Salt Lake City Council Considers Electronic Sign Restrictions

(KCPW News) The Salt Lake City Council will consider recommendations from the planning commission today in an effort to better regulate electronic signs and billboards in the city. Council Chair Soren Simonsen says there have a been a lot of changes in sign and billboard technology that need to be recognized.

“Now we have signs that have moving pictures and fiber-optics and messages that are rotating constantly and it’s hard to know how to apply those old definitions, so we get very specific,” he says.

The commission’s recommendations include requirements that the largest signs may not change images more than once every eight seconds, while moving graphics would be strictly prohibited. Simonsen says the changes are meant to help businesses have more direct guidelines to follow.

“A lot of this has been subject to interpretation. And interpretation has not always been consistent because our ordinances don’t clearly identify some of the very specific things about different kinds of electronic signs,” he says. “So mainly we want to create more consistent provisions, and take less out of interpretation and more into specifics.”

The restrictions were considered by the council earlier this year, but were put on hold because of the legislative session, where some state lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to pass bills that would limit the ability of local cities to regulate signs and billboards.