The City Council continued to listen to public opinion Monday on how and whether to regulate digital billboards and business signs’ animation and brightness.

Digital billboards allow multiple businesses to advertise on one billboard.

The city is considering legalizing digital billboards at the request of LaMar Outdoor Advertising, which owns most of the city's several hundred billboards.

As written, the zoning change would:

* Allow the digital technology on billboards unless they face houses, parks and cemeteries.

* Require digital billboards to go dark from midnight to 5 a.m., except to display public emergency alerts.

* Allow the advertisement to change every 10 seconds, with some animated transition for up to two seconds.

* Limit the brightness of the signs.

*  Require the billboards to be at least 5,000 feet apart.

Digital technology is already legal on business signs that are less than 80 square feet, but the proposed zoning change would also regulate these signs.

Digital business signs' brightness would be restricted and their messages would have to be held for at least three seconds.

Animation would only be allowed downtown, and sign “transitions” would have to be held for at least two seconds and be limited to fading, scrolling or dissolving.

Most existing digital business signs in Lincoln are technically illegal. The city sign code only allows flashing and blinking signs downtown, and then only for “public messages” such as the time and temperature.

Why the downtown exception?

“Because downtown is our answer to Las Vegas,” city-county planning director Marvin Krout said.

When the council votes on the zoning changes on Dec. 4, it may consider two amendments to the section regulating business signs. One is a small compromise, in which the minimum hold time would be reduced from three to two seconds.

The second more significant amendment would eliminate the concept of a hold time and allow any kind of animation except flashing and blinking anywhere in Lincoln.

 Krout opposes the more substantial amendment, which is supported by Bob Norris of Nebraska Neon Sign Co.

Norris said the amendment Krout favors over-regulates the signs and is an attempt to legislate aesthetics.

“Once you start, I don't know where you stop,” he said.

Lynn Darling lobbied the council not to legalize digital billboards. In fact, she said she’d rather not see any billboards as in other cities.

Darling said she served on a billboard study group in the past and “experienced the enormous powers these companies wield.”

The Lincoln Independent Business Association has previously come out against the proposed regulations for business signs and proposed three “pro-business” amendments: remove the three-second hold requirement, allow animation and remove limits on fading, scrolling and dissolving signs.

Councilman Ken Svoboda has said he wants to reduce the “hold time” for business signs to one second; eliminate the ban on animation; increase the brightness allowed and remove the ban on transition techniques.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com