Lodi planners: City Council should repeal political sign rules
Due to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the City of Lodi may repeal its current regulations for political signs.
On Wednesday evening, the Lodi Planning Commission voted to recommend that the Lodi City Council repeal Chapter 9.19 of the Lodi Municipal Code, “Political Sign Regulations.” In addition, they approved a new draft of Chapter 17.34 to slightly alter temporary sign regulations to assist in supervising political signs this election year.
In June 2015, the Supreme Court held in Reed v. The
Town of Gilbert that any municipal ordinance that placed stricter limitations on one type of sign over another is a restriction on freedom of speech. Thus, Lodi’s political sign regulations were deemed unconstitutional. The council’s repealing of Chapter 9.19 would ensure that the municipal code would be in compliance with federal law.
“What the election case said was you can’t have different rules for election signs than you have for commercial signs in our neighborhoods. Right now we have different rules. So what this ordinance does is it liberalizes our election sign rules to meet the same standards that our commercial sign rules meet,” said City Manager Steve Schwabauer. “Speech is speech: Commercial speech, political speech, and religious speech, and we have to treat them the same.”
As such, some previous restrictions on temporary signage in general may change. For instance, the new draft allows for four temporary on-site signs instead of one, so that any resident supporting multiple political candidates may display multiple signs on private property.
The new draft also removes the previous temporary sign height limit of 48 inches. And to help regulate political signs during election seasons, all temporary signs on private property would be allowed to stand for a maximum of six months, and must be take down 10 days after an event ends. The current temporary sign limit is 30 days.
The same rules apply for temporary signage on commercial and industrial areas, except that the signs can be as large as 32 square feet in those areas.
Also in the re-draft is a provision that restricts vehicle owners from parking on a public street in order to display that vehicle as for sale. Such an action causes a hazardous distraction for drivers and is therefore a nuisance, according to the draft.
The next step is for the repeal to go before the city council for discussion.