Larry Miller argues over signage

Erik Sine · January 19, 2008

Shain Gillet 17.JAN.08

Davis County Clipper

WEST BOUNTIFUL — They fought to a standstill Tuesday night. And in the end, the issue was sent back for further review. Larry H. Miller and one of his attorneys were present at the West Bountiful City Council meeting to discuss a decision made by the Planning and Zoning Commission to reject his signs near I-15 and 500 West.

“In all my years of doing business and complying with signage sizes, I’ve never run into a signage issue until now,” Miller said. “We feel the code and the decision is wrong.”

The argument was made after the planning and zoning commission declined the use of his signs because they said the signs were too big.

“When we were presented the dimensions, they were a good 30-40 feet too big,” said Commission Chair James Ahlstrom. “It was at that time the decision was made not to pass the usage of the signs.”

West Bountiful’s city code regarding signs states that signage can be no larger than 120 square feet in size, and the total size of all signage can’t be larger than 300 total square feet. But the language doesn’t include whether the sign had to be single or dual sided.

“In regards to the size of the signs, the total square footage of all the signs they showed us was larger than the 300 square feet they were allowed by the code,” said Ahlstrom. “Whether the sign is one or dual sided didn’t make a difference at the time.”

Miller’s attorney, Scott Bates, was also present to discuss ordinances with other cities compared to West Bountiful’s.

“We’ve looked at other cities, and we haven’t found a city ordinance that wouldn’t let us comply with the signs we presented to this city,” said Bates. “So we thought we were in compliance with this city’s ordinance.”

Mayor James Behunin had mentioned there was a “language issue” that needs to be resolved with the planning and zoning commission.

“We need to look further into the issue,” said Behunin. “There’s a lot of language in the ordinances that is vague and needs to be addressed by the commission.”

Other signs were brought into the issue as well, such as the Lowe’s sign and the West Bountiful Commons signs that were thought to be too large according to Mayor Behunin.

“Looking at those signs in regards to the city ordinance, those signs would be too large,” Behunin said. “I don’t see a reason why we can’t approve these signs if they are smaller than those two.”

Briggs also pointed out, in regard to a “one or two-sided” sign, that industry standards say that the size of the signage includes a “per face” language, while West Bountiful’s does not.

“We have looked over several other cities in Utah in regards to their codes and they all say ‘per face,’ or to that effect,” said Briggs.

The city decided to turn the decision back over to the planning and zoning commission with the intention that they will look further into the language barrier regarding the size of signs.

“We need to look further into the issue regarding the language,” said Ahlstrom after the decision. “If it’s a language issue, then we will look into other areas that have signs over what the allotted size and see what we did to approve those signs.”

Larry Miller showed pa-tience after the decision was made by city council to turn it back over to the commission.

“We have time to analyze our situation,” he said. “We hope to hear what the planning commission has to say next week. If we need to hold off on putting up our signs, I’m willing to do so for awhile.”