LAWRENCE: Lawmakers study sign ordinance

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
In the weeks following the New Jersey state Supreme Court’s ruling that a portion of Lawrence Township’s sign ordinance violated First Amendment rights to free speech, township officials have acknowledged the need to change the ordinance.
    Last week, Barnett Road resident Falk Engel stepped forward and offered to help township officials revise the sign ordinance. Mr. Engel is an attorney who specializes in constitutional law.
    The state’s highest court ruled Feb. 5 that the sign ordinance, which bans the use of certain inflatable signs — specifically, a 10-foot-tall inflatable rat used to draw attention to a union protest outside a construction site — is unconstitutional.
    Union members displayed the inflatable rat, which is a commonly accepted symbol of labor unrest, in front of the Gold’s Gym construction site on Quakerbridge Road in April 2005. Inflatable signs, however, are banned under the sign ordinance unless they announce the grand opening of a store.
    Wayne DeAngelo, the business administrator for Local 269 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, was issued a summons for violating the sign ordinance after he reinflated the balloon, in defiance of an order by a Lawrence Township police officer not to reinflate it.
    Mr. DeAngelo was convicted of violating the township’s sign ordinance in Lawrence Township Municipal Court, and appealed the issue all the way to the state Supreme Court after the lower courts — including state Superior Court in Trenton and the Appellate Division — upheld the ordinance.
    At Township Council’s Feb. 17 meeting, Mr. Engel said “we have a chance here to construct a new ordinance (and) to really set a standard for the state.” He handed out a copy of some preliminary proposed modifications of the sign ordinance, which is part of the township’s Land Use Ordinance.
    “We have a duty to protect the rights of all citizens,” Mr. Engel said. “What I drafted seeks to protect the rights of all people to express themselves. This (revision) is a fair amount of work. There are elements of this that I want to get peer review on.”
    “I think at the end of the day, I would like to have a model ordinance that other towns can look at,” he said. “Let’s take a negative and move beyond it. I hope Lawrence will be a ‘shining city on the hill of freedom.’”
    As Township Council listened, Mr. Engel and Municipal Attorney Kevin Nerwinski discussed the fine points of the existing sign ordinance and why the state Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously that it violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
    Mr. Nerwinski said the sign ordinance seeks to ensure public safety and to maintain the aesthetics of the township. Township officials do not want a sign “every five feet,” he said. In the case of the inflatable rat, it was a distraction to passing motorists, he said.
    Meanwhile, Harmony Avenue resident Nick Mellis criticized township officials for their reaction to the outcome of Mr. DeAngelo’s appeal — that they were disappointed in the state Supreme Court’s ruling, especially since it had been upheld by the three lower courts.
    “I am extremely disappointed that any public official — from Maine to Hawaii, from Florida to Alaska — would be disappointed at losing a free speech case,” Mr. Mellis told Township Council. “I would like to question the amount of money spent to defend the undefendable when it was obvious people have a right to protest peacefully.”
    Mr. Nerwinski, the municipal attorney, replied that the lawsuit was a matter of defending the township’s sign ordinance. It was not a matter of defending the right to free speech, he said.
    Noting that township officials plan to revise the sign ordinance, Mr. Mellis said he “can’t wait to hear how you are going to revise the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I’m looking forward to it.”