(a) Sign regulations, including provisions to control the type, design, size, location, motion, illumination, enforcement and maintenance thereof, are established in order to achieve, among other objectives, the following purposes:
(1) To promote and maintain high quality districts for all land uses, and attractive public and private facilities of all types, by permitting only signs appropriate to their environs and preventing the blighting influence of excessive signage;
(2) To provide for reasonable and appropriate methods for identifying establishments in office, business and industrial districts by relating the size, type and design of signs to the size, type and design of the office, business and industrial establishments;
(3) To eliminate any conflict between traffic control signs and other signs which conflict may be hazardous to the safety of the motoring public and to pedestrians;
(4) To control the design and size of all signs so that their appearance will be aesthetically harmonious with an overall design for the area, in accordance with commonly accepted community planning and design practices;
(5) To establish equal and uniform opportunities for persons and legal entities to erect signage appurtenant to their ownership and/or tenancy of land.
(b) This chapter is not intended to infringe on the rights of free speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, §11 of the Ohio Constitution. All sections in this chapter are to be construed, whenever possible, in favor of vigorous political debate and accommodation of the rights of residents and visitors to speak freely. All provisions of this chapter shall be interpreted in a content-neutral manner excepting solely for those narrow, legally-recognized exceptions explicitly identified in this chapter. All sections in this chapter shall be applied in accord with 15 U.S.C. §1121(b), as amended, and such other applicable federal and Ohio laws as may now or hereafter be enacted, when in conflict with same.
(Ord. 12-O-60. Passed 9-4-12.)