(a) Findings. The City Council finds it necessary for the promotion and preservation of the public health, safety, welfare, and aesthetics of the community that the construction, location, size, conspicuity, brightness, legibility, operational characteristics, and maintenance of signs be controlled and regulated, based on the following findings:
(1) Exterior signs substantially impact the character and quality of the environment;
(2) Signs provide an important medium through which individuals may convey various messages;
(3) Signs can create safety hazards that threaten the public health, safety, or welfare. Such a safety threat is particularly great for signs that are structurally inadequate, or that may confuse or distract the traveling public, or that may interfere with official traffic, directional, or warning signs;
(4) Signs can also threaten the public welfare by creating aesthetic concerns connected to an accumulation of signs resulting in visual clutter, the spoiling of vistas or views, general harm to the physical environment, or an increase of commercialism in noncommercial areas;
(5) The ability to erect signs serving certain functions, such as an address sign or a sign announcing that the property on which it sits is for sale or lease or a sign used to indicate the availability of areas for public use, is an integral part of nearly every property owner's ability to realize fundamental attributes of property ownership. The same cannot be said of signs serving other functions, such as off-premises advertising signs erected to be visible from public rights-of-way. Such signs are primarily designed to take advantage of an audience drawn to that location by the public's substantial investment in public rights-of-way and other public property; and
(6) The city's land use regulations have included the regulation of signs in an effort to foster adequate information and means of expression, and to promote the economic viability of the community, while protecting the city and its residents from a proliferation of signs of a type, size, location, and character that would adversely impact the physical environment of the community or threaten the health, safety, or welfare of the community. The appropriate regulation of the physical characteristics of signs in the city and other communities positively impacts the community's safety and appearance.
(b) Purposes and intent. The City Council intends by this sign code to establish a legal framework for sign regulation in the city. The regulations included in this sign code are intended to facilitate an easy and agreeable communication while protecting and promoting the public health, safety, welfare, and physical environment of the community. It is neither the purpose nor intent of this sign code to prefer or favor commercial messages or speech over noncommercial messages or speech or to discriminate between types of noncommercial speech or the ideas, subjects, messages, or viewpoints represented therein.
Therefore, the purposes of the sign regulations promulgated in this sign code are:
(1) To eliminate potential hazards to people using the public streets, sidewalks, and public right-of-way;
(2) To safeguard and enhance property values;
(3) To control nuisances;
(4) To protect government investments in public buildings, streets, sidewalks, traffic control and utility devices, parks, and open spaces;
(5) To preserve and improve the appearance of the city through adherence to aesthetic principles, to create a community that is attractive to people who come to live, visit, work or trade;
(6) To prevent excessive and confusing sign displays;
(7) To implement the city's Comprehensive Plan;
(8) To encourage signs that, by design, are integrated and harmonious with the surrounding environment and the buildings and sites they occupy;
(9) To recognize the constitutional right of residents, businesses, institutions, and other users to freedom of expression through signage by providing a fair, equitable, and predictable regulatory framework for signage; and
(10) To promote public health, safety, and general welfare.
(Ord. 2024-4, passed 2-26-2024)