Mayor seeks temporary billboard ban

INDIANAPOLIS -- City-County Council members are considering a proposal from Mayor Bart Peterson to place a six-month ban on new billboards while tighter permanent rules are developed.\nPeterson has suggested several initiatives, including a committee to study sign ordinances, aggressive enforcement of current laws and a new staff position to determine how many billboards fill the city and their locations.\n"There's not a problem with billboards, per se," Peterson said. "They are a legitimate and important form of advertising. There can be a point at which there are plain just too many of them."\nThe moratorium proposal was assigned Tuesday to a council committee for study.\nJeff McKinley, division president of Clear Channel Outdoor and the head of an Indiana billboard industry group, warns the proposed moratorium could lead to lost jobs and lost revenue for numerous businesses.\nMcKinley supports the mayor's call for a committee to look at the city's sign ordinance, but said he believed better enforcement of existing rules would be a more positive first step.\nHe said he would support an increase in permit fees to toughen enforcement of sign violations. Those one-time fees, paid by the sign companies, now range from $400 to $800.\nCity officials say they have no reliable estimate on the number of billboards. But the number of permits issued for new billboards has slightly increased in recent years.\nThe city has issued 66 new permits in the past two years, compared with 53 in 1999-98 under Mayor Stephen Goldsmith.\nCompanies can continue to use those billboards already standing during the six-month moratorium.