On August 11, 2014, the City Council conducted a public hearing on Bill No. 2678, an ordinance to amend Section 20.56 “Signs” of the municipal code.   The Council continued this item to provide City staff the opportunity for additional analysis and to develop alternatives to certain provisions of the proposed sign code.  Staff was also asked to come back and obtain Council direction about alternatives, and revise the proposed code accordingly, before bringing Bill No. 2678 back for Council action.

Staff’s understanding of the discussion on August 11^th is that the Council focused on the proposed separation distance of 3,000 linear feet between digital special freestanding signs, including concerns that this standard would:

• Unduly restrict the conversion of existing special freestanding signs or nonconforming outdoor advertising structures (see definitions below) to digital signs.
• Overly restrict the number of new digital special freestanding signs.

Since August 11th City Council, staff has worked on alternatives for the separation distance between special freestanding signs. The existing Sign Code separation distance was used as the baseline for the analysis of the alternatives. Presented in this workshop are 6 alternatives. Each alternative is presented with the proposed separation distance between the combinations of static and digital special freestanding signs. On each alternative, staff conducted an analysis on how many potential special freestanding signs along major roadways in the industrial area could be erected, either static and digital. The analysis includes discussion on considerations of each one of the alternatives. Refer to the attachment called Special Freestanding Alternatives. 

Refer to the attachment called Special Freestanding Alternatives. 

I moved to direct staff to revise the Sign Code to use Alternative _____ and bring back the Sign Code for review and adoption.