Fort Smith asks for rules input on digital signs

Industry praises city for letting it participate in policymaking

— Regulations governing digital billboards in the city are among several proposed changes that are to go before the Fort Smith Planning Commission in a public hearing today.

The meeting is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. in the Rose Room at the Creekmore Park community center. Director of Development Services Wally Bailey said the commission will take input from the public and make recommendations to the city directors who will have the final say on the regulations.

The city is operating under a four-month moratorium on granting permits for new billboards or converting static billboards to digital ones to give the city staff time to draw up new regulations. City planning staff members met with advertising and outdoor-advertising representatives to work on the new rules.

“At the end of the day, because they invited us to the table and took our comments, we’ve all been able to find the medium ground,” Clear Channel Outdoor President Loyd Childree said.

One reason for the moratorium is there is nothing in the city’s ordinances that regulates digital billboards, those flashy high-definition signs that change messages every few seconds.

City officials also will be looking at other things, such as billboards that are outside the city limits but where Fort Smith has planning and zoning authority.

Bailey said the planning department staff hasn’t made any recommendations on restricting digital signs that are not also put on static billboards.

“We as a staff are not taking a position pro or con on the digital-billboard issue,” Bailey said.

As proposed, all billboards in the city would be limited in size to 300 square feet or slightly larger around interstate highways, and they must be 250 feet from the boundary of a residential zone.

After hearing the proposals last month, some city directors said they prefer billboards to be 500 feet from residential areas.

Otherwise, Bailey said, the staff is proposing that digital billboards be governed by Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department regulations, which the department’s Beautification Section Director Jeff Ingram said have been in place since 2007.

Those rules say that digital billboards, or electronic message devices as the state calls them, must be placed no closer than 1,500 feet from one another on interstate highways and no closer than 1,000 feet on non-interstate highways.

The messages or images must remain static for a minimum of eight seconds, and message changes must be accomplished within two seconds. An image cannot dissolve or fade into the next image that make two images visible at the same time.

Signs are prohibited from flashing, or having moving lights or animated or scrolling messages except those giving public service information such as time and date or weather alerts.

If the Highway Department finds that any sign is causing a glare or impairing the vision of motorists, the department will give the sign owner 24 hours to reduce the intensity of the light or it will revoke the permit.

Ingram said there is no set standard for brightness in the state’s regulations. The Highway Department investigates if there is a complaint and makes a determination, but so far there haven’t been any complaints, he said.

He said there are about 32 electronic message device billboards on interstate highways or primary state highways that the department regulates in Arkansas.

Most of the digital billboards on state highways or interstates outside of cities are in more urban areas, Ingram said. The digital billboards are found mostly in Northwest Arkansas, the Little Rock area and a few in the Jonesboro area, he said.

Clear Channel Outdoor, the largest outdoor advertiser in Fort Smith, has 11 digital billboards in the city and 19 throughout Northwest Arkansas, Childree said.

Each of Clear Channel’s digital billboards is limited to eight ads per billboard, by the company’s choice. The messages change instantaneously, Childree said. There is no fading or gap between images.

He also said the billboards are light-sensitive. They have sensors that increase the brightness automatically in the daytime and lower the intensity at night.

“The industry itself indicates to me that it’s a self-regulating issue.” Bailey said.“If it’s too bright, it’s not good for their business because people won’t look at it if it’s too bright.”

While digital billboards have become part of Fort Smith’s landscape, they remain under a cloud elsewhere.

Conway, for example, prohibits all digital signs for businesses or billboards, but allows digital signs along Interstate 40 that display gas prices, Planning Director Bryan Patrick said. Even then, they have to be 500 feet from the roadway.

The city took the action in 2004, he said, because they are aesthetically unpleasant and because studies showed that they were a safety hazard. He said he couldn’t cite the study that came to that conclusion.

Rogers officials voted in November to allow digital billboards as an incentive for outdoor advertisers to remove their static billboards in the city. Rogers chief planner Derrel Smith said all billboards have been banned since the 1980s, and those remaining are unsightly and deteriorating.

To get them removed, Smith said, advertisers are being allowed to put up digital billboards along Interstate 540 if they agree to remove three of their static billboards from the city.

The digital signs have to be spaced one mile apart and can’t be nearer than 500 feet to a residential zone or an interchange, he said. Smith said the mile-wide spacing keeps the total possible number of signs low.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/11/2013

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