Why we voted against San Jose airport digital billboard plans
Wasteful energy consumption, downed trees and lack of transparency are some of the reasons we recently voted against a plan for digital billboards at Mineta San Jose International Airport.
In short, the potential negative impacts outweigh the potential public benefits of this proposal. If the City Council, which is expected to make the final decision today, votes for it, there will be long-term implications that include the addition of hundreds of digital billboards throughout the city.
For this project, airport officials are proposing four programmable 1,000-square-foot electronic signs on two airport locations next to Highway 101. Clear Channel would install, maintain and program these electronic signs in a revenuesharing deal.
At its Nov. 8 meeting, the Airport Commission voted 7-2 to recommend that the City Council reject the airport staff’s proposal. We are three of the seven commissioners who voted against the plan. Our reasons revolve around issues ranging from environmental to business to process.
Environmental concerns
Adding these two billboards would be comparable to adding 20 homes to the electric grid. If the conversion from analog to digital billboards is applied to the rest of the city, it would be like adding 2,500 to 3,000 homes of power. That is a significant amount of additional power for a city that has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030.
The removal of 43 trees for the airport billboards alone would result in “a conservative estimate of an annual loss of CO2 sequestration of approximately 2,064 pounds,” according to the city. We were also concerned about the impact of billboard light pollution on wildlife. Finally, airport officials did not explore alternative uses for these sites, such as solar panels for generating, instead of consuming, electricity.
Given that the objective of the signs is to capture the driver’s attention, it goes against the spirit of San Jose’s efforts to implement Vision Zero, which strives to eliminate traffic deaths and severe injuries.
Flawed business case
Only a portion of a business case (the revenue side and the capital side) were presented to the Airport Commission. Overhead and indirect costs associated with negotiating this deal and then managing the program were not provided.
There are also opportunity costs of city staff having to respond to the hundreds of comments during the environmental review. The potential financial risks (for example, potential lawsuits) were not quantified. Finally, the additional revenue (0.3% of total airport revenue) is minimal, especially if there are potential financial risks.
The process
We have multiple concerns about how this project has unfolded. For instance, a request for proposal that would allow other companies to offer bids wasn’t issued for this project. Instead, the Clear Channel deal would be just an extension of an existing advertising agreement.
If the city were to approve these two airport billboards, it should request from Clear Channel a reduction in billboards in other parts of the city. This is a missed opportunity to reduce blighted billboards elsewhere.
We were left with questions on whether the proposal would include speech limitations within the boundaries of the U.S. Constitution. A July 15, 2019, memo from then-City Manager David Sikes suggests “restrictions will be placed on proposed content that is … political, religious …” But city policy is not as restrictive.
The many speakers at the Airport Commission meetings and 150-plus written submissions are overwhelmingly opposed to this project. That public input combined with the environmental impacts, the marginal business case and the flawed process are why we voted no and why we recommend the City Council does the same at today’s meeting.