Burr Ridge Debates Sign Rule Exceptions

BURR RIDGE, IL – After a half hour's debate last week, Burr Ridge trustees seemed settled on a new temporary sign policy.

Their thought was that the village should bar all signs from public rights-of-way all the time. Period. No exceptions.

But then resident Edward Downs asked for an exception for real estate and estate sale signs during the weekends. Now, the village has a weekend exception for temporary signs in rights-of-way.

Trustees said they understood the request. Then village attorney Mike Durkin weighed in.

"Banning everything but one form of speech is completely illegal," he said.

He said the village could continue to allow temporary signs during the weekend.

But the village's administrator, Evan Walter, said he feared allowing signs during the weekends would result in people putting up hundreds of signs and then leaving them.

"It's happened in downtown Burr Ridge," he said.

Despite the attorney's advice, trustees continued to ask whether they could permit certain temporary signs on weekends – banning political signs or only allowing directional signs for real estate open houses.

Walter responded that when the village must read a sign to determine whether it's legal, then it has crossed into unconstitutional territory.

Later in the discussion, Mayor Gary Grasso appeared to agree on allowing temporary signs in public rights-of-way from 9 a.m. Thursday to 6 p.m. Sunday. That would make up nearly half the hours in a week.

When Grasso was told that could result in the proliferation of political signs, he changed his mind.

"If that's the fact, I'm sorry about the Realtors and my daughter is a Realtor, and I'm sorry about the estate sales and I'm sorry about the garage sales," the mayor said. "We should be consistent and allow nothing in the right-of-way... I just don't want to open the door for political signs all over the place."

The trustees voted unanimously for no signs in the rights-of-way. They directed staff to draft an ordinance.