What’s your sign: Classification, location, maybe beautification?

If you want to stir up Valley voters, threaten animals, the Centennial Trail, or the skyline with more signs. The sign issue prompts a visceral reaction on both sides of the street. Some see economic growth for their business and others see Pottersville – the ugly version of Bedford Falls in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

Trying to gather some information on billboards, I stopped by City Hall. If there’s one thing I’ve found with the new city’s employees, it’s that they are willing to take time to be helpful. Community Development Director Marina Sukup proved no different.

Her background information on the issues involved with sign legislation gave me some new food for thought. There’s more than one issue involved here and I admit to thinking primarily about pleading monstrosities dotting our skyline. She mentioned, for example, defunct signs – a good example of which was the Sprague Drive-In sign, which stood for many years after the drive-in closed. Removing these signs costs money. Big money. Money which landowners are reluctant to pay after the economic cow has already left the barn.

Sukup also mentioned how determined the billboard companies are. For example, in a previous public employ, she was part of an effort to remove a particularly offensive billboard sign, located along a set of railroad tracks, with little success. Finally Mother Nature stepped in and played censor, taking the sign down with a high wind. It blew down across the tracks and was pulverized by a passing train. Most people would call that a sign – pun unintended.

There is also the issue of sign classification. Inflatables, electronic signs, reader boards – it’s all fairly complicated coming up with a definition of a given sign type that pleases all. There’s enough inflatable gorillas, bears, and other giants around town that a high wind could make it seem like the circus is marching into town.

The colorful sign in a car dealer lot along the Valley couplet works for me. It’s small, unobtrusive, and TV-like, but it’s not even classified as an electronic sign. If, however, it were tuned to ESPN, making my daily commute more enjoyable, I’d defend it to my death.

I don’t have a problem with businesses increasing the size of signs on the outside of the walls of their business. Good taste and aesthetic appeal will govern that. Putting billboards closer together, as proposed, is self-defeating. Billboards touting liquor, politicians, and other causes compete for attention like fake Elvises at a Graceland convention and the more sequins, lights and gimmicks they employ just diminishes their impact. Billboards are hopelessly outdated in an instant update world.

What I do find distressing are two things.

First, a city councilman said concerning some doctored pictures showing a skyline free of billboards that in one sense “it makes it look empty and abandoned.” Does the Centennial Trail look abandoned without billboards? Thinking like that scares me.

Second, are the aesthetic corridors. The committee recommends billboards should be allowed along aesthetic corridors. What does aesthetic mean to the committee? Does that mean billboards are to be allowed, but they must be works of art from Rembrandt or Van Gogh? (I prefer American Gothic myself.) I can’t find any other way of justifying them. But I can think of another reason for denying them.

There’s a house, in the 500 block of north Evergreen – one of the proposed corridors. It’s immaculate, from the older home itself to the grounds it sits on. That owner, who I don’t know from Adam, obviously is a neighbor we’d all love to have. The owner pays the same taxes as you and I. For that they widened the street, allowed an office complex next door, and an espresso stand down the street.

Are we going to thank that landowner for doing everything right by allowing a bunch of billboards around his house?