Department of Community Development
Reference: Sign Code Amendment
To: Mayor Kenneth J. Kreutzer and Members of City Council
Through: Philip A. Rodriguez, City Manager
Marv Falconburg, AICP, Assistant City Manager
Holly Prather, AICP, Community Development Director
Prepared By: Mike Tylka, AICP, Senior Planner
Date Prepared: October 26, 2018
PURPOSE
City staff is requesting that the City Council amend the current sign regulations within Section 17-20-100 ("Sign Code") of the Municipal Code. The recommendation by City staff is to repeal the current Sign Code and replace it in its entirety with new text, tables, and graphics. City staff has been working with consultants from the law firm of Murray Dahl Beery & Renaud LLP and Plan Tools LLC to draft the proposed amendment. As City Code can only be modified via ordinance, City staff is bringing forward the code amendment in ordinance form to be voted on by the City Council.
STRATEGIC FOCUS AREA
Recognizable and Well-Planned Community
BACKGROUND
Brighton's Land Use and Development Code contains provisions for signs that were last amended in 2017 to remove references to political signs prior to the upcoming local elections. This was done with the expectation that the rest of the Sign Code would be revised shortly thereafter. The proposed amendment is necessary in order to eliminate content-based regulations that were deemed inappropriate by the US Supreme Court via its ruling in Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015). The decision found that the city's sign code was unconstitutional as it contained content-based regulations and, therefore, was invalid. In their decision, the Court noted that a variety of signs are problematic as the applicable restrictions and requirements typically relied upon the subject matter or message of the sign itself. The Court ruled that regulations related to the content or type of sign are presumptively unconstitutional, as the same relate to core ...
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