FORT SMITH — Fort Smith has imposed a four month moratorium on new billboards while city planners study the possible effects of digital billboards in zones where traditional billboards are now allowed.
City Director of Development Services Wally Bailey said the moratorium will affect applications for the construction or location of new billboards and for the digital conversion of existing billboards.
City directors approved the moratorium at a meeting Tuesday, at which Bailey said that digital billboards can produce an intensity and brightness that could bother residents in their homes. He said that under current city regulations, billboards can be placed where they would be near single-family and multifamily residential zones.
According to the ordinance that city directors approved, the moratorium will remain in effect until April 19. Bailey said, though, that the development-services staff will work as quickly as possible to resolve the issue.
Bailey said he and his staff plan to meet with billboard company officials to discuss the issue and get their input.
A study session also has been scheduled for Jan. 22, at which Bailey said city directors, the city’s planning commission and anyone with an interest in digital billboards will meet to discuss the issue.
He said discussions and research could result in restrictions being placed on digital billboards. Or, he said, the consensus could be that they don’t require special regulation.
Lloyd Childry, president of Clear Channel Outdoor in Fort Smith, which owns billboards in Fort Smith and throughout the region, told directors Tuesday that he did not oppose the moratorium but was concerned about the effect it would have on his business and that of the clients that rent space on his signs.
In today’s economic environment, he said, everything has an effect on business.
City Director Andre Good told Childry the city wanted to be business friendly but also wanted to make sure that neighborhoods were protected from any ill effects digital signs could possibly produce.
Bailey pointed out that the moratorium would not stop the city from considering requests to change most of the existing 189 billboards in Fort Smith.
He said Thursday that 10 applications for new billboards were submitted in the week before the directors imposed the moratorium and all but one were approved by the Development Services Department. The application that was rejected was for a billboard in a transitional zone, he said, which the city’szoning regulations do not allow.
Concerns were raised in the Development Services Department earlier this year when planners were looking at billboard regulations in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, Bailey said. Extraterritorial jurisdiction is the ability of the city to exercise planning and zoning authority behind its boundaries.
The planners noticed that some cities have addressed digital billboards, Bailey said, such as North Little Rock, Fayetteville, Bentonville and Maumelle.
He said measures those and other cities have taken on digital billboards have not been uniform. Some have banned the signs and some have placed restrictions on their size, while others have restricted them to certain corridors.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/22/2012