Those of us who mistakenly thought our big local needs were things like affordable worker housing and transportation upgrades missed the biggest need of all: more and bigger billboards closer together on our skyline.
While the rest of us snoozed, our thoughtful commissioners knew that what every Miamian wants to see is advertising towering overhead on billboards and buildings, bigger and brighter and ever more intrusive.
Besides, commissioners knew that the visitor industry was hungering for a year-around Art Basel effect with public art everywhere: the great outdoor art known as billboards plastered on every public building, filling parks and towering over highways. What a great attraction for visitors bored with beauty, nature, fine architecture and the landmarks that now fill our vistas.
In fact, the new rules are creating a great tourist lure with its own slogan for the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau to promote globally: “Nothing Says Miami Like Billboards.”
And the wonderful thing is that three elected officials got the brilliant idea of more and bigger brilliant billboards at almost the same time. It must be coincidence, because none of those who have slipped this idea into law or are near doing so ever mentioned the high-powered, deep-pocket billboard lobby that has had politicians in its pocket for years. Just coincidence – but it’s catching, like the flu.
Sure, almost everybody must want bigger billboards nearer home because only two county commissioners voted no when outgoing Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz in his last day of many years on the dais pushed through billboard legislation last month.
Certainly, nobody from the public spoke against it. Maybe that was because the vote had been scheduled after a Dec. 22 public hearing but was quietly pushed up to Nov. 15, as the commission suspended its own rules that required committee review and a hearing first and waived the requirement that municipalities get a four-week to six-week notice before the action.
Mr. Diaz was right, of course: if people got proper notice they’d have screamed about raising the legal limit for billboards along highways 20 feet higher and allowing the billboards 200 feet nearer estates and single-family homes. Just make sure they aren’t there to object and ram it through.
In the City of Miami, two commissioners simultaneously dreamed up their own legislation “independently.” It’s catching, and again purely coincidence based on the evident public need to blot out the sunshine with the bright lights of digital billboards.
First out of the box was former mayor Joe Carollo, who has been watching out for the public for decades and knew that we were missing digital billboards in our bayfront parks. These billboards would give mom and dad the chance to tell the kids to put away their ever-present cellphones and get out to our great open-air parks without missing a digital minute.
He must have been right because he faced only one no vote, from Manolo Reyes, who doesn’t know digital beauty when he sees it because he asked how these billboards “would impact the environment and city residents.” What could he possibly be thinking? Or maybe he just hasn’t been talking with the right lobbyists. Former Miami commissioner Marc Sarnoff, for example, once said he wanted to make Miami more like Times Square. Looks like he’ll get his wish.
While Mr. Carollo’s plan would get billboard art into three parks, he apparently didn’t go far enough. Competing legislation by Alex Diaz de la Portilla calls Mr. Carollo a piker and says he’ll up the ante, allowing billboards three times the total area of the biggest highway billboards and up to 10 stories tall on all government lands in the heart of Miami. Now there’s a sport.
Again, only Mr. Reyes vote no in the first round. “This opens every single city property for one of those signs,” he complained. Yes, and every other government property too. And more than one sign, because there are no limits.’
Well, there actually are limits: at 10 stories, the sky is the limit.
In the county, Mr. Diaz suspended the rules to pass a billboard bonanza without having to face annoying public comments. In the city, Mr. Diaz de la Portilla got the rules changed so the commission-appointed Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board can’t slow the billboard steamroller with annoying questions. Just another coincidence, no collusion.
Final city votes are upcoming in what will be billed as a revenue-generating tool for billboard fees. When times are bad that claim is a good cover for bad legislation. But the city is awash in tax revenues and expanding staff.
No, the real sales pitch for towering billboards changing digital messages every eight seconds just has to be their natural beauty. Just like putting lipstick on a pig.