Management Data

If you have additional recommendations or differ with the Doctor's suggestions, please email them to us and we'll include them on our site. Thank you.

This is a great idea! I wish it could be worked out in practice among agencies - even just a "day on the job."

Mike McCabe
City of Delano

This is unrealistic in most jurisdictions.

Mike Murphy
Town of Groton, CT

This is actually a pretty good idea. I sent one of my planners to spend a couple of days with a similar jurisdiction for the double purpose of a recharge and to get new ideas. It really doesn’t cost a lot to do it and has nothing but positive benefits. I don’t know about the long-term swap, that’s intriguing, but for a day or two it’s pretty beneficial.

Eric Jay Toll

I do agree with the good doctor about communities being too uptight about signage, but each community needs to set their limits (if they have any). In Oroville, we allow electronic signs but if they display text messages that stream across the display area in such a fashion that drivers are distracted attempting to read the entire message - it is a no go. Also, beacons, strobe lights or flashing signs that have extreme glare, extreme brightness etc., or if they flash on other properties, are prohibited. We give a bit of latitude for temporary signage which would include balloons, etc. We do have a challenge since we are part of a Scenic Byway and the state highway runs through our downtown. Some screaming went on when the first billboard went up so we developed and adopted a sign ordinance; our largest sign allowance is 64 s.f. (each side) in our service commercial district; 32 s.f. downtown.

The City of San Jose recently adopted new provisions for electronic/LED signs in the downtown area and for large shopping centers along freeways. They are now working on additional provisions to allow electronic signs for assembly uses and for a commercial street with a collection of auto dealers through a pilot program. The recently adopted ordinance includes regulations governing the operation of electronic signs intended to minimize driver distraction and promote land use compatibility. (See this ordinance at Click here or the complete Sign Code at Click here. Additional information is available on the City's website at sanjoseca.gov.

In developing the operational regulations, staff consulted reviews of the available literature on the topic of electronic signs and driver distraction, including:

There is a webinar sponsored by APA on Oct 13 regarding digital signage. Evidently there has been a study done regarding safety (not economic viability).Click here for more info.

Moving signs? How about living signs. You can imagine the controversy generated in Marin by the new Caltrans "flower billboards." Click here to see.

We spent 8 months reviewing sign issues and adopted a revised Ordinance in 2009 that fits our small city - rural and heritage based.

LED signs are allowed but must meet certain criteria. I believe it depends on the nature and character of the city or town, and that potential increased revenue is only gained while an LED sign is 'new and different' - once you have 7 or 8 along one area, we've found by looking at other cities in the area that they become a visual distraction and safety hazard.

We're very proud of our Sign Ordinance, click here to see the section which contains all the supplemental info, including signage.

We also have added extensively to our definitions pertaining to signage, which is under Article 2. Click here for the general page with the entire LDR where Article 2 can be found.

In any case, I hope this will help someone out there - we're definitely on the conservative end of the spectrum and thus we will leave Las Vegas in all its glory or mayhem, on your side of the nation.

In response to the LED and 'moving sign' issues discussed, I have some comments.

Signs are not inherently evil. They sure can be, though. Like cell phone towers; everyone wants the service, but many dislike how they look-especially when there are a lot of them. Dynamic signs draw the attention of the human eye; and brain. This is good from the advertising perspective. It is bad when the human eyes and brains are in vehicles traveling at high speeds and the brain is supposed to be operating the vehicle safely. It is naive to ignore the danger of driver distraction, one of the main causes of crashes. There are not studies that conclusively link more highway signs to more crashes. However, the whole purpose of dynamic signs along highways is to distract drivers. I don't think that's a situation where people should "relax a bit and have some fun." Ever been in a car crash caused by someone screwing around with a phone or music player? I suggest you talk to someone who has: it's not fun at all.

The other issue is aesthetics. Each community differs. If your community wants to maintain a less busy, more rural look, think about that. The image of dynamic signs on a shoreline trying to draw boaters on Chesapeake Bay gives one pause. I hope.

If your community is ok with flashing, moving, floating signs, go for it-but think carefully about high speed roads. I am skeptical about a study that concludes signage will increase revenues by x%, but clearly signage is important to commerce and is part of our jobs to promote economic development. Be aware there will be aesthetic changes to your community if signage takes over the viewshed of, say, your historic downtown or your gateway. There are people who don't mind this, and people who do.

This suburban community, with several highway corridors and no historic commercial core, decided that dynamic signs are acceptable up to twenty square feet. This allows for the common bank reader board size and similar signs. We do not allow inflatable gorillas and the like. We do not allow new billboards (off-premise signs). These decisions resulted from a long series of discussions and debates in public meetings, and the final vote was not unanimous. And things may change again.

Get the issues out there, look at the different corridors and commercial areas, and let the debates begin. You'll need to act as referee to ensure different perspectives are presented fairly and accurately.

I hope I am not sticking my nose in your business, but we regulated moving LED type signs early on and limited their size to 8 square feet (very small, but gave some ground by even allowing them). The "dwell time" that a message (picture, etc) must display is 60 seconds, be monochromatic (no multi-color) and no brighter that 300 watts or equivalent. Pretty restrictive, but we are a small town that wants to preserve its character and not become "Vegas-like" as some would have it become. Also, the message cannot have alternating, moving, scrolling, crawling, flashing, dissolving, or rotating copy, animation, or full color video.

However, if the sign will display the time and temp, the message may be alternated with one commercial message every fifteen seconds, the idea being that if the sign will spend some of its dwell time on a public service-type message, we will allow some flexibility.

I don't think you can regulate the message content more than that, and even what we are controlling (animation and video) may be treading on constitutional rights. Time will tell.

As for those that say loosen up, the question becomes: "how much?" First it's balloons, then banners, LEDs then what? It can quickly get out of hand and when you allow one business to do it, you have to let others. There is no constraint on the part of many businesses. The mantra is bigger and more is better. But for whom is it better? Certainly not the community as a whole as the visual clutter and tackiness exponentially proliferates. This can actually work against the business community as the appearance of all those attention-getters clog the visual realm, one or more signs competing for the customer's attention. Besides, many do not want to be bombarded by commercials distracting them while driving in an urban setting. Driving is dangerous enough!

Instead of the "up-tight" Planner viewpoint, I'll give the Engineer viewpoint and leave it to you to decide if it is also "up-tight."

One of the concerns with moving signs, flashing signs, and changing message signs is driver distraction. While from the business owner's viewpoint, driver distraction may be viewed as a plus; from the traffic engineering standpoint it is viewed as a minus. However, rather than prohibiting these types of signs outright, ordinances often limit the frequency at which the message changes in order to limit the potential for driver distraction.

For billboards, FHWA is undertaking some research on changing message signs. A description / status update for this research can be found here.

Older FHWA documents related to billboards, including changing message signs can be found here.

An example of a sign ordinance that limits the frequency at which the message changes from the City of Spokane, WA ordinances is available here.

I am sure that there are many ordinances that take this approach. I selected this particular example because it was easy to locate through a web search. I would suggest gathering examples from a number of agencies and discussing the issues that went in to shaping the ordinance with the planners in those agencies.

Benjamin J. Jordan, P.E.
University of Wisconsin - Madison
College of Engineering

Eric Kelly would be a great person for them to contact regard the LED sign issue: planatty@comcast.net or eric@duncanassociates.com.

I think you pretty much have to apply the "community standard" to signs. The vast majority of residents in our City support strong sign regulation standards as an aesthetic control. Therefore, we do not allow digital billboards or any kind of new billboard, period. However, we do allow electronic reader boards to be incorporated into a merchant's freestanding sign and it is counted toward their overall sign allowance at time of permitting. We allow them only so long as the message does not move, rotate, or flash. It must be static during display and change no more frequently than once every 30 seconds. Enforcement is not always easy with a standard like this, but it does seem to have stricken a happy medium in the community.

The City of Gulfport, Florida, recently studied fees charged by the various jurisdictions located in our county, Pinellas County. The City wanted to raise its fees as it felt that our fees were lower than other jurisdictions. (Click here to see an Excel spreadsheet of our findings.)

Our Community Development Department provides one-on-one service from pre-application through adoption of the rezoning ordinance. The process involves a city staff site plan review committee, Planning and Zoning Board, and City Council. Council must approve two readings of the rezoning ordinance. The entire process can take up to 3 to 4 months depending upon submittal dates, legal advertising requirements, and the 2 readings of the ordinance.

Here is our cost of development survey from a while back sanjoseca.gov We will publish the results from last FY once I find some spare analyst time laying around. We are 100% cost recovery, as you remember, including fully loaded costs in and out of the department. Our Public Works staff completed a fee study of their development function sanjoseca.gov that did a pretty good job of assessing full cost recovery.

I am looking for my chart I use at budget sessions about total costs and how much goes to the actual staff delivery the service vs. everyone and everything else. The chart makes the Budget Office and Finance Department staff very nervous, but I have found that shining a bright light www.hks.harvard.edu on it has helped me get a much better overhead rate than other parts of the City. I will shoot it to you when I find which thumb drive I stuck it on.

The question I have been asking since doing that analysis is, what is an acceptable overhead rate? With government revenues shrinking all over, part of the pitch I have been making is to look at revenues and determine up front what % you are willing to divert to non-direct service up front and live within that amount in a scalable fashion. While my development staff has shrank by about 50% over the past couple years, the rest of the city organization was blissfully rolling as business as usual until this year.