Maitland City Council Withdraws Bid to Overturn Digital Billboard Ban
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
By: Nicole Creston

May 14, 2013 | WMFE - Maitland's City Council has backed away from overturning a decades-old ban on outdoor advertising signage, which would have allowed Maitland's first digital billboard. As 90.7's Nicole Creston reports, Monday night's city council meeting was packed with residents ready to voice their opposition to the change.

[Image: Sample Unsold Billboard]

The standing-room-only crowd broke into applause when Maitland’s City Council voted unanimously to withdraw the proposed change to the city’s sign ordinance. It would have okayed a double-sided, 70-foot-tall digital billboard in north Maitland along I-4.

Neighbors were concerned that 45-feet by 14-feet of constantly-flipping illumination would be visible from their homes. But Alison Johns Delgado from the nearby Maitland Woods community says residents from across town came to Monday’s meeting, too.

"There were a lot of folks from the other side of Maitland, who were there not just because they oppose billboard advertising over on our side, but because they felt like the residents’ interests were not being represented, and if they were to pass a billboard over there by I-4, then it’s sort of a slippery slope," Delgado says. "Next, it’s going to be along Maitland Boulevard, or you name it."

Last month’s preliminary vote saw the City Council breaking 3-to-2 to clear the way for the billboard, despite unanimous opposition from the city’s Development Review Committee and its Planning and Zoning Board. But by Monday night, the measure was pulled since it no longer had the necessary three votes to pass.