In a strongly-worded memo to the mayor and city council members, City Manager Pat West said that the city has ended discussions with Orange-based ad company Media Management Service about erecting six electronic billboards in Long Beach.

The April 17 memo, obtained by The District Weekly, was hailed by one councilwoman Monday as a victory for Long Beach residents and council members who worried that putting up the signs would be simply adding “blight on top of blight.”

But it left open the possibility that the city could revisit the idea in the future–despite what West acknowledged as strong resistance from residents.

The ad company had asked to put up six 14-foot-by-48-foot billboards: at the San Diego Freeway and Redondo Avenue; at the San Diego Freeway and Temple Avenue; at the San Diego Freeway and and Long Beach Boulevard; at the San Diego Freeway and Hughes Way (near Santa Fe Avenue); at the Artesia Freeway and Paramount Boulevard; and at the Long Beach Freeway and Long Beach Boulevard.

In return, MMS’s most recent proposal dated April 10 offered Long Beach payment of $500,000 per year plus an annual 3 percent cost-of-living boost–or 35 percent of the gross annual advertising revenue, whichever is greater.

The city would also have gotten 20 percent of the billboards’ advertising time, which MMS attorney Doug Otto estimated last week equaled more than 450,000 8-second advertising spots each month.

But 21 months after its Request for Proposals went out–faced with increased interest from billboard companies such as Clear Channel, which didn’t bid in 2006; and after the City of Los Angeles recently brokered a trade-off with Clear Channel to remove some of its static signs in exchange for erecting electronic billboards–MMS’s bid didn’t seem so attractive.

“Almost two years after soliciting this bid, I don’t think any one of us now can stand up and say that we have a ’state-of-the-art’ contract or deal,” West wrote in the memo.

“The billboard industry has changed greatly during these two years. Additionally, after almost two years of community meetings, our community still appears extremely torn about this issue. For these reasons, we are ceasing all negotiations with Media Management, and canceling our arrangement with them.”

Two of the proposed billboard sites were in Councilwoman Rae Gabelich’s Eighth District, and
the councilwoman said Monday she was taken aback by West’s memo. (The council was set to discuss the matter twice recently, at its March 18 and April 15 meetings, but talks were postponed at the last minute.)

“I was surprised. But I’m gratefully surprised,” said Gabelich, during a cell phone conversation as she drove through Orange County on the San Diego Freeway.

Otto, the MMS attorney, said last week that soon every local city will have electronic billboards of its own–and he worried about Long Beach being left out–but Gabelich admitted to being struck by how billboard-free Orange County freeways remain.

“I’ve seen one billboard and it actually wasn’t even a billboard. It was a large sign for the Auto Center down in Irvine,” Gabelich said. “It is interesting that Orange County doesn’t see a reason to create more blight, which is what I’m going to call them.”

West said Monday that the City Council could revive an electronic billboards discussion if its members decide that’s what their constituents want.

“I don’t know,” West said, when asked whether we’ve seen the last of flashy, moving signs in Long Beach. “We’ll have to see how the City Council responds. We may get a request from the City Council to do another [request for bids].” Seventh District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga agreed.

“Never say never. You never know what another council might do,” Reyes Uranga said. “It’s clear that a lot of the community doesn’t want it, and I think that the locations are problematic, but if it happens we at least need to establish guidelines.”

And if city staffers or the City Council starts another electronic billboards discussion, would MMS, the spurned ad company, be interested? Why, yes they would.

“Absolutely,” Otto said. “We don’t think this is over. We never would have agreed to pull it from the Council agenda on Tuesday if we had any inclination that the city would do this.

“We made it clear that we wanted a full Council there to consider this, and because the full City Council wasn’t there, we went along with taking it off-calendar.”

Tags: California, Doug Otto, electronic billboards, Long Beach, Media Management Services, pat west, rae gabelich, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas