Tag Archives: sign ordinance

Sign committee to meet

The ad hoc committee looking at the City’s sign ordinance meets once a month, and their July meeting is on the 27th. Here is the agenda:

SIGN REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETING
TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2010
456 FULTON STREET, SUITE 402
10:00 AM

AGENDA

  1. DISCUSSION OF MARYSVILLE, WASHINGTON MUNICIPAL SIGN CODE COMPARISON
  2. DISCUSSION OF SIGN AREA
    • Current regulations
    • Examples of issues
    • Suggested revisions
  3. NEXT MEETING: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 10:00 am.

The meeting is open to the public; however, there is no public comment portion of the meeting.

Committee begins review of sign ordinance

From this week’s Issues Update:

The first meeting of the Sign Review Committee was held on Tuesday, May 25, 2010. This committee was created at the request of the Zoning Commission to review key issues involving sign regulations of the Zoning Ordinance. The 14?member Committee will meet monthly and intends to forward its recommendations to the Zoning Commission by December 2010.

I happen to be on this committee. All the meetings are open for public observation and will be posted. The first meeting was spent getting acquainted with each other, getting an overview of the current sign ordinance and the portions of it we will be reviewing (it’s not a comprehensive review — we’re just looking at some specific parts of it), and setting the meeting schedule.

The committee members are, in no particular order:

  • Ron Naples (Adams Outdoor Advertising)
  • Tim Shea (Zoning Commission)
  • Bill Hardin (Hardin Signs, Inc.)
  • Mark Misselhorn (Apace Design, Zoning Commission)
  • Julie Waldschmidt (Wald-Land Corporation)
  • Mike Wiesehan (Zoning Commission)
  • Jason Fuller (Manager, Peoria Metro Centre)
  • Marjorie Klise (Zoning Commission)
  • Ed Barry (Farnsworth Group)
  • Margaret Cousin
  • Robert Powers (Historic Preservation Commission)
  • Jim Hardin (Hardin Signs, Inc.)
  • Rob Parks (Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce)
  • C. J. Summers

And the sign regulation issues we will be reviewing are:

  • Size of digital display area
  • Definition of sign area
  • Violation penalties/enforcement
  • Size of wall signs and freestanding signs
  • Multiple application of the same sign (franchise)
  • Signs for multi-family development
  • Billboard extensions
  • Inflatable signs
  • Temporary banners/signs

Something I learned at the first meeting: Peoria used to have an enforcement officer on staff who was assigned solely to zoning violations. As a result of budget cuts, that position is gone and zoning enforcement is now assigned to planners. Each planner is responsible for a defined geographical area. Enforcement is complaint-driven.

Also, the last item on the list of issues to be reviewed, temporary banners/signs, were discussed quite a bit at the first meeting. Apparently, those large banners you see on the sides of businesses or staked in the ground in front of businesses require a permit. Few businesses actually apply for a permit, however. It could be that businesses are simply unaware that these signs are regulated. Or it could be that businesses are taking advantage of lax enforcement.

The next meeting is June 22 at 10 a.m. in Suite 402 of the twin towers (456 Fulton St.) where the City’s Planning and Growth Department is located.

Irving crusades for three-second transitions

Councilman Dan Irving (5th District) is leading the charge for a change to the city’s electronic sign ordinance. So far, no one with the city is on his side. The Zoning Commission voted against it. City staff is recommending denial. Still, Irving is still planning to bring it to a vote on the council floor Tuesday night, hoping that his council colleagues will see things his way.

How does he see things? Well, right now, the sign ordinance requires that electronic message boards change their images instantaneously instead of scrolling, fading, or dissolving. According to the council communication, he wants to change the ordinance so that such gradual transitions are allowed as long as the transition lasts no longer than three seconds. This, he says, will “promote Peoria’s business-friendly atmosphere” and “provide additional marketing of products in this challenging economic environment.”

In his testimony before the Zoning Commission, Mr. Irving stated what led him to ask for this change, which was summarized in the meeting minutes this way:

Council Member Dan Irving . . . commented that the intent of the Ordinance is that these electronic signs are popping up all over the City. He stated that a business owner who has purchased one of these signs, who was not aware of the Ordinance, had approached him and wanted to utilize the technology on his sign. He commented that he does not have the answer regarding these signs and stated there is a much bigger issue because most of the signs that keep popping up are not in compliance.

I personally like Dan Irving, and in fact I even endorsed him for election to the council. But this is a ridiculously ill-conceived council request. Let me count the ways:

  1. First of all, when you look out over Peoria and consider its challenges, is the dissolve rate on electronic signs really the one you want to spend a lot of energy and political capital attacking? Is this really the hill you want to die on?
  2. How, pray tell, does a three-second dissolve, fade, or scroll between marketing messages “provide additional marketing of products”? Answer: it doesn’t. This supposed benefit is empty rhetoric.
  3. “Requests for signs with non-static transitions shall be considered on a case-by-case basis and through approval of a Special Permit. Standards for consideration will include the location of the proposed sign, traffic volumes, and traffic speeds.” So, in order to get this coveted three seconds of cross-fading time, a business has to apply for a special use permit, which starts into motion a whole chain of events including: setting a public hearing date, mailing a notice of the hearing date to all properties within 250 feet of the subject property, review of the application by the Site Plan Review board, holding a public hearing, deliberation and decision by the Zoning Commission, and finally approval or denial by the city council. In addition, it appears the city staff would also need to conduct a traffic count and speed study of some sort as that information is one of the standards for consideration. I fail to see how this is in either the business’s or the city’s best interests. It will cost the city money in staff time, and it will be more trouble than it’s worth for businesses. What business owner is going to go through all that for a three-second dissolve rate?
  4. Non-compliance with the code is not, in itself, a compelling reason to change the code. If signs that keep “popping up” are not compliant, they should be brought into compliance through code enforcement, not sanctioned.

When Irving originally proposed having the Zoning Commission consider this idea, I asked him what changes he wanted to see. He told me via e-mail toward the beginning of December that “more and more businesses are putting up these electronic signs and then finding out they cannot use them because of our electronic sign ordinance” which requires static images that last at least ten seconds and change instantaneously. He continued, “Proctor Hospital has one of these [electronic signs] and it was allowed an exception or variance to our current ordinance. It is like watching a movie when you go past. I am looking to allow these types of signs in commercial area where there is no residential present and where the changing or fading of the image would not create a traffic risk.”

This sounds to me like he was favoring no restrictions on how often the images change on signs in certain areas (they could be “like watching a movie”), which is quite a different scenario than what is now being proposed. One wonders if the businesses who contacted Irving will be satisfied with such a scaled-back response to their request for unfettered use of electronic signs.

If I were Dan Irving, I would either withdraw the item or table it. It looks like a lose-lose situation all the way around.