Campaign sign regulations appear to be on their way out of Pulaski County’s Unified Development Ordinance. No formal action was taken on the ordinance’s “special signs” section when the advisory plan commission discussed other potential changes last week, but it wasn’t clear that any action was actually needed.
All the relevant county officials seem to be in agreement about removing the “special signs” portion, but they haven’t followed the procedure that would normally be used. Zoning changes typically go to the plan commission first and then to the county commissioners for a final decision.
Plan commission members generally agreed to the change back in April, but no formal vote was taken, since the discussion took place during a work session. But a week later, the county commissioners went ahead and voted to repeal the “special signs” section anyway. It was also mentioned as a potential discussion topic during last week’s plan commission meeting, but members ended up focusing almost entirely on the county’s wind turbine regulations.
Community Development Commission Executive Director Nathan Origer notes that if it’s decided that the plan commission needs to clean up the language on its recommendation to ban wind turbines, there’s the possibility that the repeal of the “special signs” portion could be formalized at the same time, if necessary.
A Supreme Court decision a few years ago discourages local zoning jurisdictions from regulating signs based on their content. Instead, the more general “special sign” language is meant to govern things like the number and size of signs that may be placed on a given property.
But members of the Pulaski County Election Board felt the regulations created more confusion and called for their removal. They noted that the placement and content of campaign signs is already governed by a completely separate set of state and federal laws.
