Salt Lake County Council may ban new billboards

New billboards may become a thing of the past.

The Salt Lake County Council plans to revise its sign ordinances by the end of the summer, and a likely outcome could be a prohibition on any new billboards in the unincorporated county. The only exception would be if a sign owner takes down a sign that is not in an appropriate area, or removes a dilapidated sign.

"We have ample signs throughout the unincorporated area," Councilman Russell Skousen said. "I'd like to see the existing signs distributed into certain areas, and no signs in the other areas."

Prior to the sign law revisions, however, county residents will probably see a rash of new signs, especially along 3300 South and 3900 South. The county has already given permits to 26 new billboards, and because the permits were issued before the county council enacted a moratorium on new signs last month, the council has decided to allow all of those signs with permits to be built.

Twelve of the permitted signs will be built by Houston-based RTM Media, which sent a letter to County Mayor Nancy Workman and the council threatening to ask for as much as $1.6 million if their signs were not allowed. Calls to RTM were not returned.

Skousen said that the council did not have a choice but to allow the signs to be built, since the companies with permits had a "vested right" to build them. Because of those permits, however, the council has taken notice of the sign ordinance.

Councilman Steve Harmsen said the revisions to the sign law are a great step that should have been taken two years ago, when he and Councilman Jim Bradley proposed revisions. The biggest sign problems in the county can be traced back to a "liberalizing" of the sign ordinance in 1996, which he said allowed the double-decker billboards and put more towering advertisements into residential areas.

"We need to go and eliminate all of the mistakes," Harmsen said.

Along with prohibiting new signs, Harmsen said he would like to take the more significant, and expensive, step of buying the leases for any signs that the council does not like. By doing that, they would get rid of signs that should not have been allowed without having to allow more signs. He would also like to limit the height of signs, which would discourage any more billboards.

Regardless, the council is going to be faced with a problem when the signs with permits are built.

"We're going to have to be creative," Harmsen said. "People aren't expecting more signs on 3300 South or Highland Drive."

Councilman Joe Hatch said that new billboards should be allowed if the owner will take down an existing sign that is undesirable. Otherwise, the county will find themselves watching signs deteriorating in residential neighborhoods because the owner has no reason to remove or repair them.

"We don't want to say this is it, no more billboards," he said. "You don't want to take away the incentive to take down ugly billboards."

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