Rancho Cucamonga, CA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

120 opens with the city's own safety finding: electronic display signs pose a danger to the motoring public because their changing message, scale, and format distract drivers differently than a static sign. 130(A). That cross-referenced section allows a nonconforming sign to keep running as-is, but requires it to be brought into compliance, meaning removed, if it undergoes a substantial alteration, defined as a repair changing its physical dimensions, height, or a major component, or any repair or refurbishment exceeding 50 percent of the sign's depreciated value; ordinary repainting or trim replacement does not count.

The second half of subsection (A) is the operative ban: no new electronic display signs shall be established except as provided in this chapter, which forecloses new digital billboards, LED reader boards, or changeable electronic message centers anywhere in the city going forward. Subsections (B) and (C) carve out three narrow exceptions from that ban: manually changeable copy signs (letter boards changed by hand, not electronically) are not restricted at all; fuel price and grade signs at gas stations are exempt; and time-and-temperature displays are exempt.

100(A), a proposal to install a new digital billboard would need to clear two independent bans at once, the off-site sign prohibition and the electronic display sign ban, with no site plan or variance process in the text that opens either one for a purely commercial digital billboard.