TOWN OF PLAINFIELD BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS. June 16, 2008

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1 TOWN OF PLAINFIELD BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS June 16, 2008 The Plainfield Board of Zoning Appeals met on Monday, June 16, In attendance were Mr. Cavanaugh, Mr. Gibbs and Ms. Duffer. ROLL CALL/DETERMINATION OF QUORUM Mr. Carlucci administered the Roll Call. Mr. Daniel said this board is a five member board and to take action on any petition it requires a majority vote of the entire board, which would obviously be three. We have three members here tonight, which means any action on a petition tonight would require a unanimous vote of the members present. If anyone, as a result of that, would like to ask that their matter be continued until more members of the board are available to hear this petition, now is the time to do it. Ms. Duffer said with no one coming forward I would like to do the pledge of allegiance. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE APPROVAL OF MINUTES Ms. Duffer said we are going to waive the approval of the minutes from the May 19 th meeting until the next month. OATH OF TESTIMONY Mr. Daniel administered the Oath of Testimony. PUBIC HEARINGS Ms. Duffer reviewed the Guidelines Governing the Conduct of Public Hearings. Mr. James said BZA , Mary E. Solada, Bingham McHale, LLP is our only case tonight. This is a request for a variance from Article 7.3 to allow an LED changeable copy sign to change messages more than six times per hour for the Stafford Crossing Shoppes retail center at 2230 Stafford Road. Article 7.3 limits the number of times a message can change to six times per hour. I think they would like the LED sign to change about every nine seconds. The Stafford Crossing Shoppes retail center is 26,000 square feet. I believe they can have as many as 15 tenants. I know in the Staff Report I said nine but they corrected me and I believe it is 15 tenants. They have an integrated center sign for the center. This is 250 square feet and 33 feet tall and the sign has nine panels on it for the tenants and then the LED message board makes up about 13.6% of the sign. It is about 34 square feet. Here is the site right here where the shopping center is. Here is Stafford Road and then SR267. The integrated center sign and LED sign is about 500 feet from the intersection. It is zoned in the General! 1

2 Commercial zoning; that is why they can have the big integrated center sign at 33 feet tall and 250 square feet. Right here on the corner is the Indiana Members Credit Union and across the street you have the Monroe Bank and then an empty lot in the Plainfield Commerce Center primary lot. Over here you have two legal nonconforming homes just to the east of the shopping center. In the center each tenant is allowed 10% of the facade and then with nine panels on the integrated center sign with the potential of 15 tenants does this justify the need for the variance? They are requesting a message change of about once every nine seconds. What is the rate of change the board is comfortable with knowing that the sign is about 500 feet from the SR267/Stafford Road intersection? For comparison purposes surrounding communities do not regulate the rate of change like Plainfield does. If not allowed, they would do that with a variance request. What Staff finds most obtrusive and distracting is not the rate of change but how the message changes. For example, a message that changes with lots of motion like an exploding background could be far more distracting to the driver than the instant change of a static message that would be in the blink of an eye. Here is the site plan; the retail center is out here; Stafford Road; the integrated center sign is in this location right here 500 feet from the SR267/Stafford Road intersection. This is a diagram of the integrated center sign. It is 33 feet high and then this is the LED changeable copy sign, which is about 44 square feet. In the Staff Report I believe I said seven feet off the ground but this pylon sign has to be at least 10 feet off the ground. That is the picture of the sign from the SR267/Stafford Road intersection. Here is the LED portion right here. So, with that I will turn it over to the petitioner. Ms. Mary Solada said I m an attorney with offices 2700 Market Tower said with me this evening is Suzanne Gammon who is the representative of the owner and with us as well is Mark King who is the sign contractor who will speak in a moment to his experience with these types of signs, which he has installed for his company all over the Metropolitan Indianapolis. By way of background the Plan Commission approved this center in May of It is 26,000 square feet and is called the Stafford Crossing Shoppes. The site has been approved, as Mr. James mentioned, with a 30 foot tall integrated center sign. We are not aware of any sort of red tagging or anything. We are here on our own volition because we wanted to have the rules of engagement very clear as to our use and operation of this sign. Let me just kind of set out a few facts about this and then I m going to ask Mark to speak of his experiences because I think we all need to be viewing this as how can this sign be operated in the best interest of public safety and that is the number one concern. I think Mark can testify to his lack of negative experiences in that regard. First of all this sign is about 300 feet from the intersection of which I know you all know is an extremely busy intersection particularly because of the truck traffic through the area, which, of course, is the intersection at SR267 and Stafford Road. So, this center is not right on the corner. It is a very attractive center. I think it is extremely well done. I can take no credit for the architecture but I was very impressed by the appearance of it.! 2

3 The proposed electronic message center, as Mr. James indicated, is only about 13% of the entire face of the sign. By way of comparison Marion County permits 40% if an electronic message center is allowed to occur. It allows up to 40% without a variance. So, obviously we are less than 50% of that. Where I think we perhaps have a little disagreement with Mr. James relates how best to present the messages. We think that in every nine seconds makes sense in terms of a scrolling message because essentially it is an enhancement to the center and to the messages of the tenants in that, first of all, you have a center that could have 15 tenants and we have 10 panels and obviously everybody is not going to get a panel. But secondly, as everybody knows, whether it is a Walgreen s or whether it is a school or a CVS these types of signs are prominent in our metro area and often they display information that is of importance to the community. For example, you might see with a pharmacy flu shots. You might see, with a UPS store, get your Christmas packages here by December 15 th. So, we do think that these sorts of signs serve an important purpose and that the public does accept them and finds what they have to say as being meaningful. With that, one of the things that we have discussed with Mr. James and I would like to make the record clear about is that we are very happy to have as a condition of the granting of a variance that we would agree to make up to 15% of our content available for community and civic associations and organizations. So, if the Girl Scouts said we want you to flash the message that our annual cookie drive is in March from this day to this day; go over here and buy cookies, we would do that and we would take up to 15% of our content weekly and allow civic and charitable groups to use that board for that purpose. The only thing that we want to clarify is we are not going to allow political content. I don t think you want that and we don t want that but with that said I m talking about again non-political and civic and community organizations and certainly churches are welcome, bake sale or what have you, we are happy to have that on our board. So, I wanted to make sure the record was clear about that. I also find it interesting that there are actually, and I know Mr. Daniel knows this, there is house and road act from 2007 that addresses the use of quote electronic changeable copy demonstrating that the use is accepted by the State of Indiana. So, there is a law that has been passed that essentially says it is permitted unless otherwise restricted. I think that is probably the best way to describe it. So, this is I guess a statement of intent of our legislature that they have reviewed this issue and have not deemed by the road there to be a material safety issue. I think maybe by going back to a little bit where Mr. James and I perhaps differ is we are not going to have blinking lights. We are not going to have moving copy of a complete message. What we would like to have, and you correct me if I m wrong Mark, is that the message would scroll on rather than flash bake sale Girl Scouts it will scroll Girl Scouts bake sale and it might take a couple of seconds to get that, probably three seconds to get there. We think that is safer and again this is a matter of opinion but we think this is safer because it avoids that sort of pop that might distract somebody where it is a more gradual presentation I should say of the message. The other thing that I think is significant here, and I m sure you have seen these all over as I have, is this board is not particularly tall. First of all it is at the bottom of the panel so it is less distracting than being at the top but because it is not particularly tall there is not a lot of room to do sort of real creative graphics. I m sure you have seen where you have, whether it is a giraffe or somebody at the basketball court or whoever that is doing something real interactive,! 3

4 there is just not enough room for that here. So, their intent is we want to attract attention to this but we want to do it in a way that isn t dangerous but secondly there just isn t a lot of room here or creativity that can be done with this little bit of space. So, I say that because I think it speaks to the desire of the proprietor of the center who I think has far exceeded and set the bar really in a great way for this community in terms of how attractive this center is. I hope it will be the standard-bearer going forward that we have tenants here, we are in a tough economy, we have 15 tenants, we have 10 panels, we have something for it to tell you and we want the community to participate. So, that is essentially what this is about and why we think it is appropriate that the variance be granted. I could but I won t bore you with it but go through what other municipalities do. I understand this might be a case of first impression here and again we are very comfortable presenting this to you as something that this community could be proud of in that again we feel there would be not push-back, if you will, from other citizens of Plainfield. In terms of the Staff Report yes we are willing to indicate that if you chose to grant this, it would have to be in substantial compliance with the site plan file dated May 16 th. We, of course, as I have mentioned, would agree to the 15% use by civic and community groups. Again, where we disagree with Staff though is that we don t quite understand why this could not be transferrable to a subsequent owner. I guess I will nitpick there a little bit. The ownership of this center is a Central Indiana family that owns about 30 centers more or less in Central Indiana. There is no current desire to sell this center; it is a family owned enterprise but I think we are a little reluctant to say five years down the road who knows. If it were sold, it would still be subject to whatever conditions are in the record. Lastly, going back to the fact that as Mr. James has indicated in his report that the static message should not involve flash and scrolling or change of intensity of light. I m now going to turn it over to Mark because I think he is the best person to express why there is nothing wrong with scrolling or even flashing as opposed to the change of message and that pop. So, really I m going to ask Mark to simply testify as to your experiences with these sorts of signs particularly many of which have been in place for several years and any reports that you had about concerns of citizens or traffic accidents or anything like that. Mr. Mark King said basically on this board it was designed for messages. It does have the capability to have animated graphics. But animated graphics are not to be used. So, she does not have that portion of the software downloaded into her system. When it first started out, basically that was the message that Mr. James has seen, it was the up message that the manufacturer put within the sign. So, basically what we are looking at is a message. We are not going to do animated graphics. We have J-pegs. There are 12,000 J-pegs whether it is an American flag or fireworks but it is not animated. Those are included in the software. The messaging and the way that they want to do it going with scrolling is slow moving. We can keep that message within your nine second interval. This board also does time intent. A lot of people look at the sign and for that reason they look for time intent. As a safety issue, we have done several reports. The State of Indiana did a report, which she has a copy of that I sent her. When we did Indiana Downs in Shelbyville, it! 4

5 took a year to get the variance. There were complete State Police reports stating that there has never been an accident due to an electronic board movement. Indianapolis downtown right at the new stadium next to the convention center they have a board and it changes every one to two seconds. We understand that you want to limit messages. This sign can do more and it will help the tenants in there. If anything, a stop message is more of a hazard than a moving message; I m not saying explosions. I don t want to do that and I understand and I will respect what you want in that way but let s say there is a day care in the center and a mother is with her children and she is wanting to know what time or when the day care is going to start. A lot of times if you are doing a message every 10 minutes, your lights are five to 10 so what we are looking at is the fact is if the message is continuous, then she is seeing it and she is on her way. There has never been a report, and I m not using that as an excuse, that says somebody has stopped and pulled over but there has never been a report in the city; that I know of, that because of the sign there was an accident. So, all we are doing is asking similar to what you have granted for billboards and requesting a time to speed up and to allow us to change messages at a faster rate. Eight times an hour you are only allowed to get six messages with the tenants but it is one message; it never changes. This board is not designed for six lines, five lines, seven lines and at 500 feet it is hard to read. The standard right now is a 10 inch letter at 250 feet. Two-hundred and fifty feet is what your eyes can see at 10 inches. This is a picture from the intersection and it is hard to read. So, if we go to a message that we can truly read, let s say they re 12 inches to 16 inches in height, I m only allowed to get eight characters on that board. So, I can t see anything. But if we scroll, and I m not saying whipping it around, a scrolled message similar to what you have seen in other locations; Walgreen s, everybody has been to Walgreen s and CVS, their signs are constant and they change every two to five seconds. The boards that Walgreen s have I sell; they are high-tech boards and they are designed for that. So, as far as changing the message very slowly as a scroll, it gets us more height and we get more visibility. That is one of the biggest reasons that we need the variance is because when we get the height in order to see based on the 500 feet we have to be able to move it. Ms. Solada said so to reiterate the boards that you have been involved with that are similar to this you have not heard from your customers or from the police or any citizens group about concerns about safety or accidents? Mr. King said no actually I have sold boards to the convention center and I have sold boards to downtown. Your interstate boards are on the interstate; if anything is going to cause an accident, it would be those; they move. Mr. Carlucci asked, can you state the name of your company and the address? Mr. King said ISF Signs at 6468 Rucker Road, Indianapolis. Mr. Gibbs said you made a statement that just said that boards on the interstate are more dangerous than this. Mr. King said no; the interstate boards would be considered more dangerous than anything because of the messages that they were doing.! 5

6 Mr. Gibbs asked, is that a fact or an opinion? Mr. King said no that is what I m saying. I m saying if the message was stopped, you would have some time to see the boards. Ms. Solada said as you could imagine any data we give you is from the industry but all we can tell you is that the U.S. Sign Counsel did engage a consultant in There has been a national representative in Congress that concluded that electronic signs do not adversely affect traffic safety. This is why you haven t really seen much new legislation out of Washington these days regulating these. This is why the State of Indiana has not discouraged them by passing a law that says unless they are regulated they are permitted. Mr. Carlucci said you ve talked about CVS and Walgreen s; we have two CVS Pharmacies and a Walgreen s and I don t think we have those on those boards do we? Does anybody recall that? Mr. James said you have to manually change those. Mr. Carlucci said and that is what we permit. Ms. Solada said so in this Town you don t have them; I know that they are in adjoining communities. Mr. James said Ziebart has a new one; it changes six times per hour; probably less than that and the library has one that changes quite often. Mr. Solada said let me just go back to a couple of facts and then I will be available for questions as would Mark. First of all again we are 300 feet from this very busy intersection and as Mark testified, it is real hard at 250 feet to see what is being posted. We think it is better to be low key and have this size of sign than try to come in here with something huge and say well we want people to be able to see it from the intersection. If somebody is interesting, my take on this is that it will get their attention enough to cause them to come by and look and peak their curiosity. They are not going to be making a buying decision right at that intersection. I think that is the way that you want it. Let s go to the findings because we are very mindful that you are required to find a certain findings and in our packet are the findings of fact. Let me just kind of talk about them very briefly. First of all, we know that you are well aware of your charge to find that the variance will not be injurious to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare. Well again the bottom line is there has been testimony today that the variations and the frequency of the message change based on the size of this component we do not believe impacts traffic safety. Number two, use and value of the property adjacent to property according to the variance will not be substantially affected in an adverse manner. Again, we are only talking about 13% of the sign copy area so we think this is a minimal intrusion, if you will, to one sensibilities and at the end of the day when you consider this is a four lane divided road and the level of traffic and the busyness of the area, we do not think this should affect use or value. Number three, the strict application of the terms of the Plainfield Zoning Ordinance will result in an unnecessary hardship. This site is located within a General Commercial District. We! 6

7 propose to use a method of sign that is permissible in Plainfield but it is restricted in terms of how often the message gets changed but again given what neighboring jurisdictions have done on this topic as well as this precise location and its distance from residential areas we think that this sign is appropriate and frankly we think that considering the fact that this commercial center, which are typically located on intersections the fact that it is some 300 feet from an intersection we think supports a finding that there is some amount of hardship involved in how to best draw people to the center, which again is a very nice center. So, with that we can answer more questions; we would be happy to do that; I appreciate your attention this evening. Thank you. Mr. Daniel said in your description and request you indicated you wanted a permit that was an unrestricted variation of the changeable sign. I noticed in Mr. James presentation he talked about nine seconds. Ms. Solada said we have agreed to the nine seconds. Mr. Carlucci said I have a question for Mr. James. complying sign as it is right now? Is this a Mr. James said yes. Mr. Carlucci said I go through that intersection four or five times a day and Mary I am one of those people actually that does pull over because I don t have a 250 foot vision at all, it is a very busy intersection, one of the busiest in the Town. You will see cars backed up; late and early evening people come back in Town and they will be backed up pretty far to the east. I always find it interesting that there is a lot of clutter there to begin with. I always find it interesting that you have a leasing sign right underneath, and this has nothing to do with what we are doing here tonight, but you are trying to draw attention to a business. So, you might want to move the leasing sign somewhere else because what you have done is you are fighting yourself with that sign. But there is a lot of clutter there. It is a very busy intersection because you have a lot of left turn movements there and a lot of people and a lot of truck traffic but it is a very busy intersection and you are pretty far down on Stafford Road before that sign even catches them. The real estate sign has nothing to do with this but I just thought it was interesting; you want people to look at that sign. Ms. Solada said I don t disagree; I kind of wondered the same thing myself. I m going to ask Suzanne, who has full authority in this matter, could you not move that sign farther west end of the site? Mr. Carlucci said I wanted to state that it has nothing to do with this but I m just pointing out that you want everyone to look at the sign and yet you make it difficult for them. Ms. Solada said I mean you are trying to focus on the rent for lease and then you are focusing on the reader board so I hear exactly what you are saying. It is not problem at all to move that sign. Again, I would think that you would want to move it to the west end of the street frontage. Mr. Carlucci said I do appreciate Mary there may be a lot of different adjoining communities that have different rules and I m glad! 7

8 you didn t go through them because what matters here is what Plainfield does. Ms. Solada said absolutely; I understand. I just thought if you had questions but yes I understand that completely. Mr. King said the main thing about this sign is with the way that it is set right now if she wanted to, let s say for instance the lease sign was not there, if she put the lease on, there was just so much time for everybody else. So, this allows us to put other messages on there. Ms. Solada said so you are suggesting that it promoted commerce for the tenants there as opposed to the landlord trying to sell space. Mr. King said correct. Mr. Carlucci said now I m regretting even bringing it up because it is immaterial, which I said it doesn t have anything to do with this other than it provides clutter. Mr. James said I will agree that with this new technology that our ordinance is probably a little bit outdated, six minutes per hour, and in fact we are even going to look at amending that but what we do have a problem with is how it changes. Article 7.3 case states that what is prohibited is any sign or portion which moves or assumes any motion gives the illusion of moving. The American Planning Association didn t just come out with a report about these new LED signs but what is in the industry standard. Some studies were done if they do cause distractions. One of the reports did say that the scrolling does cause more of a distraction because it holds the driver s attention more because he is waiting for it to scroll across to see what the whole message is. If you are waiting three or four seconds to scroll, in that amount of time you could rear-end someone or be in a serious accident. So, there are some reports out there that do report on the safety of these signs. Mr. Carlucci said in your comment about our ordinance in this area may be not up-to-date this is all that the BZA has to deal with is what is in our ordinance now. Ms. Duffer asked, is there anyone in the audience on behalf of the petitioner that would like to speak. Ms. Solada said I will introduce Suzanne Gammon who is a representative of the property owner. Ms. Suzanne Gammon said I think there seems to be a little confusion on the whole idea of the scrolling. My idea of what the scrolling would be would be a very short period of time to scroll and bring the sign up and leave it stationary; it doesn t mean consistent scrolling for the whole nine seconds. I m just saying that there would be a stationary part of each nine seconds; it s not going to be moving for the whole nine seconds. I m just saying bringing it up by scrolling it or bringing it up maybe letter by letter or whatever like that in a two second span and then leaving it stationary for the remainder of that. I think that is much less confusing than to automatically bring up a whole board all at once. I mean to me it seems a little bit more gentler and probably a little bit more appealing. I m not saying scrolling the whole time. So, I wanted to make sure that was clarified a little bit.! 8

9 Ms. Solada said we know we have three members and it takes three yes votes. Is it appropriate Mr. Daniel for us to have informal feedback from the board so we can decide whether we want to take a vote tonight or continue the matter? Mr. Daniel said our rules require that any continuance that is asked for has to be asked for prior to the beginning of the presentation from the petitioner. Ms. Duffer asked, is there anyone in the audience who would care to speak for or against the petition? Being no one coming forward we will close the public meeting portion and open it up for discussion from the board. Mr. Cavanaugh said I have a couple of questions regarding the operation of the board. How will the messages be programmed, who will have control over that and really what will be the content of the messages? Ms. Solada said the sign is operated from our office in Indianapolis so we have complete control there. As far as what they are going to say I m not really sure at this point. When we get a few more tenants, I will have a better idea but mostly it is going to be what is going on with their space whether they are having a special running or if they just want to put their phone number up there or anything like that. Mr. Cavanaugh said so it might be Bob s Shoes nine to five or Bob s Shoes now opened. Ms. Solada said absolutely. Mr. Cavanaugh said so basically sales information. Ms. Solada said that s it. Mr. King said when we were first setting up this sign, UPS is one of the locations there. As soon as they found out the board was on line, they ed Suzanne and then her assistant in the office called me because they hadn t run it yet. They came in with a message that had 10 items on it. I said well let me see what I can do and then that is when we got the phone call and I said we re just starting the board up. Ms. Solada asked, what were some of the messages? Mr. King said they do packaging, they do shipping, they had some costs, they had some specials for the opening, they wanted grand opening. So, we rolled up grand opening for 10 minutes and then we were able to put up another one for 10 minutes. So, it wasn t getting it out the way they wanted. We explained to them what was going on. But one message that they wanted that I programmed in based on the 10 minute intervals was taking three times to get it on the board because of the size. Ms. Solada said I think this is significant because you are teaching Suzanne and her staff how to program it but again the programming decisions at the Suzanne level and not at your level. So, you have the owner making sure the content and the way that it is! 9

10 presented is appropriate. With all respect to what you do I think the owner does take responsibility so I think that is good that we have that information in our record. Mr. Cavanaugh said a question to Mr. James in that regard do we have anything that regulates the types of messages that would be up there? I think on a normal manual changeable copy reader board just about any message goes, i.e., fish filet two for one. Do we have anything that would pertain to this as an automated board? Mr. James said under Article 7.3 the message shall not contain statements or pictures of obscene or of pornographic nature or immoral character. Mr. Cavanaugh said so they could have Bob s Shoe sale buy one get one free? Mr. James said yes. Mr. Cavanaugh and advertise prices and so forth? Mr. James said we did amend the ordinance to restrict prices. I don t think it includes the changeable copy for prices because Walgreen s they display a price for a carton of milk or ice cream or whatever. So, prices are not restricted on the changeable copy sign; it is for an identification sign as part of a freestanding ground sign or a wall sign. Mr. Gibbs said I have a question for the petitioner. I have heard a lot of discussion this evening talking about the safety aspect, driver s safety but I really haven t heard anything from the standpoint of how this ordinance has really created a hardship. I guess from that perspective I understand that it is a beautiful shopping center but what hardship has it created? Ms. Solada said well I think that is a good question. Well you have a center that has been under construction for a year. You have 15 bays and you have one tenant. I think that speaks to our economy right now but it also speaks to the fact that often centers like this are what I always call the corner of main and main, the busiest possible intersection. The fact that this center is away from that intersection does impose a hardship in terms of visibility that tenants seek. Suzanne is the leasing expert but I believe she would view this as a tool in her toolbox to keep the center viable and bring in good tenants and keep those tenants happy and get them to renew their leases and keep customers coming back. I think it is just as simple as that; would you disagree? Ms. Gammon said no. Ms. Solada said one other thing when you are talking about a brand new shopping center and all of the expense that goes into putting in a shopping center like this and you are asking a tenant to pay $22.00 a square foot, they want everything for that $22.00 a square foot. That means they want to be able to advertise on that sign and if they can only have a sign once every three hours because we have 15 tenants and you can only have six signs six times out there on an hour they are not going to be very happy with us. When you see an electronic message center, and granted Plainfield is different than any place else, generally speaking if you see one of those signs, you expect to see more than six messages! 10

11 per hour. So, any tenant that comes in is going to think I m going to be able to have some advertising on there and they are not going to get what they think they were going to get. Be that as it may, because I understand that Plainfield is different, generally speaking we wouldn t address how many times per hour when we are leasing space to a tenant. You could advertise on the sign; does that come with it? Yes, that comes with it but you are only going to get it every other hour and that is just not enough for that $22.00 a square foot. Mr. Cavanaugh asked, were you unaware of the regulations when you decided to go in there? Ms. Solada said no I didn t understand it to be quite as strict as it is. Mr. Cavanaugh said I think that is an issue of due diligence. This board is not responsible for helping Ms. Solada said I m just saying from my average tenant standpoint they are not going to know that either. Granted we should have but they are not going to. Mr. Cavanaugh said Mr. James I have another question for you. If the Plan Commission were to consider changing this section of the ordinance to give more flexibility, do you know if there is any real activity in that regard at this time? Mr. James said we are going to take a proposal to the Plan Commission perhaps in July. They would see the proposal and make some comments and then we would take it to the ordinance review committee. After that we would bring it back to the Plan Commission in August for possible adoption. Mr. Cavanaugh said if the Plan Commission did decide to amend the ordinance, that would become effective in what type of timeframe? Mr. James said if the Plan Commission recommends approval, then it still has to go to the Town Council for approval. Mr. Cavanaugh asked, so perhaps October? Mr. James said yes it could be October. Mr. Cavanaugh said I think that it is likely that the Plan Commission may decide to change the ordinance and thereby give more latitude. From my position here I don t think recommending a variance at this time is perhaps in the Town s best interest because frankly I don t think a variance is warranted in this situation. I don t see a hardship and I think for discussion perhaps continuing this might be good to see what happens after the Plan Commission has time to consider possible revisions to the ordinance. Then perhaps the ordinance may be more acceptable to the petitioner and meet their needs better without the need for a variance or if the ordinance does not get amended or they still feel that they need to have further dispensation to be in their favor, they would have the opportunity to have this case heard again. I don t know if the timing works on that Mr. Daniel but I would be in favor of waiting on the Plan Commission in this instance.! 11

12 Ms. Duffer said I think that is a good point. Mr. Cavanaugh said that being said I am prepared to make a motion. I move that the Board of zoning Appeals continue BZA as filed by Mary Solada on behalf of RiHill, LLC requesting a variance from Article 7.3.K. to allow a faster rate of change than six times per hour for an LED changeable copy sign for the integrated center sign for the Stafford Crossing Shoppes at 2230 Stafford Road. Second by Mr. Gibbs. Roll call vote called. Mr. Cavanaugh yes Mr. Gibbs yes Mr. Monnett absent Ms. Duffer yes 3-ayes, 0-opposed, 1-absent. Motion carried. OLD BUSINESS/NEW BUSINESS None. ADJOURNMENT Mr. Gibbs made a motion to adjourn. Second by Mr. Cavanaugh. Motion carried. Mr. James said before you leave we have two special members in the audience. It is Tom Dombrosky and Kate Singleton; those are our interns from Ball State that are working with us this summer. Meeting adjourned. Ms. Duffer, Vice President! 12