If last month's board of commissioners meeting fatally wounded a proposal to regulate electronic signs in North Huntingdon, Monday's meeting of the planning commission was the post-mortem.

North Huntingdon planning director Andrew Blenko explained to planning commission members that the board of commissioners had demurred on their proposal to regulate the color and animation of electronic signs in the township.

Although township commissioners did express an interest in regulating the height, size and brightness of signs, Blenko said township ordinances already establish a maximum size and height. As for brightness, Blenko expressed doubt that it could be effectively regulated.

"Such regulation would be impractical if not impossible," Blenko said.

He told the planning commission that while the township could establish a maximum brightness, measuring the brightness of any given sign would require expensive equipment and would be difficult to do because of ambient light and changing weather conditions.

Planning commission member Daniel Palmer said he thought the commission previously had decided to require signs to dim at night.

Scott Borst of Borill High Performance Signs in North Huntingdon said most modern signs have their brightness controlled by a computer, and the computer can dim the signs automatically at night.

Planning commission chairman William Chapman suggested requiring a 25 percent reduction in illumination overnight.

Planning commission member Stephen Cross said the thought is a good idea, but he worries that without a set daytime maximum, sign owners would just raise their overall brightness and eliminate the benefit of any nighttime reduction.

Robert Pioth agreed with Cross.

"Is everybody's 100 percent going to be the same?" he said.

Blenko said the issue went back to the difficulty of enforcing any kind of limit on illumination.

"It sounds like a nightmare to me to enforce."

The members of the commission said they wanted to do something about electronic signs, but only the board of commissioners could take action.

"We can't do it, we can only recommend it," said Blenko.

Planning commission member Bernard Solomon said Blenko should approach the commissioners about regulating brightness, although he did not know how to do it. Solomon said the township needed to take some kind of action on electronic signs to avoid a drastic change in its look in the coming years.

"Route 30 is going to be the 'great white way' of Las Vegas if we don't do something," said Solomon.