Flagstaff, AZ Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Flagstaff Zoning Code § 10-50.100.040 sets the general restrictions that apply to every sign in the City. Subsection B bars billboards entirely, along with signs that could be mistaken for a traffic signal, bandit signs, and stuffed or inflated animal or character signs. Subsection C separately lists prohibited display features, and two of them squarely cover digital and electronic billboard technology: subsection (C)(1)(f) bars electronic displays outright, and subsection (C)(1)(g) bars any Changeable Copy LED Signs. The only carve-out from the LED ban is for a fixed illumination display used to show that a business is open, to display prices, or to confirm an order placed in a drive-through lane, meaning even an allowed LED unit cannot change its message on a schedule or in response to traffic the way a true digital billboard does.

The same subsection also bars intermittent, flashing, rotating, blinking or strobe illumination, animation or any lighting effect creating the illusion of motion, including laser or hologram lights, and bars exposed light sources apart from neon or neon-simulating LED built into a sign's design. Because Section 10-50.100.040 sits in Division 10-50.100, Sign Standards, it applies to permanent signs across every zone in the City of Flagstaff, not just to commercial corridors, and a sign that satisfies the size, height, area and location standards elsewhere in the division still cannot use display technology this section forbids.