P&Z considers rolling back 2025 revision to sign code

A new sign ordinance adopted by City Council last year has had some unintended consequences, and the Springfield Planning & Zoning Commission took a step toward rolling the changes back at its meeting last night.

Justin Crighton, Springfield’s assistant director of planning and development, presented the city’s request to roll back March 2025 changes to city code Chapter 36, Article 9, which outlines requirements for signage.

P&Z voted 7-0 to recommend restoring the old version of code, with two members absent: Chair Randall Doenig and Layne Hunton. The measure is scheduled to be taken up with a public hearing before council June 8.

Crighton characterized the sign code changes as an evolving process.

“We thought we had it correct,” he said. “Once we started implementing it, two things happened: We figured out that a few of the provisions were incorrectly applied, and the promise that the consultant made us of no net impact to the sign regulations just didn’t hold true.”

That consultant was Kansas City-based urban planning firm Multistudio, which assisted the city in updating its land development code, according to the staff report.

Taking the ordinance back to status quo was an iterative process, Crighton said, with planning staff creating a first package of amendments and Building Development Services reviewers adding some more.

“When we began administering Article 9 in April, interviewing actual permit applications, we found a number of places where the adopted text just didn’t match the no-impact promise,” he said.

He said the amendment restores the former regulatory baseline and is not a rewrite or tightening of Article 9.

“It’s not a substitute for a broader stakeholder conversation that the planning staff feels that we need to have with the community about signs in general and how we regulate them going forward,” Crighton said, adding that the return to the former baseline lets the city start with a level playing field.

One problematic revision was in setback methodology. The 2025 revision measures sign setbacks from the property line, but Crighton said the old ordinance – and in every other code regarding setback distance citywide – they were measured from the roadway centerline. Allowable distances to install signage are scaled by street classification, and Crighton noted that measuring from the property line, the method in the 2025 revision, reduced allowable distances.

“The more traffic the street carries, essentially, the closer the sign can be, so that change has a real-world effect,” he said. “Under the property line method, setbacks did tighten some on nearly every street.”

He said the staff noticed the issue right away when considering applications under the new code.

“This is the first indication that we had a problem,” he said.

The prior code also prohibited temporary signs unless they were specifically permitted with a maximum of 35 square feet and a 15- or 30-day duration, with no more than six temporary sign permits per year. The revision permitted 100 square feet and 180 consecutive days, and that, too, would be rolled back. The staff report describes the revision as a substantial expansion that was not part of council discussion.

Additionally, the revision would remove a landscaping requirement that was not part of the previous code.

Rolling back the 2025 revision would also restore wall sign allowances to 3 square feet instead of 2 and again require affirmative maintenance duty and a trigger for enforcement measures after six –months of abandonment.

The change would also restore certain prohibitions, like motion picture projection, searchlights, strobe lights and use of inoperable vehicles as signs.

Several sign categories, among them hiring, directional and political signs, were not carried forward as express exemptions from code requirements in the 2025 revision, and the revision would restore those exemptions.

Crighton said there were also elements of the 2025 revision that did improve the code, among them simplified wordage and content neutrality fixes.

He said signage vendors and applicants were patient and helpful as city staff navigated the process.

The restoration of the original sign code must be approved by council to be put into effect.