For city commission and school board elections this spring, Emporia residents will be able to display political signs in their yards as large, colorful or even as mean-spirited as they like.
To ensure free speech, the size of signs will no longer be regulated by the city of Emporia, if the signs are on private property.
Rules still apply for signs on public property, including street corners and the areas between sidewalks and streets that are public rights of way. Signs that create pedestrian or traffic safety problems aren’t allowed.
At the advice of city attorney Blaise Plummer, the Emporia City Commission repealed political sign restrictions from the city’s zoning regulations. The change went into effect Wednesday.
Plummer said a couple of times the city has received complaints about the sign restrictions. In doing research, Plummer said he found problems with it.
“Political speech is considered to be the most highly protected speech,” he said. “When government attempts to regulate political speech, the government always loses.”
The previous ordinance stated such signs shall not exceed 9 square feet in area and must be removed within five days after the election to which they apply.
Rather than wait until the city gets sued over this matter, Plummer said it was better to remove it now.
“Because this has such a high degree of scrutiny in the courts, there’s almost no compelling reason you can make that will result in a court upholding a specific political sign provision,” Plummer said.
Earlier this year Valley Center homeowner Jarrod West put a sign in his yard protesting inaction on a water drainage problem.
Valley Center sued West for criminal defamation. The city later withdrew the lawsuit, but the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on West’s behalf, asking a judge to order the city to stop interfering with his freedom of speech.
Valley Center paid West $2,000 for damages plus $6,000 in attorney fees to settle the case.
Plummer thinks most homeowners are not going to want a huge or offensive sign in their yard.
“A lot of this is self-regulated,” he sad.
Plummer said the local political committees have done a good job sharing the rules about signs.
“In fact they often send out information to candidates about guidelines to using political signs,” he said. “We do sometimes have problems with people coming from out of town that don’t know our regulations, and they take advantage of the fact that the regulations aren’t really being enforced.”
Karen Hartenbower, chair of the Lyon County Republican Committee, said she was surprised the size of the sign will no longer be regulated.
“In the spring election, city candidates may not have big signs but national candidates use those large sizes,” she said. “If people really feel strongly about a certain candidate, they may put it up and not care what the neighbors think.”
Hartenbower said she hasn’t heard complaints from candidates about being limited in sign size.
When the sign question was posted on The Gazette’s Facebook page, responders said there should be no restrictions on type, size or language of political signs on private property.
Xavier Keough said absolutely not.
“That’s what makes America great: freedom of thought, to voice our opinion, no matter how repugnant to others. Once you start down a road of censorship, curtailing civil liberties, where does it end?”
Janet Fish agreed, saying, “maybe anything grossly obscene should not be allowed. But for the most part, people should not be restricted from expressing themselves, even if I don’t like what they have to say.”
Plummer said it may be possible in the future to have some sort of temporary sign regulation without signaling out political signs.
“As long as we regulate all temporary signs in residential areas the same, it would stand a good chance of being upheld,” he said.
Plummer said courts have ruled that the city can regulate signs in certain situations.
“It’s not totally out of our authority to regulate signs when it presents a clear-cut case that it’s in the right of way or creating a traffic hazard,” he said.
Wasp (anonymous) says...
Hope the Phelps clan does not hear about this!! They could ruin it for everyone.
December 27, 2010 at 3:54 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )