Both the cities of Issaquah and Sammamish discussed and voted on necessary changes to be made to their public signage code during the week of June 18.

Picking up on a postponed agenda bill to reexamine certain permitted land uses in Central Issaquah, the Issaquah City Council unanimously voted to direct staff to bring them a report on what needs to be changed in the updated code.

Keith Niven, director of economic development and development services, explained the proposed agenda bill and the work that would go into updating the development and design standards at the council meeting on June 18.

When council was working on one of the related moratorium work items, he said, they asked about having administration go back to look at the existing Central Issaquah land use codes to see if there are any allowed uses, such as public signage, that may need to be changed or adjusted to fit with the changes done in the moratorium work.

In the staff report, Niven wrote that updating the public signage code was needed to comply with the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision Reed v. Town of Gilbert. Council member Victoria Hunt asked about the reasoning behind this note and Niven explained that the courts had decided that a city cannot regulate its signage based on content.

He said that the focus of the court’s decision was around cities that allow political signage in the right-of-way. A church placed similar signs around the city advertising services, but the town of Gilbert cited the church for various signage infractions. That case eventually made it up to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that the restrictions in the town’s signage code applied based on the communicated content of the sign and the court ruled that cities cannot base signage policy on the content of a sign.

“Our code needs to be changed,” Niven said. “Because right now it allows for political signs in the right-of-way as a temporary sign, but would not allow a business or church, similarly, to do the same thing. We know we need to make that code change.”

In addition to the code changes, Niven said the city has multiple signage codes in the city for locations like Talus, Issaquah Highlands, Old Town, Central Issaquah and the rest of the city.

Niven presented three options to council to address the land use code updates. The first was to pursue the change this year, which would entail moving around other currently schedule projects. The second would be do do the work in 2019, and the third would be to wait until the council does a bigger look at Central Issaquah, which “probably won’t happen until 2019 or 2020,” he said.

In discussion, council member Stacy Goodman said that, as the person who suggested this topic in the beginning, the intent was to have staff look at and analyze the changes they feel would need to be made before bringing it to council as a work plan. She recommended the agenda bill be changed so that council would not approved the work plan right away, but instead directs staff to bring forward a memo of the main changes they believe necessary for future discussion by council and the Planning Policy Commission.

The rest of the council agreed and unanimously passed the amended motion for staff to bring back an analysis memo for further discussion, before beginning any of the work plans.

Sammamish

The city of Sammamish was further down the line in its work plan and adopted a revised signage code as recommended by the Planning Commission, which does not allow electronic reader boards (ERBs).

Also citing the Reed v. Town of Gilbert case, Sammamish staff said that the existing sign code had several content-based regulations similar to the Gilbert and when given the opportunity to change the code to comply with the court decision, also took on other updates to the municipal sign code.

The primary element discussed by the council at its June 19 meeting was ERBs. A public hearing regarding the ordinance was held at the meeting and a member of the public expressed support for non-commercial ERBs and cited their use for schools and churches as very beneficial to those organizations. Eastlake and Skyline high schools already use these boards, she said, and asked if it was possible to allow the use of ERBs on 228th Avenue Southeast from just south of Skyline up to Southeast 8th Street and have it only allowed on the east side of the road.

Council member Tom Hornish asked legal council Charlotte Archer if that would be possible. Archer said that making a distinction between commercial and non-commercial is legally risky, but the severity of the risk is unknown as the Supreme Court has refused to take a up a case that would provide clarification.

Staff brought council three versions of the ordinance. “Broad ERB” allowed the use where any other permitted freestanding signs would go. “Limited ERB” restricted their use to only 60 percent of the permitted areas. “No ERB” would not allow their use.

The council as a whole was in favor of the use of ERBs by schools and recognized their benefit, but could not legally allow use based on the user and had to base its justification on geography. Under the Limited ERB ordinance, a total of 18 parcels in a close cluster would be allowed to use them, not counting the Town Center, to which the ordinance would not apply.

Council member Chris Ross said that by adopting the limited ordinance now there would be uses that would be grandfathered in if they ever decided to change it. By adopting a no ERB policy, they could further explore possible ways to allow fewer uses of ERBs in the future.

The council adopted the”No ERB” version of the ordinance in a 6-1 vote with council member Ramiro Valderrama voting against, as he had expressed his support of the limited option.

Changes to the Issaquah land use code that governs public right-of-way signage, such as political signs, are being discussed by the city council for a possible decision later this year. Sammamish approved their own changes, and added that Electronic Reader Boards would not be allowed.File Photo