KEY POINTS:
Opponents of Auckland City's proposed sign and billboard bylaws would have us believe Pol Pot was pulling the strings.
It will be the end of "vibrancy", say many submitters. (Where did that word come from?) One objector even claimed the only cities she had been to that regulated billboards were in communist nations.
To my delight, Auckland's bureaucrats have stuck to their guns.
In a report to the bylaw hearing panel, the officials restore some perspective to the hysteria.
"Internationally, many towns and cities are banning billboards," they say.
In the United States about 1500 towns and cities, and even some states - including Vermont, Maine and Hawaii - did not permit billboards.
Other cities had strict regulations controlling them.
And billboards were banned or strictly controlled in the downtown areas of of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne."
Despite the pressure committee members will come under during the next week or so as objectors accuse them of being dictatorial fun police and snuffers of inner-city commerce, I'm hoping they won't lose track of the wider picture.
That is that the strict control of outdoor advertising in cities is the norm in civilised countries, and the badly regulated chaos reigning in Auckland is not.
Even the Property Council, whose members will lose income if the new bylaws are passed, concedes this. In its submission, the council says some outdoor advertising signs and billboards in Auckland City "are either of such poor design, or are in such bad taste, as to seriously detract from the built environment's visual amenity.
"We are also concerned that they undermine the desirability of Auckland City as a destination for commercial property investment."
But the property owners' trade union then remembers which side it is on and frets at how much money its members stand to lose if the awful signs it has just denounced were to be removed.
It then waxes lyrical about a nightmare new development which "will convert parts of the external skin of both new and existing buildings into electronic 'billboards'."
The submission worries that these giant screens would not be legal under the proposed bylaw.
Talking of self-interest, it will be interesting to see if state highway operator Transit New Zealand practises what it preaches. It wants the proposed bylaw to include a ban on any advertising billboard or sign visible from state highways.
It's hard to fault that request. But if signs are so dangerous to drivers on motorways, how can Transit rent out to sign companies the side of bridges such as the Victoria Park flyover, directly above a busy road intersection?
In all the hysteria whipped up by the billboard industry, the proposed changes to shop signs have tended to take second place. But in some regards, tidying up this shambles will be even more significant.
The proposal to ban shopfront advertising above verandah level promises to reveal the fronts of suburban strips of shops, many dating back to Edwardian times and even earlier.
The cacophony of signs, ancient and modern, often tatty, will go. Along the edge of the verandahs, it is proposed to limit signs to 300mm in height, half the present maximum.
But council officials are now proposing to increase that to 450mm. And more worrying is their turnabout over above-verandah signs. They now believe one sign above each shop verandah would be all right. To me, that's a concession too much.
This council has said much about its commitment to improving the city's visual amenity and creating a world class city. Over the next week, it has a chance to match words with action.
