Mike Feuer, who had proposed tougher regulation of billboards. Why no city council member publicly raised questions about this is entirely dismaying, although perhaps not surprising given the off-color ethical climate in this city.
This agreement actually smells so bad, and gives so much to the billboard industry and so little to the public, that you practically have to hold your nose to read it. Shame on Bill Rosendahl and all the other politicians who have caved in to deep-pockets media companies, and didn't solicit one iota of community input before rubber stamping this outrageous collaboration of those companies and our city attorney.
It just popped up one day on the council agenda and was passed by a voice vote without any discussion. Since it involved lawsuits, all prior discussion was undertaken in closed sessions, and there was no way for the public to know the particulars of what was being proposed until after the fact.
So much for the public voice being heard in city hall.
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| Posted by: EricAhlberg on Monday, October 16, 2006 - 08:45 PM
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