At the beginning of the year, Pleasant Hill City Council decided to take a look at the city's ordinance regulating temporary signs. The idea was to prevent the town from becoming cluttered with signs announcing everything from weight loss plans to ballot measures.
It turned out to be a trickier undertaking than they thought. As the Contra Costa Times has reported, city officials discovered that the set of proposed new rules for temporary signs inadvertently put the city in the business of regulating content and possibly infringing on freedom of speech. A subcommittee spent the last month making changes to the .
Below are the chief revisions that will be discussed by city council Monday evening.
1. Prohibit all temporary, freestanding, non-commercial signs within the public right-of way throughout the City.
2. Reduce the maximum allowable aggregate sign area for such signs to 64 square feet per site (previously a maximum of 80 square feet was proposed) for non-residential zones.
3. Add a new spacing requirement of four feet between signs in non-residential zones and one foot between signs in residential zones.
4. Limit placement of such signs to no more than 65 consecutive days, up to 4 times per calendar year, with a minimum of 30 days between removal and placement of the signs.
Do you think Pleasant Hill should regulate temporary signs around town?
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