Huntingburg settles dispute over residential signs
The Huntingburg Common Council approved settling a case with a city resident regarding the proliferation of signs on their property violating the city’s unified development ordinance.
At the June 13, 2023, council meeting, a resident petitioned the Huntingburg Council to address the proliferation of signs at a residence on U.S. 231 on the city’s south side. You can read the story below.
On June 27, the City of Huntingburg’s Code Enforcement Officer issued a written complaint to the resident regarding the number of signs in the yard.
According to the city’s unified development ordinance, a residentially zoned property can have up to two temporary signs on display and those signs cannot exceed 16 square feet per side. This property sometimes had between 12 and 16 temporary signs on display, including signs within 10 feet of the adjoining property line, which is also prohibited by the city’s unified development ordinance.
By ordinance, once the written complaint was made, the homeowner had ten days to appeal the notice to the board of zoning appeals or comply with the letter.
In this case, the homeowners continued to display more signs than allowed by the city ordinance and did not file an appeal with the board of zoning appeals. On July 10, the city began assigning a $100-a-day fine against the homeowners for noncompliance.
On July 31, the City of Huntingburg filed for an injunction against the homeowners in the Dubois County Circuit Court. The injunction requested the court to order the homeowners to bring their property in compliance with the city ordinance regulating the number of signs allowed on a residential property and pay the city fines that had accrued.
The homeowners countersued the city, claiming the ordinance was in violation of their Constitutional right to free speech and that the city was targeting their property due to the political content displayed on the signs. They also presented evidence that the city was not regulating other properties similarly.
City Attorney Phil Schneider said the defendants’ evidence included images of other residential properties with more than two political signs on display. However, during discovery, it was determined that the images presented by the defendants were taken within the window around elections when the city could not enforce its sign ordinance.
State law mandates that signs cannot be regulated within 60 days before and six days after an election. During the course of assigning fines to this homeowner, in compliance with this law, the city stopped fining them during that regulated period in the most recent municipal elections from September 8 to November 12.
According to Schneider, since the Supreme Court has upheld the rights of cities to regulate the number, size and placement of signs, once the defendant couldn’t show the city arbitrarily regulated the sign ordinance, their counterargument lost momentum.
Tuesday, the defendant’s attorney and the city attorney came to an agreement that the city would release the homeowners of their financial obligation regarding the fines if the homeowners would bring the property into compliance with the two-sign limit under the city ordinance, and the homeowners would drop the countersuit regarding the Constitutionality of the city’s sign ordinance with prejudice, which means they can’t bring another action against the city regarding the Constitutionality of the unified development ordinance with relation to signs.
The council was asked to approve releasing the homeowner from the responsibility of paying more than $10,000 in fines that had accrued, which they did unanimously under the condition the property would be brought into compliance by the end of the day on December 25.
