Jefferson County, MO Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

4270(A)(2), General Standards For Signs, adopted April 2, 2008 and amended by Ordinance No. 16-0100 in 2016, sets the countywide baseline: no sign anywhere in unincorporated Jefferson County may contain flashing lights, intermittent lights, animators or mechanical movement of any kind, with a narrow carve-out for State or County road project signs and for clocks. Inside that baseline, the section then permits on-premise programmable electronic message boards, but restricts them to a 'steady message type only,' meaning the display cannot flash or animate between messages.

Six transition modes are specifically authorized for moving between steady messages: down scroll, up scroll, melt, grow, write-on and reverse, and the section allows fonts and pictorials within a steady message while still barring animators outright. 4310, are treated more restrictively: they are 'permitted to have electronic message boards for time, temperature and pricing' only, which rules out full digital billboard advertising content on off-premise structures even where a physical billboard is otherwise allowed along the county's designated highway corridors. Any electronic message board must also satisfy the section's other general standards, including the ten-foot right-of-way setback and the sight-triangle restriction. Because this is a UDO article, it governs unincorporated Jefferson County only; incorporated cities set their own digital sign standards.