Amador County – Jackson City Council on Monday approved the first reading on a revised city sign ordinance that includes grandfathering existing non-conforming signs, with an emphasis on educating the community on new regulations.
The Council continued a public hearing from February and discussed previous meetings and direction by the Council to staff on the sign ordinance, and various changes. The Council saw a “track change” version that underlined added language, and struck lines through deleted text in the draft code.
City Manager Mike Daly listened to recordings of the meetings and gave information, after a Council request to make sure that the intent of the council was reflected in significant changes. Daly said the January meeting focused primarily on eliminating the amortization of the new sign ordinance, and favored going to grandfathering the existing, non-conforming signs, so there was not a big cost to businesses to meet the new ordinance.
Daly said after the meeting he met with Police Chief Scott Morrison and discussed enforcement. He proposed using the city Community Services Officer Heather Russell to monitor the sign ordinance. Daly said it would take some training for Russell, and Morrison thought it was a good idea. Russell, whose duties are parking enforcement and crossing guard, “is very good with her public relations skills, and communication about what’s going on,” Daly said.
He said he understood the Council did not want the new sign ordinance to be too onerous, and the Community Services Officer would help people to understand what they need to do with signs.
Daly said vehicle-mounted sign limitation creates a difficulty in enforcement, with business signs and logos on vehicles, parked in city lots near their businesses. He said staff offered some alternative language to focus that on keeping banners from being mounted on vehicles. He said special event signs are exempted, as in current code.
Planner Susan Peters said the “strike through” version of the ordinance was put on the city website two weeks ago, after the last meeting.
Daly said mailings to businesses and responses led to cleaning up some sign clutter, and found businesses generally supported that. He said a reduction of the sign permit fee from $95 to $25 helped, and staff will give sign code information to business license applicants to help with education.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
