 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
County sees smaller road signs ahead
By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer The familiar roadside signs on poles hawking McDonald's hamburgers, Ford automobiles and Texaco gas would be illegal to erect under an ordinance Pasco County is close to considering. Fed up with visual clutter on highways such as U.S. 19, Pasco officials plan to ban not just pole signs, but also roof signs, advertising balloons, portable signs, banners and pennants. The new rules, which county commissioners could consider as early as their Sept. 11 meeting, also would chop the maximum allowable size of exterior wall signs in half. The county's new preference is for monument signs, the less obtrusive, ground-hugging signs required just over the border in the New Tampa area of Hillsborough County. In fact, New Tampa was the model for Pasco's ordinance, Assistant County Attorney Barb Wilhite said. In Pasco's version of the ordinance, monument signs for a single business couldn't rise higher than 11 feet. The ordinance, which Wilhite cautioned is a first draft that needs more tinkering, steers clear of regulating sign content, even eliminating long-standing restrictions on strip club advertisements. Greater flexibility also would govern government, political, charitable, real estate, construction and holiday ornamental signs. What's more, the ordinance would do little to clear existing roadside clutter. Pole signs already in place could stay, provided businesses register them within three years of the ordinance's adoption. New rules would kick in if a business owner substantially changed the sign. "Obviously, there will be grandfathering," Wilhite said Tuesday. "But exactly what it will look like, I'm not sure yet." Here are some of the ways Pasco plans to cut signs down to size: -- Monument signs could be no bigger than 300 square feet or 1 square foot for each foot of road frontage, whichever is less. -- Most monument signs would be limited to 11 feet in height; but if shopping center tenants combine their signs, the monument could rise up to 20 feet. -- Signs would have to stand at least 10 feet back from the edge of the highway right of way, double the distance in the current law. -- Wall signs for each business could not exceed 150 square feet or 11/2 feet for each foot of building frontage. Pasco's existing rules allow 300 square feet. -- Unlike under the current law, businesses could not seek variances to relax the rules. The sign changes were driven mostly by groups such as Scenic Pasco, which found an ally in County Administrator John Gallagher. It was Gallagher who insisted that Pasco's ordinance mimic New Tampa's, worried that a commercial explosion in places such as Wesley Chapel will leave communities littered with eyesores. The issue came to a head last year with the construction of a 40-foot pole sign in front of a SuperTarget at Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and County Line Road. About a mile north of SuperTarget, developers of the Shoppes at New Tampa recently erected two 30-foot-tall pylon signs to advertise a Publix supermarket and Beall's department store. The SuperTarget, Publix and Beall's signs would be illegal under the new rules. Finishing the ordinance proved to be a sluggish task, dragging on for more than half a year, until the county hired a Fort Lauderdale law firm last month to fine tune the rules for $28,000.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Pasco Times Letters |
