FORT SMITH — Fort Smith planners are considering a cap on the number of billboards in the city but allowing digital billboards with bright, changing images wherever billboards are currently allowed.
City directors heard a report Tuesday from Planning and Zoning Department Director Wally Bailey on meetings planners have had with billboard and advertising officials on possible changes in city regulations that involve the outdoor advertising signs.
The directors last month placed a four-month moratorium on construction or location of new billboards and digital conversion of existing billboards to give planners a chance to examine current regulations and decide whether changes or additions are needed.
Since then, Bailey and his staff have met with officials with two companies with a major billboard presence in the city, Clear Channel and RAM, and with representatives of Rightmind Advertising and Williams/Crawford & Associates.
Bailey said the Fort Smith Planning Commission will take on the task of proposing new regulations after it holds public hearings and present recommendations to the city directors. Bailey did not mention a date Tuesday for when the commission would begin the review.
Some of the things the group agreed on, Bailey said, were to allow digital billboards in the city but to limit their brightness and the rapidity with which the images could change. They didn’t agree on the level of brightness.
The group agreed to consider limiting the number of billboards in the city but to allow companies that remove signs to replace them one for one. Bailey said companies could be allowed to remove the signs in one area and put up the replacements in different locations.
Bailey said there are currently 189 billboards in the city limits and in the city’s “extra territorial jurisdiction” zone. He suggested capping the number at about 200.
The extra territorial jurisdiction extends the city planning and zoning authority up to 2 miles outside the city limits, anticipating the area would become part of the city in the future.
There are few “V-type” signs in Fort Smith but Bailey said the group considered allowing them. The signs feature two billboards back to back at a V angle, when typically signs must be at least 1,000 feet apart. He said the group did not agree on what angle V-type signs should be but should be not so great that the two signs would appear as one or that both could be seen at the same time.
The group also agreed on various characteristics for billboards. Inside the city, the size would be limited to 300 square feet and 378 square feet on Interstate 540, and a maximum height of 45 feet and minimum height of 13 feet.
The signs, including digital signs, would have to be 250 feet from residential areas, measured from the sign to the edge of the residential property line, Bailey said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/23/2013