Chelan County, WA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

090 defines a 'billboard sign' as a large-format advertising display greater than thirty-two square feet whose structure is not owned by the advertiser, which covers the classic roadside digital billboard. 040(2) prohibits 'changing message center' signs, also defined as an 'electronic reader-board (Tri-Vision sign),' anywhere outside the county's established urban growth areas. 090 defines that term as an electronically controlled sign where automatically changing messages, graphics or symbols appear on a lamp bank or screen, expressly excluding time-and-temperature displays from the definition. Because most of unincorporated Chelan County sits outside the Wenatchee, Chelan, Leavenworth, Cashmere and Entiat urban growth areas and outside the Peshastin and Manson UGAs the county itself zones, this second ban reaches nearly every rural residential, resource, commercial and industrial parcel the county regulates directly.

030(15) carves out one narrow exception: a time-and-temperature sign is treated as an exempt sign in the commercial and industrial zones, notwithstanding the general prohibition on changing message center signs, provided it is accessory to a commercial use, does not interfere with safe vehicular or pedestrian traffic, is part of another permanent sign, and does not exceed four square feet. 92.