A proposal to regulate electronic signs in Jefferson Parish has drawn some last-minute objections from business interests. Aided by Parish Council Chairman Elton Lagasse, they are seeking relief as the council approaches its Nov. 7 deadline to vote on the measure. Lagasse said Monday he's seeking a compromise between the Planning Department's recommendations, which are largely backed by East...
A proposal to regulate electronic signs in Jefferson Parish has drawn some last-minute objections from business interests. Aided by Parish Council Chairman Elton Lagasse, they are seeking relief as the council approaches its Nov. 7 deadline to vote on the measure.
Lagasse said Monday he's seeking a compromise between the Planning Department's recommendations, which are largely backed by East Jefferson neighborhood activists, and Baton Rouge-based Lamar Advertising Co., one of the largest billboard companies in the United States.
"It'll never be perfect," Lagasse said. "We're trying to get something in the middle."
Largely unregulated, electronic variable message advertising has proliferated in the past decade, both on "off premise" billboards and those that are on the site of the businesses they promote. Even parish government has some electronic signs, in front of the Eastbank Regional Library in Metairie, for example.
But both the government's master plan and a study group convened by the Jefferson Economic Development Commission have decried the volume of signs and other visual clutter, and neighborhood activists, organized under the Civic League of East Jefferson, have been pressing for restrictions.
"Does the average person want to live in a Las Vegas-style strip neighborhood?" said Civic League President Ralph Brandt. "Then you create a community where no one wants to live."
Parish President John Young's Planning Department began studying electronic variable message signs almost two years ago, eventually delivering a set of recommendations to limit their size and location and to ban animation, special effects and scrolling text in unincorporated parts of the parish. The council-appointed Planning Advisory Board held two public hearings and concurred Aug. 9 with the recommendations. (Read the proposed ordinance.)
The Parish Council has twice delayed its vote. The 30-page measure is on Wednesday's council agenda, and Lagasse said he plans to postpone it again. If the council doesn't make a decision by Nov. 7, it must wait two years before considering the matter again, Planning Director Terri Wilkinson said.
The Civic League generally backs the Planning Department's recommendations while preferring more restrictions.
But some business people are chafing at the proposed rules. While the Jefferson Chamber of Commerce has taken no position on the proposal, chamber President Todd Murphy said the sense of business people at an Oct. 11 chamber meeting on the issue was that it is too broad and too inhibitive.
"The ordinance is very restrictive to businesses," Murphy said Tuesday. "As I saw it, it's one size fits all."
Under the current proposal, businesses that already own electronic signs could keep them but would have to reprogram them by Jan. 1 to eliminate special effects, animation and scrolling text, which would be banned for new signs. Such a rule change might make businesses owners feel cheated out of their investment of $30,000 to $50,000 in the hardware, Murphy said.
In addition, there could be room for compromise on where the new regulations apply, he said. Terry Parkway, for example, might not need the same restrictions as Metairie Road.
Other points of contention in recent months have been the size of the signs, the "dwell" time and the spacing.
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Electronic sign regulations are on the Jefferson Parish Council agenda Wednesday, but council Chairman Elton Lagasse said a vote will be deferred until Nov. 7. The Planning Department calls for limiting the size of electronic signs to between 50 and 100 square feet, depending on the location. The minimum dwell time -- how long a single message must stay visible before changing -- would be six seconds for on-premise signs and eight seconds on billboards. Electronic billboards would have to be at least 2,000 feet from one another.
"I don't think anyone would disagree that there are parts of our parish that could use some help on aesthetics, and signs are as good a place as any to start," Murphy said Tuesday.
But Brandt, the Civic League president, said the Planning Department's recommendations already represent a good balance for businesses interests with aesthetics and traffic safety. Bending to business owners now, after almost two years of discussion, is unfair, he said.
"The thing that's kind of disconcerting is that nobody's talking to us," he said. "The compromise has been done. At what point must I cry uncle?"