The Chesapeake City Council convened on February 18, 2025, for a work session at 5:30 p.m. and a regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chamber. The work session focused on temporary sign regulations, while the regular meeting included a presentation, public hearings on seven items, and new business. A closed meeting was held from 5:00–6:04 p.m. and again from 7:56–8:43 p.m.
A. PLN-USE-2024-031 – Homestead Road Pet Crematorium
B. PLN-USE-2024-044 – Topsail Chiropractic (Level II Home Occupation)
C. PLN-TXT-2024-011 – Amendment to Nonconforming Use Regulations
D. PLN-TXT-2024-012 – South Norfolk Historic District Design Guidelines
E. PLN-TXT-2024-013 – Clerical and Technical Corrections to Subdivision and Zoning Ordinances
F. PLN-TXT-2024-014 – Prohibition of Non-Self-Propelled Commercial Vehicles in Residential Districts
G. PLN-PUFA-2024-002 – Activation of Public Utility Franchise Area at 1640 Battlefield Blvd S
We're going to begin our uh work session, February 28, 2025. We have just one item, Mr. Manager. Maybe two. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, so we've recently had some questions about uh temporary signage, particularly as pertains to uh political signage. Uh we've talked to council about this um periodically over the over the years. Um as council uh recalls uh we've initiated the zoning text amendment to try to address uh an issue that the council brought up last year. Um so we just wanted to quickly go through the state of play right now with um what the rules are, what uh what the kind of legal foundation is for those rules, and then really give you all some time to talk about your desired outcomes from our temporary signage program because if you all agree on a set of desired outcomes, um we can help develop the uh program to implement those outcomes, and we just want to make sure we have clarity there. So, really quickly, I touched on we want to get to council's desired outcomes. We'll talk a little bit about our existing processes. Really, the focus is getting council to have some discussion and get any direction um on those desired outcomes. But we want to start with uh Catherine to give a brief overview of the legal landscape that we're operating under. All right. Um so this all started in 2015. The United States Supreme Court put down a decision in the Reed versus Town of Gilbert case. And essentially the ruling was localities have an interest in regulating the size, the placement, and the number of signs, but they do not have an interest in regulating signs differently based on their content. And that was very significantly significant for a lot of localities across the country because most local sign ordinances did regulate signs differently based on whether it's a political conveyed a political sign, like conveying a political message, then there's going to be special rules for political signs. Are you conveying a real estate sale sign? There's special rules for real estate signs, or you know, garage sales, special events. We had special rules for all these little buckets of signs based on the message that that sign was conveying. And the Supreme Court essentially said that violates a First Amendment, you know, freedom of speech because you're treating people differently based on the message they're putting out to the world. So they said no content-based restrictions, just regulate signs based on the time, place, and manner of the sign. So we went to what we call a location-based zoning ordinance, wherein we have special rules based on where the sign is placed. So if you look in the zoning ordinance, we have a table, all the zoning and the zoning districts are laid out, and there's different rules for the signs based on the district in which that sign is placed. And there's different signs for permanent signs or different rules for permanent signs and temporary signs. Obviously, the difference between the two is a permanent is permanently affixed and is always in place. Temporary signs are not permanently affixed to the ground, and they can only be up for up to 90 calendar days in a year because of the durational limit. Um and then in the table that I mentioned earlier in our zoning ordinance, we do have a permit requirement for some signs based on the zoning district that they're placed, although that requirement is proposed to be removed, and that was on council's agenda next month to remove the permit requirement for all temporary signs. So that is currently where we are, and we are in this place to comply with the mandate of the United States Supreme Court. And council knows uh um or or or if if if you're not aware, we send these rules, and they are that's a lot of rules, but we send them to all candidates in advance of the election, so they get an election package to their campaign uh address to talk about the state of play here in the city of Chesapeake. Um from a desired outcomes perspective. This isn't something that you all have ever like adopted. It's it's what we've gleaned from the conversations that councils had in the past. Um the very reason we have these regulations on temporary signs is to reduce sign clutter. We get a lot of complaints from citizens when we start to have a proliferation of signs, especially um on our major transportation corridors. Um it really got significant during the pandemic. So council a couple years ago asked us to really crack down on it again, and we've done that. Obviously, we we we want our um our processes are built to be legally defensible. We try to make them as clear and as fair as possible, but these are ordinances and they exist in lots of different places and ordinance and policy and practice, and so we we could always do better in in using um more clear language, but we try to do that, especially when we send those those um uh disclosure forms or or uh the the process requirements to campaigns every year. We really want to enforce the rules equally. You've all heard me tell stories about I I have on and on on the same day gotten calls from opposing campaigns saying that we favor the other candidate. We we don't favor any candidate. We're trying to to enforce the rules um equally. Um council knows that we try as with lots of our programs to do this with the lowest possible cost, and so that drives some of the decisions I'm gonna talk about in a moment. And then we really have gentle enforcement. We really are a complaint-based organization where we're not really proactively going out looking for a violation. So again, I'll I'll touch on that here. So we last time we touched on this in any depth was May 2023.