Town
Council Intent & Findings Regarding Political Sign Regulations
Prepared by: Jeffery G. Ulma, AICP, Planning Director
Adopted by Council:
Effective:
To present the rationale upon which Town
Council based its decision to amend the political sign regulations contained in
Chapter 9 of the Land Development Ordinance (LDO).
Goals
of Policy:
The
goal of this policy statement is to set forth the following intent and findings
associated with these adopted political sign regulations.
Statement of Intent and Findings:
During the 2004 election campaign, it came to
the attention of the Town Council of the Town of
In adopting these amendments, the Town
Council makes the following specific findings:
·
Expressions of opinion on matters of public
interest, including but not limited to advocacy for or against particular
candidates or ballot issues, are the most important form of speech in our
society. For that reason, signs
expressing views on public opinion should receive the most favorable possible
treatment under the sign ordinance;
·
As recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ladue v.
Gilleo, such signs are particularly valuable to allow individual residents to
express their views on matters of public interest;
·
The Town has intentionally adopted extremely
restrictive regulations on signs in both residential and nonresidential areas,
but the Town Council recognizes the need to make those regulations more liberal
for signs expressing views on public issues;
·
In particular, to protect the rights of our
citizens, as defined by the Supreme Court and as we understand them from our own
experience, we find that it is essential that we allow additional signs in
residential neighborhoods to be used specifically for the expression of the
views of residents on matters of public interest;
·
The residential neighborhoods of our Town, however,
remain the areas in which our residents continually tell us that it is most
important to reduce clutter and to maintain a pleasing aesthetic environment.
For that reason, it is essential that regulations permitting signs that
express opinions on matters of public interest be subject to reasonable limits
to prevent unnecessary visual clutter in the neighborhoods;
·
Traffic safety is of particular concern in
residential neighborhoods, where young children often play in front yards and in
other areas abutting the streets. Although
traffic loads on residential streets are typically lower than on other streets,
the concerns with traffic safety on such streets are as great or greater than
such concerns on the Town’s arterial streets and roads;
·
In this context, we believe that a regulation that
allows only one sign per property or street frontage per candidate for office or
side of a particular issue achieves a reasonable balance in these competing
interests. It allows for
householders who disagree on a particular race or election
issue to express support for opposing candidates or opposing viewpoints,
but it precludes an overly enthusiastic individual from posting multiple signs
on the same property in support of the same candidate or issue;
·
We recognize that former limits tying the use of
political signs to elections may have been too broad in their scope, and we have
consciously included in these amendments various provisions that allow and
ensure the expression of opinion on issues that are not now (or may not ever be)
the subject of an election or referendum;
·
Most signs of this type in our community, however,
do relate to an election. A rule
requiring that such signs be removed within a reasonable period after the
election – at which point they are no longer expressing an opinion on a matter
of public interest – furthers the Town’s interest in reducing clutter and is
consistent with other provisions of the sign ordinance where we place time
limits on other temporary signs and require the removal of abandoned signs; and
·
Our review of this subject led us to note that,
although most real estate signs appear to be removed promptly after sale or
lease of the property takes place, the Town ordinance does not currently require
such removal; we have thus addressed this issue regarding the potential clutter
of signs serving no purpose in this set of amendments.