CADILLAC — Several Cadillac residents spoke out Tuesday during a public hearing, saying they believed proposed changes to the city’s temporary sign ordinance may infringe on their First Amendment rights.
Council was considering changes to the sign ordinance in response to complaints of “sign proliferation” in residential neighborhoods, especially during the 2020 election season.
Another reason they were considering a change was to bring the city in line with a Supreme Court ruling on the matter that required signs not be regulated based on content but rather on “size, place and manner.” The city’s current sign ordinance does regulate signs differently due to their content such as real estate signs, political signs, and trailer/mobile signs, etc.
Essentially the ordinance amendment places all temporary signs into one category and then establishes regulations regarding size, placement, and number of signs.
During public feedback, residents objected to a few specific points about the proposed amendment, including the limitation on the number of signs, the distance between signs and size of signs.
Resident Glenn Kangas said he’s had various signs in his yard for a number of years but never received a complaint about it until this year. Kangas said he currently has a white flag in his yard signifying the U.S.’s “surrender to the Taliban.” He said he also has 13 smaller flags on his property in honor of the service members who died during the Kabul airport suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
He commented that the proposed size limitation of 4 square feet per sign is “not enough for me to express my opinion.”
“If you take away my freedom of speech, where do I go from here?” said Kangas.
Resident Justin Eckelbecker commented that council was on “dangerous ground” with constraining the number of signs people can put up and implored them to “consider the consequences” of such changes.
“I think this might stifle political speech,” Eckelbecker said.
Another person asked for clarification about flags and whether or not they would be affected by the ordinance amendment.
City legal counsel Cody Mott said there currently is “no legal guidance” on the difference between flags and signs.
“I don’t have a clear answer from a legal standpoint,” said Mott, who added that any enforcement of a sign ordinance pertaining to flags would be up to the city’s interpretation of the ordinance.
Cadillac City Manager Marcus Peccia commented that the city could go down the road of regulating flags, although past attempts by cities to do so largely have been overturned in court.
For the purposes of the discussion on Tuesday, Peccia said the ordinance in question didn’t specifically address flags and suggested council focus on the types of signs it did directly regulate.
In response to feedback from residents, council members Robert Engels, Tiyi Schippers, Stephen King, and Mayor Carla Filkins said they agreed the proposed limitations on signs were too severe in some respects.
Schippers commented that if there’s a requirement of 10 feet between signs, does that mean people with larger yards have more opportunity to express their political viewpoints?
At the same time, however, council members also agreed that the intent behind the ordinance change was to put a dent in the city’s blight problem, to which sign-cluttered yards have contributed in past years.
“I thought this was going to be a step in the right direction,” said council member Bryan Elenbaas in regard to the ordinance change.
As a compromise between the goals of the ordinance and feedback of residents, council voted unanimously to increase the number of signs people can have in their yards from the proposed four to six; reduce the distance between signs from 10 feet to 2 feet; and reduce the required distance between a sign and the city right of way from 10 feet to 6 feet, or if a sidewalk is in front of a home, along the edge of the sidewalk.
Peccia said in the near future, the city would issue a press release detailing the changes to the ordinance and how they’ll affect residents moving forward.
