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St. Petersburg to Review Sign Code

AUGUST 25, 2011: ST. PETERSBURG — A week after the City Council rejected a controversial deal that would have allowed digital billboards, the eight-member board has embarked on overhauling rules that regulate all other signs. During a Thursday Public Safety and Infrastructure Committee workshop, the council discussed ways to go about changing the laws that govern hand-held signs that businesses use to advertise, homeowner association meeting signs, sandwich board signs on sidewalks, and new digital signs called electronic message centers that scroll ads or announcements. "I'm encouraged to see council broaden its scope to look at the entire ordinance," said Travis Jarman, a neighborhood leader who helped lead the fight to reject a deal to allow six digital billboards in exchange for removing 80 traditional signs.  (News Courtesy St. Petersburg Times)

A copy of the Council Presentation is available online.

During the meeting city staff compared St. Petersburg's sign regulations to those of a number of other Florida cities.  In some cases St. Petersburg is more restrictive of on-premise signs than cities such as Tampa, but of particular note was the discovery that Clearwater and Gainesville, among others, do not permit Electronic Message Center (EMC) signs at all.  In the city there are currently 54 EMC signs, most of which have been cited for violation of our existing ordinance.  Singled out for comment was the city's own EMC sign at Sunken Gardens, which as of the meeting date was in violation of the city's sign code because it displays animation.

During the discussion it was clear that several Council members (Nurse, Kennedy, Curran) seemed to favor an outright ban on new EMC signs, with retroactive restrictions to be added to existing EMC signs.  Karl Nurse said “Think of our city with 100 times as many of these signs – we need to shut the door”.  This position had the support of city staff and a seeming majority of the Council members.

Other staff-suggested changes to the sign code include prohibiting conversion of existing signs to EMC signs; this change has been put into effect immediately by administrative policy.  Additionally, staff recommends changing the non-conforming sign relocation and repair provision, which currently allows modification of existing signs as long as the total cost of such modifications does not exceed 25% of the replacement value of the sign.  The staff recommendation is to make this a cumulative provision, so as to prevent serial modifications (25% at a time) of non-conforming signs.

Further changes for suggested by staff include (click here for details):

• Requiring a longer message duration for EMC signs – more than 6 seconds but less than 15 minutes (more than 15 minutes was said to be too hard on Code Inspectors to enforce!).
• Prohibiting any increase in sign illumination.
• Prohibiting structural improvements.
• Requiring bringing signs into conformity with current code when improvements over 50% in assessed value are made to the building or site.
• Adding a definition for abandoned signs, and reducing enforcement time on abandoned signs from 6 months to 3 months.
• Developing an enforceable ordinance against individuals holding and/or dressed as signs.

The Committee asked staff to schedule a Council workshop on this subject so that all Council members can participate in the discussion.  That workshop will take place in late September or early October.

Have an opinion about St. Petersburg's proposed changes to the sign code?  Let your Council members and Mayor know by clicking on the Take Action link.