Fletcher Statement on Proposed Billboard Expansion

MINNEAPOLIS – Today City Council Member Steve Fletcher released the following statement:

“Toward the end of the last city council term, an ordinance began moving through the committee process that would have loosened restrictions on billboards in downtown Minneapolis. Because my office has received a high volume of constituent contact on this proposal, I wanted to share an update on its status.

In short: it is dead. Any ordinance that was not passed before the end of the four-year council term is automatically ‘returned to author’ and would need to be reintroduced to become active again in the new term. Council Member Warsame, the ordinance’s original author, has expressed to me that he does not intend to reintroduce the ordinance. I join the near-unanimous voice of my Ward 3 neighbors in opposing the ordinance and will not reintroduce it.

I have appreciated the constituent feedback on this ordinance, and appreciate Council Member Warsame’s willingness to incorporate the feedback from Ward 3 constituents into his thinking on the topic. In the process of researching this ordinance, many of us learned that the current law already allows more new billboards than most of us realized or would like to see since much of Ward 3 is in an ‘opportunity zone’ for billboards that was designated decades ago, before the rise in residential land use in many of our neighborhoods. My office will explore whether this zoning policy should be revisited to further restrict billboards in downtown areas with residential land use.”

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