City Council Approves Flashy New Billboard

Martinez will get a new electronic billboard on I680 to advertise its events and functions and emergency announcements.

The council voted unanimously last week to approve CBS, Inc.’s proposal to relocate the present billboard on I680 near the Martinez Benicia Bridge about 500 feet to the north, convert the static billboard to an electronic one, and have up to 24 different announcements for the city throughout the year.

The city will receive $120,000 to as much as $240,000 in ad revenue from the billboard as well.

The agreement goes back to 1979, when councilmembers agreed to permit an advertising billboard in exchange for one that promoted the city. That agreement stipulated that the city could have four messages per year. However, the logistics of changing a billboard proved difficult, and the city rarely changed the message more than once or twice every two or three years.

The electronic billboard will allow new messages to be changed much more easily, though the city’s messages will be interspersed with ads for various products. Ads on the new billboard will stay visible for about six seconds before changing to another ad.

And other organizations seeking space on the billboard as part of the city’s agreement may find themselves disappointed. Councilmembers agreed that the messages will be limited to city-sponsored functions and events,

EVENTS:

TODAY IN HISTORY (from Wikipedia):

1899 - Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident.

The temperature (in the shade) at Al 'Aziziyah, Libya reaches a world record 57.8 °C (136.0 °F).

1948 - Margaret Chase Smith is elected senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

1956 - IBM introduces the first computer disk storage unit, the RAMAC 305.

1993 - sraeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

2001 - Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the U.S. after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

2005 - A glitch in the MMORPG World of Warcraft results in a plague affecting thousands of players.

2008 - Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston and surrounding areas.