Sign Issue Leads Planning Commission to Demand ‘Cease and Desist’ Compliance

Since August 2009, town staff said the Rite-Aid Pharmacy on Queen Street has continued to repeatedly violate town regulations by advertising sales on a digital sign outside the store.

If it happens again, the sign could be permanently turned off.

The Planning and Zoning Commission demanded Tuesday night that the company take action to correct the ongoing problem and submit a letter promising that software will be adjusted to prevent sales from running on the digital sign, otherwise the town will take action to make sure that the sign will no longer be active at the .

“We are simply trying to maintain a specific look and feel in town that has been set by our regulations and if we ignore this issue, then it opens the door for other, potentially bigger problems,” said Commissioner Paul Chaplinsky.

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Town regulations currently prevent electronic and digital signs from showing commercial advertising such as items on sale from being displayed. As part of a planning approval granted to Rite-Aid Pharmacy three years ago, the company was to refrain from using the same digital sales banner used at other stores.

Mary Savage-Dunham said the company has repeatedly failed to comply with the regulation, however, and it has led to five separate complaints filed by residents or business owners in the community since August 2009.

The sign first began displaying weekly sales in August 2009 and corrective action was taken at that time to eliminate the sales banner, she said. It didn’t end there, however, and the town has since had to issue cease and desist orders in July 2010, July 2011, November 2011 and again in April 2012.

“It’s been an ongoing issue and it’s time to resolve this once and for all,” she said Tuesday night.

The sign is only supposed to display the time and temperature, information that is usually shown on the signs aside from the noted instances according to Rite-Aid manager Janine Uznanski.

The problem lies in the fact that the digital signs are set by the company’s corporate offices, she said, and the local stores do not have the ability to change the content on the sign once the weekly sales are set. She said that she has spoken with company officials and this is something that has just “slipped through the cracks.”

“It has not been a constant problem. The company updates the sales weekly and we are talking about a handful of instances here where the sign was activated for some reason,” she said.

Planning members said they aren’t making the request to be petty, but instead to make sure that the regulations are met in order to guarantee an even playing field for all companies and stores in Southington. If the town made an exception here, it could open up the door for many other companies to argue they should have the same opportunity, they said.

Commissioner Steve Kalkowski said the burden isn’t on the town to make sure the regulations are met.

“We are asking you to go back to corporate and ask that comply with these regulations or we will have to keep the sign off. It’s not our responsibility to do that – it’s your responsibility for that to happen,” he said.

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