The Hutchinson City Council changed the city's sign ordinance on Tuesday.
"In 2018, the City of Hutchinson amended our sign ordinance to be in conformance with a Supreme Court decision, Gilbert v. Reed," said Amy Allison, Senior Planner. "Sign ordinances cannot be content based. They have to be place based. We amended our code to be more reflective of the street which a sign sits on as opposed to the type of use the sign is advertising."
The reason the ordinance was opened back up again was because of a sign at First Baptist Church on Main Street. They wanted a six and a half foot sign.
"Current code, instead of saying that sign's height and area was based off of the street classification, it said any P-I zoning district or use is based off of the standards for a residential multifamily, so the maximum height they could have is six feet."
The change will allow such uses, when along arterial streets, to have height up to ten feet. Ten feet will be the general rule, except on major streets going forward.
"We're changing the maximum height for any signage that would be on a residential street to ten feet instead of 20," Allison said. "That's because we want to make sure that the signage that is on a residential street is more reflective of the character of that street as opposed to more of a commercial or industrial type nature, so our recommendation is to bring that down to ten feet."
However, if someone has an already erected sign that is higher than the new regulations it is grandfathered in.