Signs of the Times - December 2017 - 36

INDUSTRY TRENDS
The International Sign Association

DECEMBER 2017 EDITION

Lessons Learned from Sign Code Work in 2017
Chumita Hurd understands boundaries are
important. When she first started working for
her father's sign company at age 19, he
gave her one piece of advice; he told her to
keep work at work and home at home.
Understanding those boundaries has helped
her not only succeed in the industry for the
past 37 years, but it's also been a strategy
she uses when working with competitors to
improve sign codes throughout her area.
"When you can get owners to set aside their
competition and work together as a team to
accomplish something, you get better sign
codes," said Hurd, who now works at N. Glantz
& Son as branch manager. "You just have to
get in a room and build trust. You don't talk
about your individual businesses, but you
come with one goal in mind."
That goal is to improve the environment for
sign codes-and it is paying off in Arizona,
where Hurd works, and throughout the U.S.
Here are a few important takeaways from
recent issues.

"When you can get owners to
set aside their competition
and work together as a team
to accomplish something, you
get better sign codes.
You just have to get in a
room and build trust. You don't
talk about your individual
businesses, but you come
with one goal in mind."

Lesson Learned:
Longtime Work Pays Off

Lesson Learned:
Everyone's Involvement is Key

While the Goldwater Institute-named after
longtime Arizona senator and Republican
candidate for president Barry Goldwater-
got its start in Arizona, it considers itself a
national organization fighting to ensure
constitutional freedoms are enforced. So
when it filed suit against two cities in Arizona,
it set off "a greater urgency to rewrite sign
codes," said Arizona Sign Association Executive Director Patti King.

While ISA and ASA have teamed up to educate
and assist planners, there is another important
element: involvement from sign, graphics
and communications professionals. No one
knows that better than Jude Cook of Cook &
Company Signmakers. He has served for a
decade on the Citizen Sign Code Committee
in Tucson, Arizona.

This urgency offered a chance to capitalize
on relationships that had been honed over
decades. "They trust ISA and ASA to not be
self-serving, but to work to create a sign
code that benefits everyone," King said. "It
does open up doors for us to make changes
that benefit the sign industry, and cities are
able to see that benefiting the business
community benefits the city. Everyone wins."
The work currently being done is in cities
like Phoenix-the fastest growing city in the
U.S.-and smaller places like Surprise and
Peoria. No matter the size of the community,
though, ISA and ASA-along with members-
come together to work on improvements.
King said that ASA has long worked with
planners, including exhibiting at the state
conference of the Arizona Chapter of the
American Planning Association. When the
Reed v. Town of Gilbert ruling came down in
2015, ASA and ISA hosted the first professional development workshop on the topic.
"We keep our visibility very, very high to serve
as a resource," King said. "They know and
trust that we're doing it for the right reasons
and not to manipulate the system. It's a very
positive relationship."

Out of the committee came an opportunity
to serve on another committee, this one
comprised of the citizen and zoning committees.
"We went through the code line by line and have
put together a revised sign code draft," he
said. "Anytime they came up with something
new, I emailed it to ISA's James [Carpentier]
to read over. That's been invaluable. When
you have ASA and ISA behind something,
you get a little more clout."
Granted, spending the time to work through
the various issues with the committee has been
"brutal" for these past few months, he said.
But he hopes in the end that the positive
sign codes will clear up some confusion and
continue what he sees as a "better effort at
trying to work with the industry and the
business community, which is an improvement on what we've had in the past."
Ultimately, though, he believes that participating in the process will benefit the industry
and the business community. "There were
times that there was no benefit at all for me.
I care about what we're doing and I understand.
If nobody is going to step up, who do you
have to blame?"

STATS * FACTS
Federal regulations cost the U.S. economy over $1 trillion a year, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. ISA research shows the average sign,
* * * ISA REPORT / December 2017

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