Birmingham Blues

Keep Mobile Beautiful, which usually concerns itself with litter and recycling, has gotten its knickers in a twist over an outfit called the Oasis Foundation of America. These folks don’t have much of a web presence that I can find, although they are members of something called the National Emergency Management Association.

But you thought I was posting about billboards, didn’t you? No indeed. The Oasis Foundation of America is “the nation’s only philanthropy whose singular mission is to empower communities through capacity-building, access to vital resources and the providing of necessary tools to be ready for any type of disaster.” (link) See, they want to empower us, by putting up these big storage containers — it was in the news — that will hold tarps, and blankets, and other stuff you might need in a disaster. (Beef jerky, maybe. Probably not beer.)

Oh, and one more thing - the exterior will have digital billboards that can be used to send out information in the event of an emergency. Like where the detours are. Or Amber Alerts, even!

And, the rest of the time, when there wasn’t an emergency, they would be, well, like regular billboards. Regular digital billboards.

According to KMB, digital billboards that are 5′ x 17′. Gee, that’s big! And they’re at street level, you see, so you can get in there when you need to get the blankies and stuff. Can’t you just see our streets lined with these suckers? Mobile is proud to be the pilot city for them - the Red Cross let them put one up on their property downtown, which somehow I haven’t noticed, probably because I go downtown via Government - but other counties in Alabama have been “chosen to participate” too.

Right now, they’re trying to get the Mobile rules changed, so they can start philanthropating us. From the KMB email: “Under the current ordinance, in order to put up a new off-premise sign, an existing sign must be taken down. If they have no signs to take down, they would have to go to the Board of Adjustment for each and every location. However under their proposal, it appears that no such cap would exist. Additionally, their proposed amendment would allow them to locate within 250 feet of any residence and within 400 feet of another digital sign. And under the current ordinance, a billboard can be on both sides of the unit/frame.” Yay! A container full of blankies and tarps, every 400 feet! With a giant TV screen on the side! Boy, that’s swell.

What generous philanthropists these folks are! I wonder where they get the money to pay for all of those containers? You think the digital billboards bring in any income? Nah, couldn’t be.

EDIT: Oh my goodness, it gets even slimier. The “foundation” is a not-for-profit that raised the money for the containers. The Oasis Ad Group is a FOR-profit that will sell the digital ad space “with the money from the ads covering costs such as rent, maintenance and electricity.” (the link is a cached Google file of a print-ready page from the Montgomery Advertiser, which is all I could find.) link

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.