(A) By adopting this chapter, the City Council intends to balance several important and competing interests, including the constitutional right to free speech and the public interests in safety and aesthetics. Signs are part of the public way and thereby influence public safety within the public way as well as city identity and aesthetic quality. More specifically, this chapter seeks to minimize traffic hazards imposed by information chaos within the public way, controlling visual clutter, facilitate orientation and business location within the city fabric, and reinforce city identity. It is the purpose of this chapter to regulate the construction, reconstruction, erection, installation, placement, relocation, maintenance, display, use, modification, alteration, and removal of private signs within the city, in a manner that does not favor commercial speech over noncommercial speech and does not regulate speech by content. The intent of this chapter is to promote public health, safety, and welfare and achieve the following:
(1) Encourage effective use of the signs on private property as a means of communication, by providing that:
(2) Aid customers, city visitors, and other patrons in finding and locating a business, service, or receive a non-commercial message;
(3) Assure that no person or group is arbitrarily denied the use of sight lines from the public right-of-way for communication purposes; and
(4) Facilitate legible and comprehensible communications between establishments and the public within the public way.
(B) To enhance public safety within the public way by providing signs that:
(1) To the extent feasible, make it possible that persons are not overwhelmed by the number of messages presented to the extent that public safety information is obscured, information that one seeks cannot easily be found, and persons are able to observe or ignore messages according to the observer’s purpose;
(2) Do not create constitute a hazard due to disruption of the public right-of-way such as confusing or distracting motorists, impairing a driver’s ability to see the public right-of-way, impair the ability to see traffic signs;
(3) Are not constructed without proper engineering design to prevent collapse, fire hazard, or decay; and
(4) Are not left abandoned to become a blight.
(C) To maintain and enhance the aesthetic environment and the city’s ability to attract sources of economic development and growth by providing signs that:
(1) Do not interfere with scenic views;
(2) Do not create a nuisance to persons using the public right-of-way;
(3) Do not create a nuisance to the occupant of adjacent or contiguous property by their brightness, size, height, design, or movement;
(4) Are not detrimental to land or property values; and/or
(5) Contribute to the special character of particular places or districts within the city, thereby, helping the observer to understand the city and orient within it.
(D) To regulate signs generally by classifying each sign according to its design and construction type and by regulating such types as they occur within certain sign districts throughout Cleburne. Such regulations will address the type, number, size, height, and placement within a site of signs according to their location in the various sign districts.
(E) To establish the minimum necessary and least burdensome requirements in order to accomplish the purposes contained herein.
(Ord. 01-2016-07, passed 1-26-16)