08-1237 Animated Signs and Electronic Display Type SIgns

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traffic safety, and that signs which divert the attention of the driver and occupants of motor vehicles from the highway to objects away from it, may reasonably be found to increase the danger of accidents, and agrees with the courts that have reached the same determination [see In re Opinion of the Justices, 103 N.H. 268, 169 A.2d 762 (1961); Newman Signs, Inv. C. Hjel/e, 268 NW. 2d 741 (N.D. 1978); Naser Jewelers, Inc. v. City of Concord, New Hampshire, _F. 3rd _,2008 WL 162521 (1st Cir. 2008)]; and WHEREAS, the City Commission is mindful of the warnings from various studies regarding the effect on traffic safety of electronic, electronic changeable message and tri-version signs discussed in the September 11, 2001 report sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration entitled "Research Review of Potential Safety Effects of Electronic Billboards on Driver Attention and Distraction", and therefore, wishes to clarify its prohibition of these sign types; and WHEREAS, the City Commission finds and determines that the City has consistently adopted and enacted severability provisions in connection with its Code provisions and that the City Commission wishes to ensure that severability provisions apply to its land development regulations, including its sign regulations; and WHEREAS, the City Commission finds and determines that the City's sign regulations are concerned with the secondary effects of speech including but not limited to aesthetics and traffic safety, and are not intended to regulate viewpoints or censor speech, and for those and other reasons that the foregoing proviSions are not subject to, or would not fail, a "prior restraint" analysis; and WHEREAS, the City Commission finds and determines that the Code's severability clauses were adopted with the intent of upholding and sustaining as much of the City's regulations, including its sign regulations, as possible in the event that any portion thereof (including any section, sentence, clause or phrase) be held invalid or unconstitutional by any court of competent jurisdiction; WHEREAS, the City Commission finds and determines that under Florida law, whenever a portion of a statute or ordinance is declared unconstitutional the remainder of the act will be permitted to stand provided (1) the unconstitutional provisions can be separated from the remaining valid provisions, (2) the legislative purpose expressed in the valid provisions can be accomplished independently of those which are void, (3) the good and the bad features are not so inseparable in substance that it can be said that the legislative body would have passed the one without the other, and (4) an act complete in itself remains after the invalid provisions are stricken [see, e.g., Waldrup v. Dugger, 562 So.2d 687 (Fla. 1990)]; and WHEREAS, the City Commission has determined that there have been several judicial decisions where courts have not given full effect to severability clauses that applied to sign regulations and where the courts have expressed uncertainty over whether the legislative body intended that severability would apply to certain factual Ordinance No. 08-1237 Page 3