It’s only been a couple of weeks since the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors altered the draft general plan update to allow for the construction of electronic billboards, which would have been prohibited if the planning commission’s recommendations had been followed. Since then, two such billboards have gone up around the county – one at Redwood Acres, the other at the turnoff to Bear River Casino. It’s not exactly clear whether the supes’ action led directly to these billboards, or whether the billboards (in their planning stage) led to the supes’ action, or neither. The Redwood Acres billboard likely would have been allowed under the planning commission’s recommended rules anyway, since it is “on-site” – at the location it is advertising. Perhaps the same could be said for Bear River.

[UPDATE/CORRECTION: The LoCO commentariat convinces me that the Redwood Acres billboard has been around for longer than I thought it had — pre-Oct. 6, in fact. Sorry! —Ed.]

What is true is that we’ve suddenly been seeing more of these things, and we’re likely to see many more still in the years to come. But LoCO commenter Joel Mielke is not taking the supes’ decision lying down: This morning he posted a petition on change.org asking the board to reverse itself and ban electronic/animated billboards entirely in the new general plan. He’s racked up 86 signatures as of this writing, after the petition has spread itself ‘round the Facebooks.

Now, Mielke’s petition doesn’t give you anything about the board’s reasoning for opening our roadways to the digital revolution. The Outpost went back to Oct. 6 to check out the meeting at which this was discussed, and – boiling it down – there seem to be three basic arguments that persuaded the board:

  • USEFUL IN EMERGENCIES: In other places, according to a representative from the industry, electronic billboards have been commandeered by governmental agencies to deliver emergency information to the public. Could Humboldt County do that? During a tsunami, say? Maybe.
  • MAYBE THEY’LL BE BETTER IN THE FUTURE: Even if you don’t like electronic billboards now, is a 20-year ban of them (plus or minus) really warranted? Who knows what they’ll be like 20 years from now! Technology moves fast – maybe the things you don’t like about them will not be included in future models.
  • OPPOSING HYPOCRITICAL PRO-LUNACY: You say you don’t like glare or excess light blotting out the night sky. OK – what about the moon, then? You hate the moon? As Supervisor Rex Bohn said: “I understand light and glare, but I appreciate the hell out of a full moon, when I can almost read by the moonlight too, and it’s got a lot of light coming off it, so…” He loves the moon and he is no hypocrite, so he was among the four votes in favor.

The video of the meeting can be found below. Zip forward to about the 3:27 mark if the video doesn’t automatically start there on your system.