Most Durham citizens seem to support the current billboard law as is, but the hot topic of electronic advertising along Durham's roadways has yet to be decided.

"The ultimate policy is the governing bodies' policy," City-County Planning Director Steve Medlin said this week.

Some members of the City Council and county commissioners favor leaving the law alone. Others want more information.

"Let the process flow," said Mayor Pro Tem Cora Cole-McFadden.

The process has been flowing for more than a year and a half. In mid-2008, Fairway Outdoor Advertising - the Georgia company that owns most of the billboards in Durham County - asked that regulations in Durham's Unified Development Ordinance be changed to allow moving, upgrading and digitizing some of its signs.

The idea met a good bit of opposition, particularly the electronic-billboard part.

"I can't think of anything more obnoxious," said Myers Sugg of the Tuscaloosa-Lakewood neighborhood, during an InternNeighborhood Council discussion.

"Please keep Durham beautiful and do not open the gate to ugly, wasteful digital billboards," wrote Erin Kennedy, in an e-mail to City Council members on behalf of the Colonial Village Neighborhood Association.

The InterNeighborhood Council, in a 2009 resolution opposing any change, described billboards as "contribut[ing] to urban blight and decline" and "inimical to purposes of good planning and urban design."

A poll commissioned by the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau last summer found citizens in favor of leaving the current ordinance alone by a 9 to 1 margin.

Nevertheless, Medlin said that, besides Fairway, his department has heard "numerous other inquiries" from local businesses, sign manufacturers and advertising companies about relaxing restrictions on sizes, heights, number and locations for signs.

"We as staff are simply looking for your guidance," he said to a committee of council members and commissioners this week.

Fairway's request is scheduled for a public hearing by the Durham Planning Commission, a citizens' advisory body, on April 13. Once the Planning Commission makes a recommendation for approval or denial, the request goes to the City Council and County Board of Commissioners.

"Those bodies are going to have to make their own decisions," Medlin said, "and it can be different between the two."

Legal minefield

Council member Mike Woodard said discussing the request before it reaches the governing bodies was "putting the cart before the horse," and Cole-McFadden said she wanted more information before forming an opinion.

"I want to make sure it is an objective process," she said. "As an elected official, I want to make certain I am open to everything that comes before me."

Aesthetics and traffic safety have been the primary issues in citizen objections, but InterNeighborhood Council President Tom Miller, an attorney, has said the real issue is protecting a law that has effectively put billboards on the way out of business in Durham. Revising the law could lead the city and county into "a legal minefield," deputy city attorney Karen Sindelar said this week.

"We have come through that minefield ... and prevailed," she said.

That was years ago. In 1984, the city passed a law banning billboards in most locations and banning modifications to those protected by grandfather clauses or other ordinances - including, ironically enough, the federal Highway Beautification Act. As a result, the number of billboards has declined by attrition.

Billboard firms sued the city as soon as the law went into effect, Sindelar said. It took 10 years and more than $1 million to defend the law in court. Its provisions are now part of the city and county's Unified Development Ordinance. But tampering with any part of a currently defensible ordinance, she said, risks opening the city and county to more challenges in court.

Kathy Everett-Perry of the County Attorney's Office said the current ordinance could probably be updated in a legally defensible way, but City Council member Diane Catotti advised caution. She reminded the committee that the city is already dealing with a $30 million lawsuit stemming from the Duke lacrosse incident of 2006.

"I do fear litigation," Catotti said. "It's a lengthy and costly process," and both the city attorney's office and the planning department may have to cut staff to balance next year's budget.

"I'm not interested in opening this can of worms," Catotti said.