Campaign sign regulations are causing confusion for Pulaski County candidates. The county’s updated Unified Development Ordinance that took effect at the beginning of the year appears to include some rules for campaign signs, but no one’s entirely sure, according to election board member Laura Bailey. “We have had, in the last 10 days, multiple contacts from concerned citizens, which then went out to various candidates, had all sorts of panic with the candidates because of the Unified Development Ordinance that you guys passed on December 18,” she told the county commissioners Monday. “On page 175, there’s a section on ‘special signs.’ It says ‘special signs’ will be defined in the definitions. It is not.”
Bailey said that while the ”special sign” portion of the ordinance includes dates that seem to correspond to the election cycle, it never refers specifically to campaign signs. “Is it just garage sale signs? Is it political signs?” she asked. “As election board members, we cannot enforce it. We can only enforce election law, and there are signage issues related to election law. We can do those, but we need to know who to refer the other stuff to because we’re getting phone calls because people are reading into it, that it is political signs, but we don’t know if it is or not.”
Community Development Commission Executive Director Nathan Origer believed language was intended to address campaign signs, but he admitted that the lack of definition was an oversight. He added that since it’s a zoning issue, it’s up to Plan Administrator Doug Hoover to decide whether signs are allowable, with disputes going to the board of zoning appeals.
However, Origer said that section of the ordinance would probably be difficult to enforce with no clear definition. Hoover said that the signs in question were legal.
Origer said the issue will likely be corrected during the next round of revisions to the Unified Development Ordinance next year, unless it’s determined that immediate action is needed.
