(a) This Sign Code is intended to promote the general safety and welfare of the citizens of the city by facilitating communication between people and their environment through the establishment of a comprehensive system regulating signs. They are intended to promote the use of functional signs, as well as to encourage variety in design and usage, thereby protecting the rights and investment of individual owners, as well as those of the general public. The general objectives of this Sign Code are as follows:
(1) To require all signs, to be properly constructed, installed and maintained;
(2) To encourage public and private signs that are appropriate to the zoning districts in which they are located;
(3) To encourage public and private signs to be readable and harmonious with adjacent properties;
(4) To reduce competition between public and private signs;
(5) To reduce visual clutter by controlling the number, size and location of private signs;
(6) To eliminate any conflict between signs and traffic control devices in order to mitigate hazards to the safety of pedestrians and vehicle operators;
(7) To control private signs located along the Interstate System.
(b) These regulations are not intended to infringe upon, or restrict, rights of free speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or Article I, Paragraph 11 of the Ohio Constitution. These regulations shall be construed and interpreted in a content-neutral manner except for those legally recognized exceptions explicitly identified herein. These regulations shall be applied in compliance with such other federal and Ohio laws as may be now or hereafter enacted, when not in conflict with them.
(Ord. 07-2021. Passed 2-23-21.)