Lebanon
On a normal day in Lebanon, inexpensive signs can be found on the sides of busy roads and in public spaces, inviting residents to attend everything from church suppers to Dartmouth College football games.
But the days where anyone can plant a sign along the road is now being challenged as the city ramps up enforcement of a regulation banning signs from the city’s rights of way.
Several groups have recently been asked to remove signs, leading some to question the regulation’s constitutionality.
A city task force has taken up the issue.
“For 37 years, we put on the Rotary Auction, and we put up signs like this all during that period,” said Steve Whitman, a member of the Rotary Club of Lebanon.
So when it came time for the club to promote its upcoming Brew Fest, volunteers once again relied on signs to promote the event.
Members fanned out on a Sunday earlier this month and planted signs around the city.
“And on Monday morning, we got a rather strong statement from (the city) that we were wrong and couldn’t do that,” Whitman said in a phone interview on Thursday.
Club officials reached out to the Lebanon zoning office only to find the city was cracking down, meaning the Rotary Club would have to find new homes for the signs.
“There was no notice of this,” Whitman said of the rules. “It was just out of nowhere.”
Lebanon Zoning Administrator Tim Corwin said the city code has long prohibited such signs in the rights of way, which can extend several feet from the roadway onto residential properties.
Enforcement became a priority in recent weeks, he said, after multiple groups went overboard with their signs.
“This has nothing to do with any of the events. It’s just a matter of enforcing the current regulation and trying to be fair and as even-handed as possible,” Corwin said on Thursday.
The signs are largely acceptable on private property, he said.
However, in the attempt to reduce the clutter, the city seems to have opened the door to questions of whether the city’s regulation is constitutional.
Chapter 152 of Lebanon’s city code prohibits signs placed in the right of way with a commercial message, as well as those promoting events. But exempt from the regulations are political signs.
That exemption is problematic, Corwin said, because of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
In its ruling on the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Ariz., the court found that municipalities cannot regulate signage based on content or message.
“You could see that argument that you would allow political signs. It’s a core function of our democracy,” Corwin said. “We expect to see those signs in certain places during the election season.”
But, he said, the court’s decision has “made it very difficult to say ‘now we allow certain types of speech and not others.’ ”
“It highlights what’s at stake and forces us to think of other options,” Corwin said of the ruling.
It’s not just municipal laws that could be affected by the Supreme Court decision. New Hampshire has its own sign regulations that could be in conflict with the ruling.
Under state law, political signs are allowed within state rights of way as long as the landowner consents and the sign doesn’t pose a safety risk.
During election season, road crews remove signs along interstates and highway on-ramps, on medians and attached to traffic poles, said Richard Arcand, a program specialist at the state Department of Transportation.
The law requires candidates to remove signs soon after elections. But some municipal officials said the state rules contradict the Supreme Court’s decision.
“It basically said that you can’t regulate signage based on content, and our RSA 664:17 (relating to) political advertising is regulating signage based on content,” Concord Zoning Administrator Craig Walker told the Concord Monitor last year. “So in essence, that RSA is now unconstitutional.”
Lebanon’s Corwin said he agrees with Concord’s assessment that the state law is no longer valid. He urged members of the city’s Sign Ordinance Task Force on Tuesday not to use the state law as a model for future regulations.
Early this year, residents and business leaders were appointed to the task force to rethink the city’s zoning ordinance in the wake of the court decision. Roadside signs are also part of the task force’s focus, Corwin said.
There are three options members of the task force are mulling: banning all signs in rights of way; allowing all signs; or instituting a permit system.
Curt Jacques, a member of the task force and owner of West Lebanon Feed and Supply, said he’s leaning toward the permits.
There’s nothing worse than seeing bad looking signs on the side of the road, he said, adding they “cheapen the perception of what the community is.”
On the other hand, Jacques said, they also provide advertising for groups looking to do good deeds.
Jacques recently put up signs for the company’s Cause for Paws fundraiser, which raised roughly $10,000 for animals impacted by recent hurricanes, and was also told by city to remove them.
By setting up a good permitting system, he said, the city could better set expectations for signs while also allowing them to continue.
Rob Taylor, executive director of the Lebanon Area Chamber of Commerce, said the city should restrict signs to designated locations for set periods of time.
Allowing signs in prominent places in Lebanon could enhance their message while also reducing the overall number of signs, said Taylor, who also serves on the task force.
“Obviously, the task force is really trying to strike a balance that allows for good signage to be put up around town but also does its best to preserve scenic beauty and the visual appeal of the city,” he said.
Corwin hopes the task force will be able to produce recommendations for a future policy during its next meeting, scheduled for mid-October.
Any change to the city code then would have to be approved by the City Council.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.
Correction
Signs placed in the city of Lebanon’s right-of-way have been part of a Sign Ordinance Task Force’s purview since the panel’s inception early this year. An earlier version of this story was wrong on that point.