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Crescent City council directs tighter limits on digital signs, rejects off-site billboards
Summary
After weeks of planning commission work, council members gave staff direction to limit digital signs to smaller sizes and cap density, and to keep off-site advertising out of most city zones while staff returns with an ordinance.
The Crescent City Council on Nov. 17 narrowed a proposed overhaul of the city's sign regulations, directing staff to draft an ordinance that would limit digital-display signs, cap the number of installations and retain a ban on off-site advertising in most zones.
Planning staff told the council that the revisions grew from a case in which a newly installed digital sign at Tsunami Lanes displayed rotating, off-site advertising content not covered by the existing code. The planning commission originally recommended allowing off-site advertising in the C-2 corridor with a 100-square-foot cap and other rules for digital displays; staff said the draft ordinance set static-message requirements and brightness limits (daytime up to 10,000 nits; nighttime 160 nits) and would require automatic light sensors.
After extended public comment and council debate about aesthetics, driver distraction and the downtown master-plan goals, the council coalesced around several directions for staff: treat digital signs under a tighter size limit (council direction favored an 8-by-4-foot or 32-square-foot maximum for digital displays), adopt a strict cap on the allowable density (council discussion favored a hard cap of two digital signs in the city's C-2 zone as a starting point, with appeals through the planning commission), and not reintroduce broad off-site advertising within city limits. Council members also asked staff to consider distance-based spacing between allowed signs so that multiple signs would not appear on every block.
City staff noted that any new signage along Highway 101 will also require Caltrans review and, where applicable, a Caltrans permit; staff said administrative permitting on the city side would take 2'to'4 weeks and Caltrans review could take a month or two. Staff will revise the draft ordinance to reflect council direction and bring an introduction to the council for formal adoption.
The council's action was direction to staff rather than an adopted ordinance; staff will return with revised code language and environmental/zoning analyses. The planning commission's initial packet and staff presentations remain the record for the technical limits proposed to date.
