After hearing several complaints from residents during the June 17 meeting, Jersey Village City Council decided to kill a motion to convert a Clear Channel billboard off Hwy. 290 to a digital display. If passed, the motion would have required a change to the city's existing ordinance that calls for no new billboards within Jersey Village.

"I believe the city does need to keep up with technology in order to attract the type of people who would like to live here, but I also believe we are here to listen to the people," said Councilwoman Sandra Joachim, who was elected in May. "I have to agree with the overwhelming response from our residents."

Nearly a dozen Jersey Village residents, including former council member Mark Maloy, spoke out against the proposal from Clear Channel, stating that digital advertising causes unnecessary distractions and poses a risk to public safety on the roadways.

"How many distractions do we need for people driving vehicles down our roadways?" Maloy said. "We already have many distractions that are causing unsafe driving conditions. The only benefit of allowing digital billboards is to the billboard advertisers. There is no additional revenue received by the city."

Jim Fields, another Jersey Village resident, agreed with Maloy and inquired about the safety on the freeways.

"If it indeed is true that these [billboards] make driving conditions more dangerous—if there is a wreck on that freeway and it is attributed to the sign—who will be held liable? I am concerned about that," Fields said.

According to the planning and zoning board, officials have researched the effects of electronic billboards and recommended to City Council that the city not move forward with Clear Channel's proposals. Research cited that the amount of time a motorist's eyes are taken off the road to see the changing adds—which are required to change no less than every eight seconds under state law—is more than two seconds.

Jersey Village is not the only entity to ban digital displays. The City of Houston and the Harris County Toll Road Authority have standing ordinances that do not allow existing static billboards to be converted to digital displays.

Clear Channel has proposed a change to the billboard ordinance in Jersey Village twice since September 2011 to allow the conversion of billboards from static to digital. Both times, residents and city officials have turned out in protest.

Having killed the motion, a future proposal may be presented to City Council in the coming years. However, the item will not reappear on the agenda until changes have been made to Clear Channel's proposal, said Mayor Rod Erskine.

"When I was a council member I was interested in looking at the possibility of leveraging the digital billboards to allow the single digital billboard to get rid of other billboards in our city," he said. "What is on the table I don't believe to be any kind of good to the city, but I did think it was worth looking in to."