Bus Billboards are Back!

Updated on April 24, 2014:
The Budget Committee voted to pass Bill 69 for second reading.  The Honolulu City Council plans to hear the bill on May 7th at 10 AM at Honolulu Hale.  If you care about this issue, please attend this important hearing. 

From Kathy, Chair of the Bill 69 Working Group: 

The City Council’s Budget Committee is once again considering Mayor Caldwell’s proposal to sell advertising on the outside of city buses. Hawaii is too beautiful for bus billboards!  Our public bus service should not be held hostage to such an ineffective fundraising scheme.  

Many of you worked hard back in January to convince the Budget Committee to defer consideration of the proposal for billboards on buses.  They did defer the bill.  But now that the Council is closer to voting on the final budget and the issue of Bill 69 is back on the agenda for Wednesday, April 23.  There will be a hearing that morning, probably at 9 AM  

If we work hard now, we can kill off this bad idea of bus billboards and stop the Mayor from holding bus service improvements hostage to advertising signs. 

Here’s what each of us needs to do right now:

1.  Prepare and submit testimony for the budget committee meeting on Apr. 23. You can fax your testimony to:  or email it to:jtachibana@honolulu.gov,gmurayama@honolulu.gov,cnakazaki@honolulu.gov

2.  Make plans to attend the hearing, if at all possible.  Bring your friends. We need to have a strong showing at this hearing to demonstrate support for keeping Honolulu billboard free. Click here to sign up to testify.

3.  Forward the action alert email from The Outdoor Circle to other friends who share our concern for scenic beauty.  If you are a Facebook user, post it on your Facebook page. “Like” The Outdoor Circle for more updates.

4.  Call your Council Member to express opposition to Bill 69 even if your member of Council is not on the budget committee.  (The Council Members do talk with each other!)  Here is a list of all Council members with their phone numbers and their districts.

5.  Call the office of each member of the budget committee to express opposition to Bill 69.  That’s Chair Ann Kobayashi, Chair; Carol Fukunaga, Joey Manahan, Kimberley Pine, and Stanley Chang. 

 Our message is simple:  

1.  We cherish the scenic beauty of this island.  Allowing advertising signs to mar this beauty is counter to all we hold dear.  Rolling billboards are just as bad as the stationary ones The Outdoor Circle got rid of a century ago!

2.  The Mayor and City Council must restore the cuts that were made in Oahu’s bus service.  But they cannot hold bus service hostage to a plan for billboard advertising that will damage our scenic beauty.  They must be creative and find the money somewhere else.

3.  Bill 69 creates a false promise of new revenue because of its many legal problems.  We already saw how previous efforts to regulate advertising content produced years of expensive litigation around aerial advertising.  Bus billboards are a bad idea.  The Budget Committee must kill this bill right now.

This is the time for all of us to take action.  Hawaii is too beautiful for bus billboards.

Mahalo for your continuing commitment to keep Oahu free of rolling billboards on our buses.


For examples of what Honolulu could be in for if bus billboards are allowed, click here to see TOC's Facebook photo album. 

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