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Stafford's Date published: 8/14/2007
by Hugh Muir
Next month the Stafford Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on an ordinance aimed at making significant changes in what kinds of commercial signs can be put up along the county's highways and byways. The proposed regulations are the result of questions raised late last year by the Planning Commission when it noticed that three large electronic billboards--large, colorful LED-type signs--had appeared in the county. This new technology took official Stafford by surprise. Two thoughts leapt to the planning commissioners' minds: blots on the landscape and distractions to drivers. In December, the planners asked the supervisors for directions on what should be done. In February the board replied that it was a complex issue. There had been no significant changes in sign ordinances in the county in decades. Meanwhile, a rapidly developing Stafford had blossomed with signs. The supervisors asked the planners to come up with proposals. The Planning Commission turned for advice to the Virginia Department of Transportation, which is in charge of all the public roads in the state. Through the winter and spring and into the summer, the planning staff, the supervisors and VDOT kicked around a number of ideas, held public hearings and proposed changes. Finally, in mid-July, an ordinance emerged. It goes to the supervisors in September. It pretty much rewrites the old rules. The principal proposals deal with billboards--those huge signs common along America's highways for nearly a century. But the ordinance also deals with large business signs and, for the first time, model home signs, which have become a growing presence as housing developments spring from fertile former farmland. First, the billboards. Erecting new billboards has been forbidden since the 1980s, when beautification was in vogue and legislation to that effect swept the nation. The principal targets on the roadside were the big signs. Stafford and others passed ordinances forbidding new ones. The laws "grandfathered" existing billboards. They could stay and be kept in repair, but they could not be moved or replaced. On the matter of keeping the billboards in good repair, there was a limit on the cost of this maintenance. Advertising companies weren't permitted to spend more than 50 percent of the big signs' replacement costs for repairs. Of course, that meant that environmental groups that wanted the signs down had to wait until they fell down.
It surprises me that Stafford County spends a lot of time trying to control signs while there are bigger issues to handle - Crow's Nest, environmental protection, controlling growth, education, BPOL ect. IMHO Working on these should be their primary concern and not minor issues like highway signs. Reading a changing/rotating sign on 610 is not a problem while going a snails pace in bumper to bumper traffic. Fix the traffic flow throughout Stafford should be the goal.
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