Sign Variance Meeting

Every time I am in class, or read a newspaper, or crack open a policy book, it astounds me how involved the government is in daily life. I am not saying it's overall bad -- it really depends on the situation. But, it always amazes me how often government determines the outcome for mundane, and even unnoticeable situations. Case in point: sign variance. I went to a meeting about people that want to place signs (on private property) that are not up to government regulations, or violate some sort of code. In order to put up any certain sign, you have to run it by the government. At least that is the case in Phoenix.

In the meeting, two particular cases caught my interest. The first was the ASU's downtown nursing building. A beautiful building. Downtown Voices, an activist group, thought the architecture of the building closed the development off to the citizens (I guess the main entrance is facing one direction, and the people believed it should be facing another direction to have the feeling it is more open to the public). In order to appease the citizens' demands, ASU created a new gateway to their facility, which would entail the canopy and the sign "ASU" to go over into the public-right-of-way. The motion was passed without any sort of controversy. Another group was a development company who owned office space next to the highway. They wanted to place a big sign (10 feet tall, and the maximum is 6 feet tall) for one of their renters who, they claimed, would not feel as inclined to rent out the office space if they could not have a larger sign. After going back and forth with the council (I thought he was going to loose, by the tone of the meeting) he was granted the sign permit, so long as his other renters did not demand signs as big.

I am not saying these outcomes are good or bad. It just blows my mind sometimes how much the government is involved. I guess it is necessary, in this case, because if people were allowed to set up signs as big as they wanted, then their neighbors would put up even bigger signs, and so on it would continue.