Scenic Houston recognizes that a strong sign regulation ordinance is an excellent tool for economic development. We are vigilant in our research and comparative analysis of sign regulations and litigation across the country to ensure that the City has a strong Sign Code as it relates to both on-premises business signs and off-premises signage (billboards).
Improving the visual impact of on-premises business signage. Scenic Houston believes businesses need appropriate signage for purposes of identification and wayfinding. Too many signs per business, inappropriate spacing, disproportionate heights and poor use of technology can all hurt, rather than help, a business’s growth. Scenic Houston’s on-premises sign priorities include the regulation of electronic changeable message signage, reducing sign sizes and heights, and decreasing the number of abandoned signs. Scenic Houston is at work overhauling the on-premises sign sections of the Houston Sign Code, in cooperation with the business, sign industry, neighborhood and scenic leaders who comprise the Mayor’s On-Premises Sign Task Force.
Strengthening the off-premises sign regulatory language in the Houston Sign Code. Scenic Houston has enlisted one of the nation’s few legal experts who specializes in billboard litigation and First Amendment free speech disputes, to review and recommend provisions that would strengthen the billboard sections of the Sign Code. Scenic Houston wants to ensure that Houston’s code is among the best-written in the country. As a result of this expert analysis, Scenic Houston endorses the following five proposed revisions, which preserve the no-new-billboard provisions of the ordinance which have been in place since 1980, avoid sign-related lawsuits, and make the city more visually appealing.
- Allow noncommercial messages to be substituted for commercial messages.
- Add a severability clause---if any part or section of the Sign Code is ever declared unconstitutional, then it can be severed without impacting the validity of the rest of the code.
- Mandate that an advertiser is not a sign operator for purposes of enforcement.
- Modernize Sign Code language to pull all current case law and definitions into the code. This ensures that the Sign Code will not inadvertently extend to signage that is not intended to be regulated.
- Provide additional legal remedies for certain actions--abatement, disgorgement, loss of license, inventory requirements, etc.