Like the call to order PBD Planning Board meeting, held at 24 Low Street, PBD, Massachusetts.

Agenda for Thursday, April 16th meeting.

It's held at 7 p.m.

at the Wigan Auditorium.

At this time, I'd like to suspend the public hearing, the planning board meeting and enter into a public hearing.

Notice is hereby given that the PVD Planning Board and the City of Peabody will conduct the public hearing on Thursday evening, April 16, 2026 at Wigan Auditorium City Hall Peabody, to consider admitting the zoning ordinance of the City of Peabody as follows.

Be it ordained by the City Council of Peabody, Massachusetts, the following.

Section one by amending Section 11.6 entitled billboards.

Section two by amending Section 11.6 billboards as followed.

Section three, all ordinances are plans, ordinances inconsistent here are hereby repealed.

Section 4 of the ordinance shall take effect as planned by law for the remote purpose of using zoning platform.

Please visit WWPD Mass.gov calendar on homepage or contact city clerk's office.

At this time, uh Kurt Balavance will present uh thank you, uh Mr.

Chairman.

Uh my name's Kirk Bellavance.

I'm the director of planning and community development for the City of Peabody.

Uh what the board has before them this evening is a uh zoning amendment for 11.6 billboards.

Uh in 2017, uh the city council had voted to uh eliminate that section of the zoning ordinance, uh the billboard section, because they were prohibiting uh billboards from being erected in the city of Peabody.

Uh since then, our city solicitor had made a recommendation that we uh put the billboard language back in modified uh so that it met the criteria of what's existing out there now.

Uh for example, the we lease billboard space, uh billboard property to allow companies to come in and place billboards, uh one uh for fifteen thousand dollars per year for static and twenty-five thousand for uh uh electrical billboards.

So the the city has those uh lease agreements in place, um, but there's no terms uh outside of the the contract with them.

So this language is drafted by the city solicitor uh in order to uh have that properly done with through the zoning ordinance.

Um as it lists in the uh sections, the purpose of why we're doing it, the applicability uh it mentions the uh static and digital billboards, and then the term of the permit, which is the most important piece uh that allows um any special permit holder of a billboard, uh if they abandon that they're subject to a fine uh after 30 days.

Then if the if they continue to do that, it's up to $300 per day uh until such time the uh billboard is removed.

So that language wasn't in uh the ordinance, so they wanted to place that in this for protection for the city.

And then they also uh added on the prohibition, so there'll be no more uh no additional billboards constructed in the city of Peabody.

Uh so again, this the purpose of that is to um re-establish some language in the zoning ordinance to provide some protection in for the city.

Happy to answer any questions.

At this time, I'll take some questions from the board.

Dr.

Otto.

Thank you.

All we have, Kurt, is a section two that gives just the titles of the sections, purpose applicability, term of permit and prohibitions.

So there's more in this that we don't have, is that correct?

Uh, correct.

Uh each section is um there's additional language as part with part of those sections.

Yes.

Seems to me that should have been in the advertisement as well.

Any other questions from the board?

Mr.

French.

Is there an easy place that we can get that language to look at there's several different ways.

Uh, we can get you photocopies immediately.

Uh you can go online uh to the clerk's office.

Uh, they have that posted.

Um those are the two most convenient ways.

Any other questions from the board?

Yes.

Uh the the fine, the three hundred dollar fine.

Does that start after the thirty days, or does it go all the way back to the first of the the thirty days?

Uh typically the uh so this would fall into the building department.

Typically, what they would do is they would um provide notice uh to the proper the billboard holder, the person that the company that owned the sign, they would notify them first and say if they didn't remedy the situation, then at a certain date they would start to find them.

Mr.

Chairman.

Yes.

Um, I just find it a little difficult to make a decision on this when we don't have any information about any of the amendments.

We just have the you know the purpose applicability and so forth, like Dr.

Otto said.

It's it's I'm not confident making a decision on something that I don't know what I'm deciding on.

I yeah, I understand.