POLITICS: BILLOBARD ISSUE DISCUSSED

Julius Zomper sees billboards as visual clutter; Jeff Bohnert sees them as an advertising tool.

The two men argued the issue at a forum at Southeast Missouri State University on Wednesday.

Proposition A, a measure on the Nov. 7 ballot, would ban construction of new billboards on interstate and primary highways and would bar the replacement, rebuilding or relocation of existing billboards along such routes, and prohibit sign companies from cutting trees on highway rights of way to make their signs more visible.

Zomper, campaign manager for the Save Our Scenery 2000 organization, advocates passing Proposition A; Bohnert, general manager for Drury Southwest Signs Inc., a billboard company based in Cape Girardeau, is against the measure.

Bohnert told the 40 people at the forum at Rhodes Hall that the number of billboards on the state's major highways has declined from about 40,000 in 1968 to around 13,500 today.

Zomper, however, thinks Missouri still has its share of billboard clutter.

"There are a lot of billboards in Missouri," he told the audience.

The number of billboards in the state is three times the average of billboards in the eight neighboring states and 1 1/2 times higher than any of those states, Zomper said.

"This is not a wacko environmental thing," Zomper said of Proposition A.

Bohnert said the billboard industry is already heavily regulated.

Missouri allows billboards along interstate and primary highways only on commercially or industrially zoned land or on unzoned land if there is commercial or industrial activity within 600 feet.

State law requires billboards along rural interstate highways to be at least 500 feet apart. The maximum size is 800 square feet. They can be a maximum of 30 feet tall and 60 feet wide, excluding support structures. A maximum of two signs can be stacked vertically on a billboard structure.

Two sides disagree

The Save Our Scenery group and the billboard industry disagree on whether Proposition A would require the state to remove about 3,415 billboards that don't meet current regulations.

The billboard industry insists the signs would have to come down at a cost of about $500 million. The Missouri Department of Transportation would have to foot the bill, the industry says.

Proponents say that isn't the case.

"It won't require removal of a single billboard," Zomper said.

The measure, he said, is aimed at keeping out new billboards or modifying existing ones.

The number of billboards in Missouri is increasing by about 5 percent a year, he said.

"It's a beautiful state," Zomper said. "I drive around a lot. We're saying, 'enough is enough.'"

Bohnert and the billboard industry, however, argue that the measure's real intent is to reduce the number of billboards in the state and ultimately get rid of such signs entirely.

The initiative itself states the intent is a "statewide reduction of outdoor advertising and elimination of advertising from areas of natural scenic beauty and in or near residential, historic and similar districts at the earliest feasible moment."

Bohnert said banning new billboards would hurt tourism and small businesses that depend on the traveling public.

It also would hurt farmers and other landowners who lease land to the billboard companies for the erection of signs, he said. The billboard industry in Missouri spends $10 million a year on land leases, he said.