The New Orleans City Planning Commission met on June 23, 2026, at 7:15 PM local time. All commissioners were present except Commissioner Steag was recused from the first docket item. The meeting addressed multiple zoning and subdivision dockets, including a text amendment for billboard swaps, a conditional use for a child care center, a bed and breakfast conversion, a deferral request, and a subdivision approval. The meeting opened with roll call and adoption of minutes deferred.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good afternoon, and welcome to today's city planning commission meeting. I'm going to go ahead and take roll. Commissioner Kepper. Okay. Commissioner Poche. Commissioner Abear. Here. Commissioner Josie Gupta. Here. Commissioner Whitries here. Commissioner Jordan. Commissioner Steve. Here. We're all present. Well, for the most part, so we have a quorum. We're going to go ahead and get started. We are going to read the rules that Commissioner Steag is in the process of updating. All right, red line. Stay tuned for our new rules. The formal public hearing rules. Before speaking, each person shall give their name, address, and state her whom he or she is representing. Opponents or other interested parties will speak for a period of fifteen minutes. Each speaker will be allowed a maximum of two minutes. Proponents will be allowed a period of six minutes for rebuttal. Each speaker will be allowed a maximum of two minutes. Opponents will not be allowed to rebut. No material written matter, photographs, maps will be accepted by the commission or its staff at any time during this public meeting. This procedure shall be followed except at such time when the preceding officer shall and with the approval commission members present extend such time. We have called roll call. We can go ahead and move to the adoption of the meeting minutes from June 9th, 2026. Those are not ready yet, so those should be deferred. Alright, let's move on to docket item 047 26. So this item is a proposal by city council motion for a change to the billboard regulations. Um it's motivated by two billboards really. One is uh on Interstate 10 uh and in mid-city, kind of where mid-city backs up to I-10. There's a billboard there that is digital. Um neighbors have complained that the digital billboard is shining into the residential neighborhood that abuts uh the interstate, and have uh gone to their council members um seeking a method of of sort of reducing the illumination coming off of that billboard. And so the council members have worked with the billboard owner to essentially swap the digital billboard at that location on Dehem Court by 10 for another billboard on top of the Hilton Riverside at 100 poydres. Um, so the the proposal that has uh been facilitated by the council would uh essentially move the digital billboard from one location to another. Um the problem that exists with this is that there's not a set of zoning regulations that allow for it. Um the the zoning regulations do allow for billboard swaps, but it's kind of in the context of if I'm a billboard company that has five billboards, I can take down these four billboards and uh and then digitize this fifth one, which has to be kind of a one of a pre-identified list of billboards that does not include this site. And so the you know, the one the reason this one is challenging is it doesn't fit directly into that sort of point-based uh administrative trade-off system, but it does make sense if you look at the underlying intent of the regulations to get billboards out of residential areas and put them into purely commercial areas, and that the billboard, although it's near I-10, which is generally a good place for a billboard, is shining on a residential neighborhood, and the billboard would be moved to this location in the part of the CG that is purely commercial and therefore relatively well situated for a billboard. And so at the staff level, we've proposed a series of regulations that, in addition to the existing billboard swap structure, allows the council to identify locations that because of unique conditions around their location circumstances uh surrounding land uses are uniquely well suited to receive a billboard that that might exist elsewhere. Um, and so it you know, because the current system doesn't allow for sort of a legislative judgment call as to what are appropriate locations outside of the point-based system. This really allows the legislature to say, you know what, you know, looking at the very specific circumstances of this, this makes sense. And so we create a set of regulations that are a little bit based on the classic sign regulations that allow for classic signs to be identified through a text amendment process.