KEY POINTS:
The $5 million Auckland City Council is spending on its billboard bylaws review would be better spent on stamping out graffiti, says the Auckland Chamber of Commerce.
Its chief executive, Michael Barnett, said the 1750 groups who had joined the chamber in presenting submissions to the review committee had spent about $10 million.
"And all the signs are that the battle has a long way to go yet."
He said many submissions agreed that the city council needed to raise standards and get rid of illegal billboards to improve the look of the city.
But the council's proposed solution was impractical and costly and, without adequate consultation, was doomed to fail.
The goodwill of the advertising industry and business organisations could have been harnessed early in the review to help address concerns about signs and billboards.
"These are few in number compared with the huge amount of graffiti that daubs the city. Where is the zeal and campaign on this?"
Mr Barnett said the council had a service dedicated to complaints about graffiti.
But, during the past three years, it had received only 150 complaints about business signs, and hardly any about billboards.
The wholesale change proposed in the bylaws was out of proportion to the size of the problem and a huge waste of time and resources.
Taking the big-stick approach seemed an old-fashioned "them-versus-us" approach, rather than one of including groups in a shared belief in making a world-class city.
Mr Barnett said the review committee should have only one recommendation to make when it finished hearing submissions on Friday. That was that the council and representatives of the industry and stakeholder groups should sit down together to seek a consensus.
"Pick up the offer to get a working party together and get it sorted."
Earlier, international tour guide Russell Hoban appealed to the committee to stand firm against critics and not water down the proposed bylaw provisions.
He said he was embarrassed when showing tourists around and felt that Auckland was one of the most "over- bill-boarded and signed" cities.
"I call it corporate graffiti," he said.
Mr Hoban said that as a qualified environmental health officer, he believed the proposed bylaw was "extremely enforceable".
A report commissioned by the council estimated the the council's billboard proposals on 346 sites would result in a loss of $9 million a year and 300 jobs.
But Brent Wheeler, a consulting economist for APN Outdoor, said this was "overly optimistic".
He told the review committee the total economic effect of losing 346 sites would be $80 million and 413 jobs.
The economic impact of losses through an option to remove would be in order of $21.5 million and 112 jobs.
He believed the reducing the size of billboards would result in a loss of $29.5 million.
