DEPARTMENT: Development Services
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Michael Shannon, Director
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City Wide
SUBJECT:
Proposed Changes to San Antonio City Code Chapter 28 - Sign Code regarding Digital Billboards
SUMMARY:
City Council will consider a proposed update to the City's Chapter 28 Sign Code which will allow for digital faces to be placed on the backside of thirteen (13) existing digital billboards, a change requested and proposed by Clear Channel Outdoor.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
In the 1980s, there were around 2,300 billboards within the San Antonio City limits and, over time, that number has decreased to around 1,200 billboards. Additional billboards are prohibited within the City and in order to relocate a billboard, two billboards must be removed. Similarly, new digital billboards are prohibited within the City and the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ).
In 2007, the City authorized a one-year pilot program for digital billboards that allowed for up to 15 off-premises digital billboards (Ordinance No. 2007-12-06-1247). However, permits for only 13 digital billboards were issued and installed during the one-year pilot program, each having only one side of the billboards as digitals. In general, three signs were removed for each re-face (i.e., a 3 to 1 takedown ratio). Overall, 83 billboards were removed during the 2007 digital billboard pilot program. Since then, City code states that no new off-premises digital signs are permitted in the city or the ETJ. The 13 existing digital billboards are required to follow minimum safety standards including minimum dwell time of 10 seconds, the change of message has to be within 1 second or less, default freeze mechanism (in case of malfunction), and may not display light of such intensity or brilliance to cause glare or impair vision of drivers.
Clear Channel Outdoor has developed a proposal to modify the existing City Code Chapter 28 - Signs to allow digital faces to be added ...
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