Placentia, CA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Placentia Municipal Code § 23.90.100 lists the signs that are not permitted in the City of Placentia, and three items decide the question for electronic and digital billboards. Item (3) prohibits signs that incorporate in any manner any flashing, moving or intermittent lighting. Item (4) prohibits rotating or animated signs, or signs that contain any moving parts. Item (12) prohibits any off-site advertising, including billboards, except as otherwise provided in the chapter.

Section 23.90.010 defines a billboard as any sign usually designed for use with changing advertising copy and normally used to advertise goods or services at a location other than the premises where the sign stands. A sign built to change its message, placed off the advertised premises, is a billboard under that wording and falls under item (12).

The one off-site exception is § 23.90.195, off-premises freeway signs. The definition in § 23.90.010 says an off-premises freeway sign does not include billboards. Eligibility is narrow: a business in the C-1, C-2, C-M or SP-5 districts occupying the entire building area on a parcel of at least two (2) acres on Chapman or Orangethorpe Avenues within one thousand five hundred (1,500) lineal feet of the Orange 57 Freeway right-of-way. The planning commission and city council review it under Chapter 23.75, and the sign cannot exceed sixty (60) feet in height. Section 23.90.195(c)(3) bars mechanical movement and flashing, moving or intermittent lighting on these signs except for a reader message board, a term the chapter does not define.

Two specific plans repeat the electronic ban. Section 23.111.050 in the Transit Oriented Development Packing House District and § 23.112.070 in the Old Town Placentia Revitalization Plan list animated and moving signs, including electronic message display signs, as prohibited, except time and temperature displays, which are not considered signs.