Providence City Council: Committee on Ordinances | September 14th, 2026

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to committee and ordinance. The five it's the time is 05:37, and today is September 14. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Chairman Espino? Present. Vice Chairwoman Peterson?

Present.

Councilwoman Harris is absent. Councilman Vargas?

Councilor Vargas? Present.

Councilor Royes? Present. Four present, one absent. You have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Okay, the first thing that I'd like to do, because I I there's only two items on the agenda, so we should move rather quickly. But there is one item that I will be taking out of order, so we'll hear that first. So I'd like to do a motion to take item number two out of order, Made by councilor Pietrangelo. Second.

Second by councilor Vargas. All in favor, aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. Madam Clerk, item number two, please.

Item two, petition from Jeffrey Mark Aude, owner of JC one hundred thirty one Realty LLC and president of EW Audi and Sons Inc, requesting to change the official zoning map of the city of Providence by changing the zoning district from various properties from m dash MU to m dash one, and to change the language in section twelve zero two h of the zoning ordinance to add subsection four to read as follows. A storage container might be used for permanent storage. A storage container should not be stuck on-site.

Thank you, madam clerk. So I know that we have a large number of people here to speak on this item, but unfortunately, we're gonna have to continue this item. Counselor Harris, who represents this ward, is not available. And we continue it last time as there was concerns that was pressed. So we wanna hear from both sides.

But for now, we will be continuing this to a date that is certain so that we don't have to re advertise. So the next day will be October 13 at 05:30PM. So with that said, I'll entertain a motion to continue item number two. So move. To a date starting of October thirteen at 05:30.

Second. We have Councilman Vargas, second by Councilor Peterson. All in favor, aye. Opposed, the ayes have it. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, item number one, please.

Item one, petition from Dylan Coney, Squire, Rhode Island Land Use Law of 123 Dyer Street, Suite 3 B, Providence, Rhode Island 02903, requesting an amendment to the official zoning ordinance of the City Of Providence by adding a new subsection to the text of two zero zero five, section f, billboards removal inventive.

Thank you. If you have not, there are an opportunity for you to sign up if you're here to speak on this item, item number one. Otherwise, mister Azer, please, would you like to present on this? Thank you.

Good afternoon. Good evening. Mr. Chair and members of the committee, my name's Robert Azar. I'm the Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Development.

I'm here to give an overview of this ordinance and to speak to the City Plan Commission's review of it and their recommendation to you. This is a petition that came to us from Lamar, which is a company that owns and operates most of the billboards that you see in the city of Providence, both facing highways and also throughout the neighborhoods. This may seem familiar to some of you, because they came before the city council several years back with a similar proposal, and that is they would like to turn some of these billboards into electronic message signs. In other words, they would go from being a billboard with a static message that's applied to a sign face and stays there until it's changed out by human beings, to essentially very large television screens that have the ability to change messages as frequently as would be allowed by law or local ordinance. And the center piece of the proposal, actually there were two aspects to the proposal.

One is that for every one square foot of digital sign face, the ordinance would provide that two square feet of static sign faces be removed and discontinued. The other one was that they were offering to negotiate some sort of impact fee with the city. This was reviewed by legal counsel and then by the City Plan Commission. First thing is that city's legal counsel from the law department determined that any payment by a private entity in exchange for zoning consideration would be considered contract zoning and would not be legal in the state of Rhode Island. The other thing is with respect to the two square foot exchange rate, I'll call it, we did some research throughout the country and we found that this is actually a practice that you see in many places, this taking down of static faces in exchange for digital sign faces.

And we found that the exchange rate was as high as 13 to one in certain places in the country. So, our recommendation of the CPC and one that they adopted was an exchange rate of 10 to one. And as you can see in in the City Plan Commission's recommendation to the council, the commission supported an ordinance, but one that would have to be entirely rewritten. And in our letter here, you'll see that there are seven points in addition to the provision that the proposal for payment to the city shall be struck. But I'll summarize the seven points, and if you are inclined to advance this ordinance, I would suggest that this evening, you substitute this language for what is currently before you.

So the first one is that a permit would be required. That would mean that they couldn't just do this. They would have to get a building permit, and then the Department of Inspection and Sanders would have to verify that all the remaining conditions are met. Number two is that the electronic message signed shall comply with all applicable federal and state regulations and shall be approved by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation. Number three.

The electronic message sign shall be located in either a commercial or an industrial district and shall not be located within two fifty feet of a residential district as measured from the base of the sign. Number four, the sign face shall be oriented towards Interstate 95 and may only be incidentally noticeable from any residential district. The original petition here had asked that these be approved when located adjacent to an interstate highway. Since I-one Hundred 95 through Providence was relocated after billboards were made illegal in Providence, there are no billboards facing the relocated I-one Hundred 95. So that's why we specified that these can only be located facing I-ninety 5.

And by the way, they wouldn't be on any other state roads like 146 or 44 or one or any of the other state roads that run through Providence. Number five, the area of the electronic message sign face shall not exceed the area of the existing sign face of the billboard. And number six, the replacement shall be in exchange for the permanent removal and abandonment of non electronic billboards as follows: A, a combined square footage of non electronic billboard sign face area removed shall total at least 10 times the square footage of the electronic message sign face proposed. B, the removal and abandonment must occur prior to the installation of the electronic message sign and must include structures and footings. C, for purposes of this provision, back to back signs and V type signs shall each be considered two sign faces.

Seven, the replacement shall not change the billboard's status as a nonconforming sign. I will say, if you had any questions about illumination and glare and such, The Rhode Island Department of Transportation does have regulations about billboards that face interstate highways, and within those regulations, they speak to light levels and glare and such. So if this were to pass and be incorporated into the zoning ordinance, it would piggyback on state regulations. So that's the that's the extent of the CPC's report to you.

And we have the report here.

You have the staff report, yes, and you'll see those seven points on page two.

So that ought to be found within the substitution?

That would be so this came to you as a petition. So this language, yes, again, you were inclined to move forward, I would recommend that you substitute this language and then I'll work with the clerk to turn this into an actual ordinance that would then get forwarded to the City Council.

Alright. Any question for committee member for Mr. Aza? Have a question. Councillor Peterson.

Deputy Director, I don't know that you can actually answer this question, but I'm gonna give it a shot. Who controls the way the signs are, the change of advertising that would be on the sign if they're not these standalone Since they're electronic, I'm assuming it's all done via a computer or some sort of

Yeah, the owner of the sign would have the ability remotely, you know, to change the message. And if you've seen these out on the highways, I presume most or all of you have, these messages have the ability to change as you're moving past them. And I believe the state regulations say that they have to stay on one message for nine or ten seconds. But you can imagine, if you're in a slowdown, you might see several messages. But, you know, this is clearly an advantage to the billboard companies, because they can much more easily change the message, and they can put more messages in front of the driving public.

Can I ask a follow-up?

Absolutely, go ahead.

So your, the proposal is for a 10 to one exchange rate. So like 10 different, is that how it works? 10 to one?

Yeah. So it's not 10 billboards to one billboard. It's based on square footage. So, for example, if I don't have the exact numbers, but let's say a billboard on the highway where they want to turn it into a digital face is 500 square feet. That would be 5,000 square feet of signs elsewhere that they would have to take down.

If a small billboard in a neighborhood is 200 square feet, that counts towards the 5,000, and so forth.

One more follow-up. Do

we have a lot of the billboards, the stand alone billboards that need to be replaced? Like I guess I'm just trying to figure out how many we actually have right now versus what would be

Yeah. So my understanding is that don't have an actual number of billboards that are facing Route 95 in Providence. It might be a dozen, say. I'm sure Lamar will know very precisely how many there are. And then out in the neighborhoods, once you start looking for them, you'd be surprised at how many there are.

They're on the sides of buildings. They're on vacant lots. Some of them are facing where I-one Hundred 95 used to be, on top of buildings, and so forth. So there's quite a number of them. And one thing about this program is that we have very few tools in zoning to actually make nonconforming things go away because the state law allows for non conformities, once they're established, to exist in perpetuity.

So this is an opportunity to kind of wind that back. It's a way to reduce visual clutter. And also, if somebody is perfectly happy to collect the rent on a vacant lot as long as there's a billboard paying the rent, maybe there's an opportunity to put that vacant lot to a more productive use, like housing, for example.

Thank you. Anybody else? Councillor Royals, please. Thank you, Chair.

Question for you, Bob. Is there, does the city keep an inventory of, in general, where billboards are most concentrated, which neighborhoods? And did the CPC take account of any neighborhoods that would be disproportionately impacted by billboards and this potential new change in law?

So we did a little bit of Let's see. We did a little bit of analysis. Most of this information came from Lamar's website. And our staff report to the CPC says that Lamar reports nearly 200 outdoor advertising products in the city alone. And that a majority of them are concentrated along highways.

And if you look at a map from their website, you see them along Route 10, along 95, a little bit along the Route 610 connector. Most of these tend to be clustered. I would say, you know, there's a relatively equal dispersion of them. Maybe a slightly more, you know, in Elmwood, and then just a little bit north of downtown where 146 And 95 split, but frankly they're everywhere.

On-site, councilman? No. Thank you. Thank you, mister Azar. We'll be going back to you at some point for more question.

City sergeant, please, could you bring me the list? And while we do that, we have certain items that we need to put into the record. So I'll entertain a motion to enter into the record the report from City Planning Commission. It's made by Councilor Peterson, second by Councilor Member Vargas. All in favor, aye.

Opposed, the ayes have it. I'll also entertain motion to enter the testimonies that have been received into the records. Made by Councilor Peterson, second by Councilor Mabarga. All in favor, aye. Opposed, the ayes have it.

I'll also entertain a motion to enter into the record letter of recommendation from CPC, as well as the substitute for the petition. Made by Counselor Peterson. Second by Counselor Mabargas. All in favor, aye. Opposed, the ayes have it.

Thank you so much. Alright, and So we heard from the deputy director. So although it's not the first person that signed up, I wanna hear from Mr. Dylan Conley, who will be presenting the his side of this.

Thank you, mister chairman. Hello. Members of the committee, it's good to be back. This has been ongoing for some time. I think the one of the core components of this, and I wanna make sure that it doesn't get lost within some of the finer forms of the debate, is it's this does not allow for the construction of new billboards.