BAY MINETTE – Seeking to prevent a window that would allow billboards to go up in areas where they are now banned, the Baldwin County Commission voted Tuesday to set a moratorium on the signs in city extraterritorial jurisdictions.
An act passed by the Alabama Legislature this year, sets police jurisdictions at the limits in place at the beginning of 2021 and also establishes regulations for how far a city can exercise its planning jurisdiction to enforce subdivision regulations.
Under the law, a city can exercise a planning jurisdiction as far as three miles outside the corporate limits. On Jan. 1, 2023, that jurisdiction will be reduced to a maximum of 1.5 miles.
The moratorium passed Tuesday prohibits billboards in municipal planning jurisdictions until Feb. 18, 2022.
In much of Baldwin County, municipal sign ordinances prohibit billboards. When the legislative act goes into effect, those ordinances will not apply outside the city limits, Matthew Brown, county planning director, said.
“Municipalities can only exercise their municipal police powers now within their corporate limits as it relates to their own ordinances,” Brown told commissioners. “So, the understanding is that is going to bring any of their sign ordinances back into the municipal limits.”
If the county waited until the jurisdictions were pulled back to prohibit the signs, some billboard companies could use the transition period to construct billboards that could not be removed after a ban was enacted, he said.
“This is just to ensure that these protections persist during this phase-in period while we’re trying to get all the details worked out,” Brown said. “We think this moratorium will avoid any unexpected consequences coming in, maybe, a short window of time when we weren’t ready for it.”
He said that some cities, such as Fairhope, have areas just outside the corporate limits where billboards could be built if city sign ordinance authority is removed.
County Administrator Wayne Dyess said Baldwin has had the authority to prohibit billboards in areas under county control since about 2005. Areas in city jurisdictions, however, are not covered by the county bans.
“If for some reason the areas change for the municipal planning jurisdictions, this would open it up to potential billboard construction which had been prohibited for the past 15 or so years,” Dyess said.
Commissioner Charles “Skip” Gruber said the county needs to act now to avoid lawsuits or other problems.
If they pull back with this thing, in accordance with Act 2021-297, it’s going to create some changes and if we don’t do this, we’re going to get caught without an opportunity to look at this,” Gruber said.
