By Chandler Inions

chandler.inions@salisburypost.com

CHINA GROVE — China Grove officials approved amendments to the town’s Unified Development Ordinance during the town council meeting last week.

The move amends the town’s rules regarding such elements as a sign’s placement, illumination and size. Before the town staff’s recommendation, China Grove’s planning board conducted workshops and courtesy hearings regarding wall signage.

The town attorney also provided an overview of the current legal landscape and the challenges the court system is still working through. One of the legal references included the Reed v. Gilbert case, in which the Supreme Court held Gilbert’s sign regulations, which grouped and regulated signs by categories (e.g., political and ideological signs), were content-based because they targeted signs based on the sign’s communicative content.

In that case, the Court outlined valid content-neutral distinctions allowing the local governments the ability to regulate based upon the following:

• size

• building materials

• lighting

• moving parts

• portability

• location — private vs. public property

• fixed messages and electronic signs

• restriction of the number of signs

• on-premises vs. off-premises signs

• time restrictions

“The purpose of this amendment is to bring our temporary signage agreement into consistency with content-neutral provisions,” said Teresa Barringer, the China Grove planning and development director.

Revisions to section 14 are designed to create a designated section for all temporary freestanding signage while ensuring compliance with the content-neutral provisions. That section includes signage during election periods as well as temporary commercial, residential and development signage.

In that section for temporary freestanding signs, the proposed amendment removes campaign signs as permitted in the town-controlled streets rights-of-way. One sign per street frontage will be permitted for the “duration of development, vacancy or sale.”

Added to the chapter on signs is language permitting fence wraps that display signage being affixed to perimeter fencing at a construction site, a temporary freestanding sign no larger than 6 square feet per street frontage on developed and occupied residential property when the owner or occupant is opening the property to the general public. One temporary freestanding sign no larger than 3 square feet per street front will also be permitted.

Some of those changes include additional language concerning electronic message centers (EMCs). They are not permitted within 100 feet of residential use. Messages are to remain fixed for at least 20 seconds and include an instant transition.

The changes can be found on the China Grove Town Council’s website under the Jan. 2 meeting packet.

Landscaping
and buffering

With ever-increasing industrial development, China Grove officials will occasionally revisit zoning restrictions, including landscaping and buffering requirements for new construction.

Town staff recently identified a need to revise the current regulations to provide additional separation of industrial development with external zoning boundaries and to provide larger buffers when adjacent to single-family residential uses.

Per Barringer’s department’s recommendations, the town increased setback requirements for Light Industrial and Heavy Industrial zoning and designated the existing buffer requirements from 30 feet to 50 feet in the former zoning and 50 to 100 feet in the latter zoning.

The town council approved those changes as well.