Pismo Beach, CA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

The Pismo Beach Municipal Code prints two zoning codes under Title 17, and each has a sign chapter with the same prohibition. Section 17.111.060 C in the 1983 Zoning Ordinance and § 17.36.070 C in the 1998 Zoning Code list "Billboards and other off-site signs" among the signs that are "inconsistent with the purposes and standards of this chapter, and are therefore prohibited." The word digital does not appear in either sign chapter, and the prohibited list carries no exception clause for item C.

Both chapters define the banned category by content, not technology. A billboard or off-site sign is "a sign structure advertising an establishment, merchandise, service, or entertainment, which is not sold, produced, manufactured, or furnished at the property on which the sign is located" (1983 § 17.111.015 A.8; 1998 § 17.36.015 item 7). An electronic display advertising something not sold at its own site fits that wording, and the definition draws no line between a painted face and a lit one. This page reads the printed words and does not claim the code addresses a digital billboard by name.

The number-and-area section adds a second barrier. The signs it describes "may be allowed only on the same site as the use being advertised or identified" (1983 § 17.111.080; 1998 § 17.36.090), which leaves no allowance for advertising a use located somewhere else. Signs on public property or in a public right-of-way are prohibited too, with narrow exceptions for traffic and street identification signs and certain projecting signs.

On-site electronic signs are a separate question. The 1983 chapter defines a reader board sign as one whose message can be changed through "individual letters or characters, separate panels, or electrical messages." Both chapters send any sign with a component that "moves, rotates, flashes, is otherwise animated, or gives the appearance of any of these" to the planning commission, not the director, for the sign permit decision (1983 § 17.111.040; 1998 § 17.36.050). The 1983 illumination standard in § 17.111.090 D caps brightness at four hundred foot lamberts and requires light sources to be "steady, stationary, shielded."

Pismo Beach uses two adopted zoning codes. The city's Zoning and Land Use page states that properties inside the Coastal Zone are regulated by the 1983 Zoning Code, and properties outside the Coastal Zone are regulated by the 1998 Zoning Code.