Like city officials, Pittsburgh's neighborhood leaders are divided over how to address the proliferation of digital billboards.

Some believe neighborhoods should have free rein to cut deals to allow digital signs in return for the removal of vinyl ones. On the other side are those who think there should be strict limits on the glowing, ever-changing ads.

Tony Ceoffe, executive director of Lawrenceville United, expects to urge City Council today to "please think long and hard about what you're doing" before curtailing the administration's professed power to make billboard deals without the normal bureaucratic approvals. That message comes as council members consider a procedural or court challenge to the administrative approval of a digital billboard slated for the Grant Street Transportation Center.

That 1,200-square-foot digital billboard was awarded to Lamar Advertising by the Pittsburgh Parking Authority and permitted by Zoning Administrator Susan Tymoczko in consultation with Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Pat Ford.

As part of the deal, Lamar would eliminate six nearby vinyl signs. A narrow council majority questions the administration's power to cut such deals.

Becky Rodgers, executive director of Neighbors in the Strip, said people should walk the area near the transportation center before taking any action that might nix the permit.

"The area around the convention center and transportation center is filled with blight -- dark, grafitti-ridden walls -- that over 4,000 Pittsburghers, parking and going to work, walk through twice per day," she wrote in an e-mail. "I think those people might appreciate a little lighting and sprucing up."

Mr. Ceoffe is no fan of billboards, but doesn't want council to jeopardize his talks with Lamar Real Estate Manager Jim Vlasach to make "a substantial reduction" in the 53 vinyl placards along Butler Street, in return for support for digital signs near the 40th Street Bridge and toward the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium parking lot.

His and other Lawrenceville organizations have distributed a survey asking residents if they would support such a swap.

Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., said he wouldn't want to trade a few small billboards for one electronic one in the Penn Avenue corridor. If such a swap were to occur, he would want it to go through a public process.

"If this is going to be the wave of the future here -- and I think it is in outdoor advertising -- then I think we need to revisit the city zoning code to begin to regulate how and where these signs are placed," he said. He'd like to see rules for their hours of operation, and hearings and votes by the Planning Commission and council on their permits.

"If done well, they can be attractive, and in the appropirate setting, even an amenity," said Mark Fatla, executive director of the Northside Leadership Conference. "Unfortunately, most of them are relatively crass."

The current disagreement on how digital billboards are regulated is untenable, he said.

Council is scheduled to vote today on a nonbinding resolution asking Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to rescind the Grant Street billboard permit, and then subject the proposal to bidding, plus hearings and votes outlined in city code. That vote, though, may be postponed pending a legal opinion from city Solicitor George Specter.

Some council members may mount their own challenge.

"This will go to court, and at this time we're still checking the procedural issues and contemplating what legal counsel should be retained," said Council President Doug Shields, who wants the billboards to go through a public process. Among the questions are whether council members or private citizens should challenge the permit, and whether it should come as an appeal to the Zoning Board of Adjustment or to Common Pleas Court.

Council has scheduled a March 20 public hearing on the Grant Street billboard, but any legal challenge might have to be filed by Thursday to comply with deadlines in the city code.