STARKVILLE — The city will continue with its sign ordinance as-is.
Due to an ordinance approved by the board of aldermen in 2011, all pole signs throughout the city must come down and in turn can be replaced with a strictly-coded monument sign. After discussion Tuesday, the board decided to maintain the ordinance citing aesthetics and equity as its reasonings.
Defined in the Starkville Code of Ordinances, a monument sign is any ground sign supported totally by a solid base of masonry, brick or other material, whose base is not less than 80 percent of the total sign area width, while a pole sign means any sign erected, constructed or maintained for the purpose of displaying outdoor advertising … affixed in the ground or on the ground and not attached to any part of a building.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said the ordinance’s intent regulates signs across town, making them more uniform and helping the overall aesthetic of the city. The outlined monument signs must be no larger than 80 square feet and no taller than eight feet in height and be at least five feet away from the nearest road.
“I believe it improves the aesthetics of the community,” Spruill said. “I think having all of those signs willy nilly up in the air over the years, there were no sign restrictions whatsoever. It did not improve how our community looks and I think aesthetics are important.”
Spruill said she sent letters out to all businesses not in compliance with the ordinance two weeks ago to notify them they had until May 5, 2022, to take down their signs. Although the ordinance was passed in 2011, these businesses were only notified when the board first enacted the ordinance and when Spruill sent out letters a few weeks ago, but she said there has been much discussion over the years surrounding the topic and believes all businesses were aware of this regulation.
One hundred and eighty letters went out to businesses throughout the city with pole signs that need to come down before May, while approximately 80 to 90 businesses have already complied with the ordinance over the last 10 years, Spruill said. If by the due date businesses still have pole signs up, they will be subjected to municipal court and a potential fine of up to $1,000 per day.
Ward 1 Alderman Ben Carver lobbied to remove the portion of the sign ordinance requiring businesses to take down pole signs, claiming he believes the current board should fight for business owners who may be struggling financially. He also said he does not believe pole signs are detrimental to the city and help create the college-town aesthetic.
“This was a long time ago,” Carver said. “I think it was poor policy to defer it down to 2020, actually 2021, but this is something this board didn’t enact or the previous board, and I’m not so sure the majority of this board feels the same way. … I think we should look at this subjectively and not just what the previous board said. This is an issue of today.”
His proposed motion of removing the pole sign regulation ultimately failed after he was unsuccessful at receiving a second to the motion.
Ward 2 Alderman Sandra Sistrunk, who voted in favor of the ordinance in 2011, said taking pole signs down will help with safety throughout the city. If a person is driving down Highway 12 and paying attention as they should, she said, they will not be focused on reading signs high in the air but on the traffic at hand.
“These signs are remnant of the time when Highway 12 was a highway and not an urban street,” Sistrunk said. “Over the last decade, and certainly things have sped up over the last few decades, the nature of that road has changed. It’s much more of an urban road that requires signage that’s visible to someone that’s keeping their eye on the road in front of them.”
Ward 5 Alderman Hamp Beatty said he supports removing pole signs but believes businesses need adequate time to eliminate them. He moved that if businesses are already under contract with sign companies when the ordinance goes into effect in May, they are not subjected to court hearings or fines.
“I just know we’re nudging people — it’s been 10 and a half years — we’re nudging people to do this. The end goal, the end goal, is to get the old signs up and get the monument signs up. In the process of doing that, I don’t want a business, someone of good faith that is going through the process … and it didn’t get done (in time), I don’t want them to be penalized.”
His motion also failed 4-3. Sistrunk said Beatty raised a valid point, but companies have seven months until the effective date and believes this issue should be addressed in the court process and let a judge handle situations such as those.
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