After one and a half years of work, there is still no updated sign regulation

HELENA – A proposed ordinance to revise the city’s sign regulations may bring changes to some signs in Helena.

Although the City of Helena has been working on this project for about 18 months, there seems to be a consensus that an update to the code is long overdue.

“Our existing regulations date back to 1997. There were no LEDs back then. Nobody put TVs on poles in the sky to advertise,” says Michael Alvarez, Helena’s City Planner II.

Helena City Councilwoman Emily Dean said, “I think there are quite a few people who would probably say this should have happened a decade ago. I was six years old when the last ordinance was passed.”

“We’ve made great progress. It’s much better than it was before. We just have a few things we can tweak – I certainly support the new sign ordinance 100% if we can tweak those two areas,” said Earl Charles, President of Branded Sign Solutions.

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You may have seen Branded Sign Solutions signs around town, including at Melaque Mexican Restaurant, 4J’s Casino, Furniture Showroom, and Bank of the Rockies.

One of Charles’ concerns is a change to the Code that addresses Electronic Message Centers (EMCs), as you see below.

Charles said: “Millennials are used to content that is constantly changing. They are used to looking at their phone and watching videos and things like that. If you want to be a business person and be part of the community, you have to appeal to those customers. You have to do something that gets their attention.”

The new code would ban animated images and cartoons from the EMCs and limit slide changes to every two seconds.

“One of the messages I play is the Flag Day message. I don’t see anything offensive about it and I imagine how boring it would be if we just had a stagnant downward trend,” Charles said.

Alvarez said: “District commissioners and citizens say they find it distracting. Maybe it poses a danger while driving. You shouldn’t watch a little cartoon while driving.”

To protect Helena’s dark skies and limit light pollution, the updated ordinance would also require a local EMC within 300 feet of a residential area to be turned off between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. daily.

“I don’t know if advertising after hours, when you’re closed in the middle of the night, is an effective time to advertise,” Alvarez said.

Charles said, “The banks, the credit union, the Dairy Queen, all of them. Even though none of them are visible from a residential area, because they are physically within 300 feet, they would have to be shut down, and I just don’t think that’s in their best interest.”

Previously, the city had planned to eliminate the number of billboards, but now it wants to limit their number throughout the city.

In order to account for each billboard, the city will now issue an annual billboard business permit for each location.

Companies would pay the approval fee to the general fund, which helps cover the costs of running the program.

However, some businesses and sign companies have concerns about permitting since Helena would be the first in the state to implement this program.

“We would be a leader in modernization in Montana, but you see this all over the country,” Dean said.

Alvarez said, “There is no obvious reason to me why we don’t approve the sites. And the only thing I can think of is that our fee structure is based on the number of employees at each site, which makes sense for 99.9% of businesses, but creates a loophole for billboards.”

The City Commission plans to discuss the issue again on Sept. 9. Public comments can be emailed to [email protected].

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