Damariscotta Board of Selectmen Chairman Dick McLean said he is “hoping the board will agree” to call a special town meeting in order to consider amendments to a town ordinance regarding changeable signs.
McLean made his comments at a Jan. 3 meeting of the Damariscotta Planning Board. The planning board discussed draft amendments at the meeting, focusing on whether to include standards for awnings in the ordinance.
“We’re not necessarily in favor of leaving the awnings in there,” planning board chairman Fred Sewall said. “We’re going to leave it up to the selectmen.”
The selectmen will discuss the amendments at their Wed., Jan. 5 meeting.
Discussion of the amendments has been ongoing since summer 2010, when the Dept. of Transportation (DOT) informed Lincoln County Community Theater (LCCT) that the message on their electronic marquee changed too frequently.
According to Maine law, “The display on each side of a changeable sign… [may] be changed no more than once every 20 minutes, unless the municipality in which the sign is located adopts an ordinance to the contrary and notifies the Department of Transportation in writing.”
Before DOT stepped in to enforce the law, the message on the sign changed every six seconds.
“From the theater’s standpoint, the big thing we are striving for is to have an ordinance that allows us to change the message every 30 seconds,” Barnaby Porter, an LCCT volunteer and a co-owner of the building that houses the theater, said at the Jan. 3 meeting.
