Cornelia City Council members voted Tuesday to extend the current moratorium on permits for new signs through the end of August.
Leaders had thought the moratorium would be over by July thanks to new regulations they’ve been working on to restrict the types of signs businesses can erect. City staff had that newly written sign ordinance ready for a vote this week until a new US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling threw a wrench into their plans.
The federal case that halted the process, Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona, was focused on how that town regulates temporary signs. In a 9-0 decision released Thursday, the court found the Gilbert sign code didn’t treat all temporary signs equally. Their ordinance allowed different rules for political signage than for other temporary signs. The justices found the town’s ordinance to be an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights.
While narrow in focus, Cornelia City Attorney Steve Campbell calls the SCOTUS opinion “precedent setting” and says Cornelia must take that ruling into consideration before passing their new sign ordinance. “If we had passed this (ordinance) before the ruling,” he told city council members Tuesday, “we would have been back here repealing it now.”
The question of how to regulate signage is not a new problem for Cornelia. Back in 2012, a dispute over billboards downtown almost landed the city in court. Leaders settled the issue and allowed those permits but they want to avoid that type of conflict in future.
The new sign ordinance has been in the works for a couple of months and is based on implementing “planned zoning overlay districts” that should make it clear to businesses just what types of signs are allowed in various parts of Cornelia. Campbell says the area in red (on the map above) covers the downtown business district, “You’ll probably only have hanging signs, you’re not going to have billboards or any of that kind of signage.”
The other two overlay districts are transitional, “You’ll have monument signs out here,” Campbell says, pointing to the yellow section that follows Level Grove Road, “They won’t be very high and would have a brick base or something like that.” The blue section out along North Main Street toward Wal-Mart would have similar regulations, “as you get further out this way there would be more allowed because it gets into an area of larger scale commercial uses.”
Cornelia City Council members say they will revisit the sign ordinance at the end of August. There will be a chance for the public to comment on the planned changes before they vote.
