Fitchburg, WI Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Section 26-83 of the Fitchburg, Wisconsin sign ordinance takes a restrictive approach to electronic and moving signage rather than a permissive one. The baseline rule bans any flashing, alternating, rotating, or swinging sign operated by mechanical means or wind, whether illuminated or not, anywhere in the city. The ordinance then carves out three narrow exceptions: on-site time and temperature signs, on-site LED signs displaying motor vehicle fuel pricing, and electronic drive-thru menu board signs, but only if the menu board is 20 square feet or less and its content is not visible from a public street.

Even within that exception, the drive-thru menu board still needs a conditional use permit from the plan commission, a discretionary, case-by-case approval rather than an administrative sign permit. The section separately bars any flashing, alternating, rotating, or swinging floodlight, spotlight, or beacon used to illuminate a sign, and prohibits any floodlight or spotlight from directing its beam or glare onto surrounding premises or roadways, regardless of whether the sign itself is electronic. Every illuminated sign, electronic or not, must also comply with the city's electrical code.

Because Fitchburg's sign chapter no longer contains a general off-site sign category, the former Section 26-81 having been repealed in 2014 when it covered off-site signs, a freestanding digital billboard advertising a business at another location has no permitted path into the code at all; the only electronic displays the ordinance contemplates are on-site.