San Mateo seeks billboard location

Goethals, who suggested the three locations as potential options, also identified location criteria restrictions. Billboards should only be along either Highway 101 or State Route 92 and should not be directly next to a residential neighborhood. Goethals believes this narrows down locations to only a few sites in the city, one at Poplar Creek Golf Course, one behind Target and one by The Crossroads, an office building complex at 101 and 92, allowing for safety and fewer disturbances to residential neighborhoods. Goethals suggested pursuing and securing contract opportunities with Target and The Crossroads. The city could collect revenue and limit how many billboards there are based on safety concerns.

“We can identify how many and where and pursue it first, and based on all of those things, determine how this ultimately goes and also ensure that we don’t see a hundred billboards because we would be regulating this through our police power. I think that’s a fair way to go about it that benefits the city and benefits the residents,” Goethals said.

The City Council wants billboards on city-owned land for extra revenue but away from residential neighborhoods to protect privacy and reduce noise and light pollution. At a November study session, city staff found each billboard could generate between $200,000 and $300,000 per year and increase General Fund revenue, providing significant nontax revenue for the city. The total revenue increase depends on the number of billboards.

The city is still deciding on a specific billboard ordinance model, with some suggestions like the San Carlos’ ordinance, which allows billboards on land that the city owns or leases. San Mateo’s current sign ordinance prohibits billboards. The City Council in 2020 asked staff to explore a program that allows for the operation of electronic billboards to increase revenue. The model would allow for the greatest revenue potential for San Mateo but has a legal risk. City Attorney Shawn Mason was concerned about potential First Amendment issues if the city used the San Carlos model.

Because of the San Carlos model’s legal risk, the City Council provided direction to staff to first develop and establish criteria for picking a location, like sign placement, spacing requirement, proximity to residential areas and lighting and size limitations. Mason said the first step is developing specific criteria, establishing where it works in the city and then deciding on locations and a model ordinance. The city is narrowing standards around specific criteria to minimize legal liability that could arise come with only allowing it on city-owned property, Mason said. The requirements would likely only allow for a handful of viable locations for billboards in San Mateo.

The City Council was also in favor of moving the only billboard in San Mateo to the Poplar Creek Golf Course. The billboard is on the southbound side of Highway 101, south of the Third Avenue exit, and the billboard is owned by Clear Channel, San Mateo spokeswoman Samantha Weigel said by email. Councilwoman Amourence Lee thought the idea of relocating the existing billboard to the Poplar Creek Golf Course from Deputy Mayor Rick Bonilla was a good idea.

“In terms of having the least impact to surrounding neighborhoods and bringing the current sign up to certain modern standards, I think that would be a really solid and measured approach that I would support. I’m strongly in favor of realizing passive revenue for the city,” Lee said.

She was interested in going further to find other locations for billboards and favored creating a community-sensitive and restrictive policy guideline that would narrow appropriate locations considered for billboards.

Bonilla favored adopting a billboard program modeled after San Carlos and working with the billboard owner at Poplar Creek to relocate the existing billboard to city property.

“I support the direction of where we are going, and I think a combination of the second and the third options is what we should use,” Bonilla said.

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

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