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Windsor Interim Planner Maxie Brown let the town’s Planning Commission know April 23 that work would be starting on an update to Windsor’s sign ordinance.

She said that she and Windsor Town Manager William Saunders had been discussing the ordinance.

“It does need to be updated,” she said. “First and foremost, the sign ordinance needs to be revised to comply with the 2015 Supreme Court case Reed v. (Town of Gilbert), which unanimously invalidated their sign ordinance. (Gilbert treated) signs differently based on their content.”

Justia, a website that provides summaries of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, noted that Associate Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion of the court on this 2015 case, and that opinion began as follows: 

“The town of Gilbert, Arizona (or Town), has adopted a comprehensive code governing the manner in which people may display outdoor signs. … The Sign Code identifies various categories of signs based on the type of information they convey, then subjects each category to different restrictions. One of the categories is “Temporary Directional Signs Relating to a Qualifying Event,” loosely defined as signs directing the public to a meeting of a nonprofit group. … The Code imposes more stringent restrictions on these signs than it does on signs conveying other messages. We hold that these provisions are content-based regulations of speech that cannot survive strict scrutiny.”

Brown said most communities have updated their sign ordinance since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision, but she noted it was her understanding that Windsor had not. 

“The court provided guidance for localities to amend their sign ordinances to go toward content-neutral options for regulating signs and regulating based on which signs are allowed in which zoning districts, size, building materials, lighting, moving parts and temporary signs,” she said. 

To Windsor’s planning commissioners, Brown said town staff’s thought was that in the coming months, “we would start reviewing other community sign ordinances that have been updated to reflect this court case and start to draft some amendments and, with the help of the town attorney, eventually get something for you to look at.”

She granted that the overall task was going to be “kind of a journey, a process.”

“But it’s something that we think we should start, and we wanted to let you know early on,” she said. 

And she encouraged commissioners’ participation in the process by highlighting a way they could potentially contribute.

“If you have any issues with the sign ordinance, things that have come up, please let us know so that we can take that into consideration also,” she said.