VIDEO: New Changes Being Made To Billboards Around Town

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)- There are new rules regarding billboards in Starkville.

During Tuesday’s board of alderman meeting, city leaders voted 5 to 1 to amend the city’s current sign ordinance.

Mayor Lynn Spruill said the changes are an effort to help beautify the city.

The billboards are classified into two categories, class one and class two.

Class one billboards are located along highways in the city while class two billboards are located in various other places throughout town.

Starkville currently has 15 billboard signs throughout town with the majority of them being along highways 12, 182, and 25.

Spruill said the new changes to the ordinance will call for a reduction in the number of billboards, and an improvement on how those billboards look.

“Billboards, while they certainly serve a purpose, they are not the prettiest things to have in your sight line along Highway 12 in particular,” said Mayor Spruill. “We have clusters of them that are all kind of meshed together, so what we hope we will be doing is encouraging the billboard companies, particularly Lamar, who has the most in the city, to reduce that number, because one of the things they want to do is go from those static signs to electronic signs that gives you multiple advertising as they go through that cycle they work.”

Spruill said she hopes to have the number of billboards signs reduced to around seven or eight and have them spread out further apart around the city.