I always wonder why city leaders are so anal about signage. They put some of their most creatively repressive skills at crafting sign ordinances hostile to private property rights and human commerce. Their ordinance enforcers patrol neighborhoods cracking down, writing up citations so written words are kept to a minimum on the landscape.I often ask who is that demands reigning in signage and promoting near postage-stamp size, boring and information-devoid signs? Cities are so begrudging at allowing signs. Their stinginess serves no one. If signs are so bad, then why can home sales and leasing signs, political signs and rummage sales signs even be allowed? Probably because there would be an ugly outcry if they were banned, as well there should. Certainly cities’ belligerence to signs is really not about creating a pleasing ambiance.Youd think cities were protecting some mountaintop, idyllic scene from sign pollution when they put their controls on what businesses, churches and others want to tell the passing public along plain city streets.A salute to the Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale for successfully getting the Town of Gilbert to back off of its practice of sharply limiting what a church could do to make its place of worship better found. Gilberts Code Compliance Department cited the Good News Presbyterian Church for putting temporary signs out on sidewalks and street corners near its rental site on Saturdays and keeping them there until services were over on Sundays. The congregation has met for four years in Coronado Elementary School, 4333 S. DeAnza Blvd., about a third mile east of Higley Road and midway between Germann and Queen Creek roads. The school is well off the beaten track and deep into a quiet neighborhood. The ordinance dictates that religious assembly signs must adhere to a time limitation of two hours before and one hour after the service. The Good News folks had been placing 17 signs in strategic places near the school. Then in September 2005, the church was cited by the town. It was forced to reduce the number of signs and hours of posting them, down to the legal limit. The Alliance sued the town on the churchs behalf, arguing that the restrictions violated the rights of religious organizations and pointed out a seeming inconsistency whereby political and protest signs can be up in more locations around the clock. Alliance counsel Jeremy Tedesco argued that if the Town of Gilbert allows others to post signs well in advance to express a viewpoint or invite members of the community to attend some type of meeting or event, then the town must allow churches to do the same. Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton approved a request to allow the church to post the signs in a way the code has not allowed. A Gilbert spokesman told the Tribune that the Town Council is discussing amending those policies to accommodate the agreement. Tedescos point is that ordinances cannot place greater restrictions on religious groups than it places on non-religious groups, in keeping with the Constitution.Recently, I found a citation on my own Tempe churchs office door because a volunteer had staked up, at a street corner, this years vacation Bible school banner, a mere 1 by three-foot all-weather vinyl sign. The church was ordered to remove it or go to city offices and obtain a Significant Event Permit for $103, good for just 14 days out of the year. Want to put another banner up for Easter services? $103. Want to put one up for Christmas services? $103. Want to put one up for the womens cookie sale? $103. So much for "free" speech.The church has been at that corner for 46 years, and putting up banners that long, and, I believe, doing plenty of community outreach and good. Now, presumably because one neighbor complained to the city, weve been nailed and are on the citys enforcement radar. Maybe we should get an old panel truck, affix a banner to its side or paint the side with the message, and park it in our lot near the corner.In some live-and-let-live communities of America, houses of worship have signs with moveable letters, often witty statements and lines of wisdom. Or they pitch a concert, preview the pastors weekend sermon title, or give the date of the chili supper or a special speaker coming to town. And banners sprout up for special events without checking in at city hall. But somehow poker-faced folks in city offices, likely taking the advice of the city professionals borrowing and replicating boilerplate best practices from other sterile cities, push their rules through. Like so much that government does, it happens in the vacuum of people not paying attention. We dont challenge proposed and petty rules that lack practicality and common sense, before it’s too late.Heres another thanks to the Alliance Defense Fund for taking on the Town of Gilbert. And in Tempe, I plan to continue to ask the question, If all the public signs serve a purpose, why such restrictions on messages placed on private property? Government can always set the rules because they can.

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