West Cook News

The Burr Ridge Village Board recently debated a change to Village ordinances regarding signs in the village.

During a Dec. 12 board meeting, Burr Ridge resident Krystle Johnson Downs voiced her opinion on the zoning change. She asked that the code not be approved as rewritten without adding a clause that protects the interests of residents and community members, as such signs have done much good for the community. She cited the resurgence of a little league club and many successful garage sales, neighborhood events and even house sales credited to such signs.

The current ordinance would ban signs from being placed on the right-of-way, but they are still allowed on private property. The Village also is not allowed to regulate content of the signs, although they can regulate their size and placement. The ordinance would apply strictly to public land and the rights-of-way.

"So the short answer is yes, we have a permission to allow signs right now, but staff has never encountered an example of something which was truly compliant to every element of the sign ordinance," Burr Ridge administrator Evan Walter said in the meeting. "So because of that, you have a de facto ban on signs in the right-of-way. Now if you had a thousand examples in the last five years, not one complied by technical definition. So it became an issue of staff communicating to persons who sought to seek signs or sought to understand how they could seek to place signs. It became really an educational issue of them not understanding or not being willing or unable to comply with all of our sign regulations. So we were eventually left with the situation of picking up many, many signs every single year."

The discussion arose because the language of the sign ordinance is very complicated and difficult to comply with, with specific hours regarding signs on public property as well as rules about written names, contact info and contacting local residents as well.

Following the debate, the Village Board decided to pass the motion to ban signs on public properties as a cover-all regulation.