Aug. 15—VERNON — The Town Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday night at 7:35 p.m. regarding an ordinance that would allow the conversion of an existing billboard at 51 Hartford Turnpike into one with a digital screen.

WHAT: The Town Council will hold a public hearing regarding the conversion of an existing billboard at 51 Hartford Turnpike into a digital billboard with a changing screen.

WHERE: The hearing is set for 7:35 p.m. Tuesday in Town Hall.

The current billboard, near the property of the Motel 6 and owned by New Haven-based Outfront Media, faces I-84 and is used for advertising. Under the proposed ordinance though, the billboard would be converted into a digital LCD or LED screen that would display changing images, according to town documents.

Town Administrator Michael Purcaro said today the company would pay the town a one-time fee of $126,000 for each face of the billboard.

Under the proposed ordinance, the size, height, number of advertising faces, and location of the existing billboard would not change. The proposed ordinance would not allow any other billboards in town to be converted into digital screens, according to town documents.

"If any other company ... wants to go from a static to digital billboard, they have to go through the process all over again," Purcaro said.

If the billboard were to be converted, any images or messages displayed on the screen would have to stay without changing for at least eight seconds, and no "movement, animation, audio, video, pyrotechnics, or other special effects would be allowed," according to the proposed ordinance.

The proposed ordinance also states that the digital display would be equipped with a light detector that would adjust brightness of the screen according to natural ambient light conditions and would be required to have a mechanism to freeze the screen in case of malfunction.

The town also would require that the town engineer make sure that any content displayed on the screen would not be a nuisance or traffic hazard.

"We spent a lot of time talking about light pollution," Purcaro said, adding that a digital billboard would actually be less bright than the current static billboard's lights at night.

Under the proposed ordinance, the town also would be allowed to broadcast emergency messages to the public using the display, such as weather warnings or Amber Alerts, Purcaro said.

He said that under the agreement with Outfront Media, the town also would be guaranteed over $60,000 worth of free advertising for town events.

Purcaro said the company already owns similar digital billboards in the Hartford area.

Ben covers Vernon and Stafford for the Journal Inquirer.

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