Nayani Thiyagarajah

Are the billboards on our city streets bugging you?

Well then you can do something to help the Beautiful City Billboard Fee campaign.

Take a look around our city. Whether you’re in the downtown core or driving along a highway, billboards are somewhere to be seen. At one stop on the road you may see an ad for backpacks. Next you might come across a large-scale, full-body photo of some beautiful man or woman endorsing some expensive line of clothing. You may even see a big billboard-size version of Jennifer Aniston’s face telling you to watch Friends, weekdays at 6 p.m.

The Beautiful City Billboard Fee (BCBF) is one which would see six million dollars collected yearly from a fee on billboards in Toronto. All third-party outdoor advertisers would be required to pay an annual fee, from which all profits would be put into public art, prioritizing on art produced by artists from marginalized communities and youth artists.

Twenty-seven various organizations make up the BCBF Alliance, including the Grassroots Youth Collaborative, Lotus Leaf Communications, The Gladstone Hotel, the Toronto Youth Cabinet and the Youth Action Network. The Toronto Arts Council, a member of the Alliance, will be in charge of distributing profits if fee is approved.

Susan Wright, the Director of Operations at the Toronto Arts Council, believes that the campaign will see success.

“There seems to be a fair bit of support. I’m pretty confident that some aspect of it will happen,” she says.

However, she adds, “whether the whole thing will unfold as we would like, well these things don’t turn around and happen immediately.”

Aside from the central goal of putting more funding into public art, the BCBF Alliance has a few other main objectives for the campaign. This includes increasing funding for both watching and regulating billboard advertisers, and providing work for artists.

One key objective is to “help move Toronto towards a pedestrian focused aesthetic.” Ostrom, founder and co-director of the BCBF campaign, says that this means the “BCBF will assist moving Toronto away from a car based aesthetic (billboards) towards a more pedestrian feel.”

“If you look at billboards, they’re basically designed for major impact, for people driving by,” he adds. “But the mass majority of public art requires people to get out of their cars, explore their neighbourhoods.”

In fact, when was the last time you took a casual walk along the streets of a busy city? And this doesn’t include rushing off to work or running to your next class or taking a trip to your favourite store along Yonge Street. Rather, when’s the last time you took regular old-fashion walk around the block or a walk to a park? Maybe a walk to observe and admire some architecture, or a walk to check out some cool street art?

“Access to visual communication in public spaces needs to reflect the creativity and multiplicity that exists in Toronto,” says Ostrom. “Or else we face alienating the city’s inhabitants from their own surroundings.”

However, despite the support and enthusiasm shown towards the campaign, there are some who do are against the idea of placing a tax on advertising billboards.

Dave Meslin, a public space activist, disagrees with the idea of a billboard fee and maintains that it is too early to employ a tax. He argues that considering Toronto’s current fiscal state, it would be wiser to boost the number of billboards in order to bring in more money. Instead of immediately introducing such a fee, Meslin suggests employing a sequence of billboard-control measures.

“We have a city council desperate for new sources of revenue, and councillors have shown quite clearly that they consider our visual environment a natural resource that can be sold to private companies,” says Meslin.
He adds that the revenue gathered from the proposed billboard tax “would increase with every approval for a new sign but would decrease whenever the city enforced its own bylaws and removed an illegal sign.
“The formula would be a nightmare scenario for public space advocates.”
Still, Ostrom argues that public art will also help to support other significant issues different from initial objectives.

“When produced locally, public art contributes to ‘place making’ and can serve to reinforce multiculturalism.”

This, he says, is the exactly opposite of Billboard advertising in many ways including “motive, medium and methods.”

As well, Ostrom argues that public art and local projects work to develop public ownership.

“The BCBF works as a remedial act, enabling and spurring people to further add to their communities in a positive format,” he says.

Asked whether he believes the BCBF campaign will be a success, Ostrom is positive.

“What gives me the greatest optimism is that even though the campaign been going on a long time, it’s [enthusiasm] still there.”

According to a 2005 Pollar survey for the BCBF Alliance, 66% of Torontonians support the fee and 60% feel that fewer billboards would make the city more beautiful.

“Politics is a long process and there are good reasons why democracy takes long,” says Ostrom. “But we’re farther than we’ve ever been before.”

And Ostrom has fair reason to believe so.

Following a series of public consultations and an increase in community support, a June 11 City of Toronto Staff Report showed the recommendation for a report on the BCBF to the Executive Committee by Toronto’s Deputy City Manager Richard Butts. On June 25, the Committee passed this recommendation. A new staff report is expected to come out in October or November.

Despite the support however, Wright maintains that even if the fee is approved, there will still be monetary issues to deal with.

“Any time money is involved, there are all kinds of reasons things wouldn’t happen,” she says. “There will be city departments, sign regulators, bill advertisers all trying to determine where the money might go.”

“There are huge potential changes for what happens with the money,” she adds.

Ultimately, Ostrom still believes that the campaign will create positive change.

“It’s a small portion of a larger shift in society, and I think public art could play a large role in that shift.”

If you would like to sign the BCBF petition, you can visit http://www.them.ca/bcbfpetition.asp.

For more information on the campaign and how to get involved, you can contact Devon Ostrom at devon@them.ca