Lebanon
The City Council tonight is expected to discuss creating a new task force that would be charged with drafting new regulations to bring Lebanon in line with the ruling. Some officials also hope the group would update existing regulations to better reflect the needs of businesses and communities.
“Our (sign) regulations haven’t been updated in 25 years,” Zoning Administrator Tim Corwin said on Tuesday. “Regardless of the fact that (the ruling) came out, it’s about time we take a look at them.”
In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Good News Community Church of Gilbert, Ariz., saying the local regulations violated the First Amendment. Town officials there had tried to regulate signs the church used to advertise services.
The court also created a test for municipalities to follow: If a sign must be read to determine whether it’s in line with local ordinances, those regulations could be in violation of the Constitution.
Currently, Lebanon’s zoning ordinance regulates signs based on their purpose and what kind of services they advertise.
“So in taking a look at our regulations, it became clear that a number of our regulations are based on the content of the sign,” Corwin said, adding that municipalities across the country now are facing the same problem.
“By no means was Lebanon different than the average community,” Corwin said.
In order to bring the city in line with the court ruling, the planning department is recommending the creation of a task force comprised of city officials, community members and businesses to help create new regulations and report back to the city with their draft regulations in the fall.
“At the end of the day, this task force will recommend to the (City Council) a set of rules that hopefully reflect the general will of the people,” Corwin said.
City planners also intend to ask the City Council to adopt interim sign rules that do not regulate based on a sign’s content. Those could take effect in April, if they are approved by officials.
Although the Supreme Court ruling is the primary reason for the task force, officials have been calling for an update for some time.
The new signs are a frequent topic of discussion at Zoning Board meetings, as members struggle to balance language in the current ordinance, the values of specific neighborhoods and what businesses say they need to survive.
“I think (the ordinance) could use some improvement,” Zoning Board member Dan Nash said on Tuesday. “I wouldn’t know how to improve it, but sometimes there’s conflicting requirements or they’re subjective or they’re hard to evaluate.”
He said applicants frequently want more signage for their businesses, but the board has to balance those requests with the limited language in the ordinance as well as an individual neighborhood’s characteristics.
“As a body we don’t have a lot of latitude. We have to go by the criteria set forth in the ordinance,” Nash said. “So if the (City) Council wants to change the rules, they should give us good guidance.”
As recently as last week, the Zoning Board was being asked to approve two proposals for businesses to increase their signage.
One business, Miller Auto Group on Route 120, was hoping to receive two variances and two special exceptions to install an electronic sign on a property that already has two other signs.
“Our franchise, being Chrysler, does not allow us to add anything to their sign,” Miller Auto’s facilities manager Phil Maheu said before the board on Feb. 6. “If we want to put a new thing up, we need to put it on a different sign. We can’t attach it to theirs.”
But board members expressed skepticism that forgoing the sign would cause the dealership an undue hardship, a requirement for receiving a variance.
“I would need to be convinced that there’s a hardship that you have that nobody else has,” Nash said in an audio recording of the meeting. “I think everybody would like more signage.”
“If you’re a business owner, you know the stresses of advertising. You know the stresses of getting people through the door. The hardship is keeping the doors open,” Maheu said during the meeting.
The board ultimately voted down Miller Auto’s proposal.
A Zoning Board meeting in May also challenged officials.
The owners of the Team Nissan North dealership off of Route 120 had renovated in 2015, adding a Nissan sign over the front doors without receiving explicit city approval to do so. To rectify the situation, company officials came before the board to ask for a special exception to keep the sign.
During the meeting, they argued it would cost about $50,000 to remove the sign and Nissan could withhold rebates to the dealership.
“What (Nissan) could in fact do is extremely, extremely harmful to a dealership that employs a lot of good people,” said Christopher Dessureaux, who represented the dealership before the Zoning Board.
In that case, the board begrudgingly voted in favor of the dealership keeping the sign, partially because of the financial damage the dealership could face if it took it down.
Corwin, the city zoning administrator, said he’s seen the board struggle many times with similar cases, and hopes the proposed task force can help devise regulations that balance competing interests.
“An essential ingredient in that is balancing the need of our business community to effectively advertise and have a sustainable economic climate in Lebanon and balance those (needs) with the legitimate aesthetic concerns of our community,” Corwin said.
Although he doesn’t expect the task force to agree unanimously on any new regulations, Corwin said he hopes it can provide needed input for new rules.
“It’s a delicate issue,” Corwin said. “From a business owner’s perspective, this is their livelihood.”
The City Council is expected to discuss the task force during its meeting at 7 p.m. tonight at City Hall.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.