Freehold Township, NJ Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Freehold Township does not regulate billboard lighting because it does not permit billboards. Section 190-184, titled Outdoor Advertising, states plainly that outdoor advertising companies as defined in this section shall not be permitted to locate billboard-type signs in the Township. C defines an outdoor advertising sign company as a company in the business of leasing outdoor advertising space and under the licensing power of the Outdoor Advertising Tax Bureau of the Department of Treasury of the State of New Jersey, tying the ban to the state's own regulatory definition of the billboard industry rather than leaving it to local interpretation.

G(2) lists billboards, flashing signs, portable signs, internally illuminated signs, and pole signs among the uses barred within that overlay, on top of the townwide ban in Section 190-184. Because no billboard-type structure can lawfully exist in Freehold Township in the first place, there is no companion illumination standard, brightness cap or curfew written for billboards the way Section 190-176 sets illumination rules for ordinary business signs. A landowner approached about hosting a billboard, lit or unlit, digital or static, should treat Section 190-184 as a flat no rather than looking for a lighting permit path, since the Township's own code gives the Zoning Officer no mechanism to approve one.