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Digital billboard rules proposed
Proposed regulations affect new billboards
AUSTINTOWN
The Mahoning County Planning Commission has recommended that the Austintown Zoning Commission approve changes to that township’s digital-billboard regulations.
The proposed regulations affecting new billboards would bar them from flashing, blinking or using animation and require that their images change no more frequently than every eight seconds.
“Obviously, we don’t want any running, flashing, sequential lights,” Darren Crivelli, Austintown zoning inspector, told the planning commission Tuesday.
New digital billboards would need township zoning board of appeals approval if their proposed location is within 200 feet of a residential district.
“I would like to give residents who are going to be impacted by these billboards an opportunity to appear before the board of appeals,” Crivelli said in an interview.
Such billboards range from 250 to 600 square feet, he noted.
The township trustees adopted a resolution Sept. 22 in which they called for public hearings on the proposed new regulations.
The township zoning commission will discuss the proposed new electronic-billboard regulations at 6 p.m. Thursday at the township hall on Ohltown Road.
After the zoning commission acts, the regulations will go before the trustees for possible enactment.
Crivelli told the planning commission the proposed new rules are designed to make the township’s zoning ordinance conform to Federal Highway Administration and Ohio Department of Transportation standards for billboards along federal and state highways.
The township now has four electronic billboards, all of them on state Route 46.