Albany sign ordinance public hearing a sign of indifference

ALBANY — The public hearing called to discuss proposed changes to the city of Albany’s sign ordinance turned out to be a sign of indifference.

Two business owners — one of them an Albany City Commissioner — showed up to hear Albany-Dougherty Planning Director Paul Forgey’s discussion of changes that could become law at the City Commission’s business meeting Tuesday night.

“Here’s the first negative: There are more than 4,000 small businesses in Albany, and only two people show up,” Ward III City Commissioner B.J. Fletcher, who owns the Open Roads and BJ’s Buffet restaurants, said. “This could potentially impact a lot of our businesses, but only a couple of people felt the need to be here. That’s disappointing.”

The other businessperson who attended the public hearing, Becky Elder, who with her husband Eric owns and operates several Liberty Tax Service franchises in the region, expressed concern over the city’s efforts to keep her costumed “wavers” from directing traffic to her businesses.

“This is our business, our livelihood, and those wavers bring in 70 percent of our traffic,” Becky Elder said. “Our company has never had an accident involving any of our wavers, and those are jobs that are putting people to work, keeping them off the welfare rolls.”

Forgey noted that the city’s sign ordinance allows “human signs” so long as the so-called wavers are located on the business’s property. Elder said she’s been warned about employees trying to attract customers to Liberty offices on U.S. 82 in East Albany and her location at the corner of Jackson Street and West Broad Avenue downtown. In both instances, the employees are not on business property.

Fletcher suggested that Forgey work with the Elders to find a compromise that would allow them to keep their wavers in East Albany but not in the downtown historic district.

“We want to work with our small businesses,” the city commissioner said. “But, as Mr. Forgey said, we have to regulate things a little more closely in the historic district.”

Among the changes Forgey discussed at the public hearing were two suggested by the Albany City Commission: that business owners be allowed to appeal a dilapidated sign designation and that multiple-message signs be allowed to change every 10 seconds rather than the 60 allowed under the current ordinance or the 30 seconds suggested by a Sign Ordinance Task Force that met last spring.

Other changes recommended by the task force include:

— Maximum fee increase from $40 to $80;

— Limiting additional opening and closing signs to 30 days for openings and 60 days for closings;

— Allowing nonconforming historic signs under certain circumstances;

— Allowing additional billboards in C-2 and C-3 districts;

— Allowing rigid banners to be displayed for 21 days six times a year;

— Removal of the three-year amortization requirement for nonconforming signs.

Fletcher asked if Forgey, whose office will start directing part of Code Enforcement operations under a restructuring plan being considered by the city, could have officers on duty evenings and on weekends to curtail illegal signage.

“Some people wait until 5:01 to start putting up illegal signs because they know no one’s on duty,” Fletcher said. “If you had an officer working 5 to 10 (p.m.) and on weekends, you could stop some of this.”