Sign regulations, including provisions to control the type, design, size, location, motion, illumination, enforcement and maintenance thereof, are established in order to achieve, among others, the following purposes:
(a) To maintain high quality residential and public facilities districts by permitting reasonable signage; and
(b) To provide reasonable conditions for identifying establishments in office, business and industrial districts by relating the size, type and design of signs to the type and size of the office, business and industrial establishments; and
(c) To eliminate any conflict between advertising signs and traffic control signs which would be hazardous to the safety of the motoring public or pedestrians; and
(d) To control the design and size of all signs so that their appearance will be aesthetically harmonious with an overall design for the area; and
(e) To promote the most desirable developments and economic activity consistent with the objectives of the City's planning and development program; and
(f) To prevent any inadvertent and unintended favoring of a commercial message over a non-commercial message, or favoring of any particular non-commercial message over any other non-commercial message.
With these regulations, it is the City's intent not 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 provisions of 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. (Ord. 2009-155. Passed 11-16-09.)