Palmer’s Digital Billboard Ordinance Gets Delayed

Palmer Township Supervisors were about to approve the new digital billboard ordinance when a billboard industry representative spoke up.

Margaret Kyle, a real estate manager and account executive with Lamar Advertising, said her company is concerned with the section of the ordinance that requires the digital signs to be switched off from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Her clients spend millions of dollars to advertise on digital billboards, Kyle said, so losing seven hours of customer viewing, seven days a week, is not cost effective for them.

The point of the township’s ordinance is to keep the bright billboard lights from disturbing residential neighborhoods at night.

“I don’t want a light from my billboard coming into a person’s bedroom,” Kyle said. “It’s PR and costs us money.”

She said her company doesn’t even consider where it could bother neighborhoods. But it won’t advertise in municipalities with lights out ordinances either.

Beyond advertising, digital billboards can display public service announcements for municipalities as well as emergency information, such as an Amber Alert, Kyle said.

David Colver, chair of the supervisors, asked the township solicitor, Charles Bruno, if removing the “lights out” portion of the ordinance would change the process of voting for it.  

Bruno said that the change was significant enough to warrant advertising it again. This is done so that people concerned about it or affected by the ordinance can talk to the board at the next meeting.

The board decided that there were enough reasons to remove the “lights out” portion from the ordinance to postpone the vote.

The issue will be up for vote again .