Laredo, TX Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Section 28-27 of the Laredo Code of Ordinances sets the method for measuring every sign's height: from the top edge of the sign or its support structure down to the average finished grade below it, unless the chapter says otherwise. If a sign sits on a mount, berm, or other raised pad built solely to gain height, that pad counts toward the sign's total height once it exceeds three feet, and the baseline is the curb grade at the property line. The chapter then carves out the freeway exception in the same subsection: any freestanding sign directly adjacent to an elevated section of a freeway, expressway, arterial, or collector, and within one hundred feet of it, may increase its maximum allowable vertical height by one foot for each foot of roadway elevation.

In practice that lets a sign facing a raised freeway ramp clear the district's normal cap, which otherwise runs from 15 feet in most residential and B-1 districts up to 50 feet in B-3, B-4, M-1, M-2 and MXD districts under the Sec. a freestanding dimensional table. Off-premise signage aimed at freeway and expressway traffic gets its own ceiling too: Sec. e caps off-premise freestanding signs facing a freeway or expressway at 672 square feet, set back at least ten feet from the property line, in the B-3, B-4, M-1, M-2 and MXD districts.

Both the measurement rule and the height bonus were adopted together by Ord. No. 2017-O-044, § 1, effective October 3, 2017, as part of the city's overhaul of Chapter 28. The bonus is self-executing text in the measurement section rather than a discretionary variance, but a sign owner still needs the sign permit required under Sec. 28-24 before erecting anything that relies on it.