Flowery Branch Council looks at LED sign amendment

FLOWERY BRANCH - Flowery Branch City Council Wednesday approved on first reading an amendment to the city sign ordinance to regulate LED billboards; the question was how long the electronic displays should last.

Councilman Craig Lutz said the issue is safety; how distracting to interstate motorists passing by Flowery Branch are 10-second LED sign messages? He proposed at least 63 seconds.

The state minimum is 10 seconds; that's what the amendment calls for. City Attorney Ron Bennett said LED signs are so new he's not sure how much longer than 10 seconds would draw a lawsuit risk from the sign companies.

"I can say by going by the state minimum, I think you literally zero out your risk because if the state says this and nobody's challenging the state and we're consistent with the state, that's where it's closest to zero," Bennett said.

"As it begins to change obviously the higher the interval, it's related to the increase in risk," Bennett added. "The less messages LED sign companies can sell, the less money they make and the higher the chance they're probably going to want to litigate about whether that's an unreasonable regulation."

Council members Mary Jones, Allen Bryans and Pat Zalewski indicated they did not want to risk a court fight over sign message duration that could cost the city and that the city could lose.

Council approved a two-week extension of the sign moratorium to allow more time to study and adjust the proposed sign ordinance amendment.

LOOKING AT SALARIES

City of Flowery Branch employee wages would be going up if City Council accepts the results of a classification and compensation study.

City Manager Bill Andrew said the average employee's pay could go up just over six percent to compete with neighboring cities and counties.

"The city spends a lot of funds to train our employees and to work with them and we wanted to be more completitive with our environment," Andrew said.

The salary plan includes annual cost of living adjustments and pay increases based on merit.