HUDSON — Staff will work with businesses to determine how to update the municipality’s commercial sign regulations to address changes in the types of displays that now appear on merchants’ windows, according to City manager Jane Howington.



City Council on Feb. 19 agreed with Howington’s recommendation to prepare legislation issuing a temporary moratorium on enforcing certain parts of the city’s commercial window sign regulations. Howington said the city would continue enforcing its ban on neon signs. The sign regulations are part of the city’s Land Development Code



Council is expected to vote on legislation imposing the moratorium at its next meeting on March 5.



Howington made the recommendation after the community development department recently sent out letters to four businesses saying that the window clings they were using violated the Land Development Code and requested that they remove the clings or face penalties.



Jody Roberts, the city’s communications manager, said clings are photos or images that some businesses affix to their windows. Roberts noted window clings did not exist the last time the city updated its Land Development Code.



"Right now, we regulate how much of your window can be a sign," said Roberts. "We didn’t want sign clutter in the windows."



Roberts said that since the clings cover the entire window, "they are against our sign code."



The letter stated that failure to remove the clings by March 1 "may result in the issuance of a penalty in accordance to with Land Development Code."



The end of the letter noted the penalty for violating the Land Development Code’s would initially be a $100 fine, but then subsequent violations would be "a penalty of up to $250 and/or up to 30 days imprisonment."



Roberts said the city received "a lot of calls" from "upset" city merchants after they heard from one of the business owners who received the sign code violation letter. This led to Howington recommending the moratorium. Roberts emphasized that the four businesses that received letters will not have to remove their window clings.



Lisa Carson, an owner of Gwendolyn Elizabeth — which is one of the businesses that received the letter — on Feb. 19 thanked city officials for their response to the concerns she and other business leaders raised.



"We were very alarmed when we got the letter saying that we could be facing imprisonment for having some window clings in our business that have been up for a few years," said Carson. "[It] definitely stressed out our family and I can’t thank you enough for your support in reworking this and trying to come to some sort of agreement."



Carson said she was "happy" to work with city officials on crafting legislation to address clings.



"We look forward to the call to help in any way we can," said Carson.



Roberts said the letters to the four businesses were "an error on [the city’s] part to have that as the first communication with these merchants. That was not the appropriate way to approach it."



At the Feb. 19 council meeting, Howington apologized to the businesses that received the violation notices and acknowledged that the city was now taking a different approach.



Howington also clarified that the city’s zoning code "does not allow us to send you to prison. We don’t have that in our zoning code enforcement."



"As soon as we started hearing what was going on, we stopped, we took a couple steps back, realized that that was not the correct process to use, we reviewed that process and changed the process so that won’t happen again," said Howington. "We’ve communicated with the businesses and now we would like to move forward in a collaboration with the businesses to make the sign code the best sign code that we can make to preserve our heritage and our aesthetics, as well as be as viable [and as] business-friendly [a] government as possible."



Council member Alex Kelemen (Ward 3) said he felt council should have been made aware that the city was going to begin addressing window clings.



"We stepped on a rake on this one and I apologize for that for a lot of reasons," said Kelemen.



Council member Beth Bigham (Ward 4) said the process the city used "really caused a lot of outrage and alarm from some business owners and I just want to say we are sorry about that because we want you to stay in Hudson."



Resident Sara Norman said she was "encouraged" to hear about the moratorium likely being rolled out to create an opportunity to craft "some really good rewrites done on parts of our [Land Development] Code."



The moratorium will remain in place until city officials determine how they will address window clings, said Roberts.



Reporter Phil Keren can be reached at 330-541-9421, pkeren@recordpub.com, or on Twitter at @keren_phil.









