Sign Georgia Banking Agreement Simple

Industry sign banking georgia agreement simple

[Music] hello everyone i'm jay lazaga welcome to this installment of lnj's morning break we hope you're well it's been a while we've been distracted a little bit by taking kids to college jason having a beautiful baby girl uh life everything else going on but we're back and we are happy you're here happy you've joined us we um love hearing from you guys thanks to all of you who keep reaching out sending emails or texts to say hi i personally love that i love hearing from you guys i could spend all day reaching out to you guys to say hi we have um an interesting subject today we're talking about something that is honestly already a mess of an issue and going to become even more of a mess of an issue over the next i think right now it's 38 days math is not great but we're going to talk about political and social justice sides and they are this issue is affecting your communities it's it is everywhere we are joined today by jennifer roberts taylor mathis hi guys um they're going to be great give you information today we before starting um we're going to cover a couple things and you know we're very practical in how we advise boards and and what we do and what we say so we're going to cover what is we believe the law in georgia on this issue but we're also going to cover the real world and that is what maybe we should or have to do anyway and some of you may not honestly like the message we give uh that's okay but we want to give you a real advice practical advice so we're going to talk about that today and you guys know if you have questions during these sessions the menu bar uh has a spot for you to ask questions and send them in we may not answer them all during the session but we will get back after uh individually we'll reach out we'll let you know when we can help and answers to your questions we're also going to keep the session open for a few minutes afterwards so that you can ask your questions at the end and we'll get out back to you and we'll reach out with individual answers we also um have a special thing in this one using that same question function we would love to hear from you suggestions on topics that you would like us to cover in upcoming morning breaks and as an incentive we have a treat for you so the three best ideas in topics for future morning breaks is going to get one of our new lnj water bottles we've got leftover bling that we're giving out at some of these sessions the uh come back because occasionally some of them will be super bling um but we'd love to hear your ideas on sessions put it into questions and um and we will pick the three best and send you your rewards already see a couple of notes thank you for the beard i'm not so much growing a beard as not shaving is what it's helping people and i am very disturbed by how gray i am these days but okay honor sessions one quick reminder um visit our website ljlaw.com the resources section many of you have already done it we have tons of information sample documents you know we've had put up a lot related to the covet mess but things related to annual meetings and other things elections use them have your board use those you don't even have to be one of our clients or have your boards be one of our clients we we are so we believe it's so important to be connected to the industry that we get that stuff up for you to use we um so we want you to use that we also have a handout that i believe taylor's going to talk about in this one just as a little treat if you look in handouts and you click on the political jpeg the picture and open that that is exactly why we're having this session today so a little lightness in the session feel free to open that and look at it feel free to explain to your boards why they need to consider this an issue important because that's what's going to happen in our communities okay and again no representation from us about which political candidates are right or wrong the only issue is signs being an aesthetic issue in our community and we're going to talk about that so without further ado we're going to start with jen um thank you guys again thanks jay um hello i'm jen roberts uh i just uh you know first of all sorry i don't think it's surprising to anybody that general restrictions on lawn signage are quite common in communities having restrictive covenants many of you probably have such restrictions now a community association's attempt to enforce those restrictions on political signs and displays that couldn't be a sticky issue and it can also become a heated one um and i'm guessing discussing that a common objection that you'll hear from owners is that the first amendment protects his or her right to post signs um bearing political message their right to free speech street eat free speech on their front lawn or on their front door or over the back gate or wherever it can be seen by the most people is this true yes and no uh yes uh everyone knows you have a right to free speech in this country and it's protected by the first amendment that's applies to political speech and political science what's important for our owners to understand though is that the first amendment protects us from government action the government cannot restrict your speech unreasonably or politically just ban you from disagreeing with them so for example say um you post a political sign in your front yard and the police show up one day and pull it out of your yard and say there's a county ordinance that bans all political signs well then you may have a first amendment issue uh look that and it's a community association just enforcing a restriction on signs in the community the first amendment doesn't apply uh you you only have protection from the government and a community association by and large is going to be considered a private entity it is i mean in most cases they're non-profit corporations they're not government entities now that's not to say that there aren't some instances where you can have a very very large community with a uh powerful association that does kind of operates as a city there's a trash collection security even road maintenance well okay that'll be your exception to the rule and in and if that is the case then you might have to think about the first amendment you know somewhat but in the vast majority of communities this is not a real concern constitutional free speech protections are rarely applicable to community associations um and a second thing owners need to understand and and i think this is most important uh in our line of work here is that people understand our constitutional rights are not absolute they're not limitless if you think about it we go out into the world every day and accept restrictions on our constitutional rights i mean all you have to do is walk into a school airport courthouse well your second amendment right to um carry a gun is limited in those places uh and is your free speech even if you're going to have a protest you have to get a permit just as often we agree to put other limitations and restrictions on our constitutional rights and and that's what happens in a neighborhood that has a restricted covenants basically it's a contract when an owner buys in a community that has restrictive covenants that they will agree to abide by the rules that are in the document that are in the declaration so when you're contacted by an owner who says that the association is infringing on their rights or violating their first amendment rights or banning them from doing something they should be allowed to do well that's not really the issue the issue is that the owner made a promise that he would not post sign in his yard but he may made a promise not to post a political sign depending on the language so it's a matter of whether or not they keep their they're into the bargain uh they keep their promise that they wouldn't do what they said they wouldn't um and so that's the first amendment pretty easy it doesn't apply to uh community associations and it's a contract issue not so much a constitutional issue but as managers and board members you'll also need to be cognizant of state and local laws that might restrict the association's ability to ban owners from posting political signs completely there actually are some states that provide owners with greater rights than what the first amendment does and says that community associations cannot ban homeowners from advertising their political views on front lawn uh texas washington a few others um say you know there can be no complete ban and there are some other states where there's no law but the courts have decided you know what we agree there can't be a complete ban here the state of georgia not one of those states it has not enacted any such legislation currently there's no georgia state law prohibiting or restricting community from banning political displays also the georgia appellate courts are have found that it's okay for a community associate community association to actually ban all signs in a community so you may have a community or or be in a community that has a declaration that with a provision prohibiting ownership correcting or placing signs in the community without approval from the architectural community architectural committee or the board under the current law and president these provisions would likely be upheld enforced by the courts again also there's always and also a caveat or art exception keep in mind more and more states are moving towards you know allowing political speech more freely and against restrictions and or complete ban uh a court may at any time decide that they don't like a a complete ban and um they're also local state ordinances that will affect your um your your restrictions i mean if you have a community that's near a polling place or public right-of-way yet there are some local ordinances that will restrict shines as well um obviously you can't obstruct traffic common sense stuff but if your question coming here today is can you enforce a complete ban on political signs in your community can your current sign restriction be enforced to require the removal of political signs during election season yes and yes uh now the better question like jay said uh might be shouldn't you ban political signs entirely and shouldn't you carve out an exception uh it's political expression in your current sign regulations that's for taylor thanks john hi everybody i'm taylor mathis and i will be covering the second piece of this conversation which is how do we handle political science in our community and how are we going to regulate them we've already talked about the fact that we do not recommend restricting them entirely we know that trends are anti-association pro-social justice pro-freedom of speech freedom of showing our political expression and we want to embrace those we want to encourage owners to participate in the political process and to have those views but to do so in a way that is still in line with our community standards and is not offensive or polarizing we also recognize that while georgia keystone while georgia courts have still upheld community association authority to restrict or ban political science or science in general that may change and even though that may be the case now we want to embrace these current changing trends and allow for flexibility rather than risk having owner pushback with political viewpoints any sort of restriction might create owner friction we do not want to risk litigation for issues involving political signs the time money expenses that we may spend on litigation even if we come out winning are just not worth our time and are better spent put towards something else another possibility is that if we do impose an overall ban on political signs we might end up on the nightly news or on social media as the community that's trying to ban free speech and even though we know that's not the case we do not want that look for our communities so what we recommend is instead creating flexible regulations that are uniformly applied for political signs some of the ways that we can do that are creating reasonable rules that apply to political sides for temporary periods of time just basic time manner place restrictions that allow owners to express themselves politically while also addressing eyesore concerns like those you might see in the handout we know that owners want to participate in the political process and we want to encourage that we do so with these restraints so some examples you might see in a signed policy would be requirements such as requiring the assignments professionally created restrictions against signs that are made on poster board with markers or banning signs that are either have flashing lights or blinking lights or anything that might be a distraction to motorists or pedestrians we might also want to create a policy that requires that the signs are relevant to the ongoing election obviously a sign for a candidate in a local state or presidential election would be relevant we also consider social justice signs to be relevant for these purposes in addition to signs for public questions or referendums but a sign for an election in russia would not be something that would fall in these in these categories we would not consider that to be relevant for our political purposes here we also might think about restricting signs that are offensive or have inappropriate imagery to make sure that we're being mindful of others in the community that might be offended by those signs other restrictions we might consider are requiring the number of signs per lot in a single family community creating a reasonable amount maybe three signs per lot or five or in a condominium association maybe that number is less likewise location of the signs if we are only requiring them in the front yard to be placed in in certain areas of the front yard or in windows or in a condominium association if we are only allowing the signs to be placed in windows or on a balcony likewise you might think about creating location restrictions making it clear that common property and common elements are neutral zones and that no owner can place any political signs in those areas we might also think about just in general how to craft these rules and regulations to fit the needs of our community and what our community members are looking for these will be different for each community but the key here is making sure that the rules that we create are uniformly applied in a way where everyone is able to express themselves politically but in a way that's still in line with our community standards and in a way that is not harmful or offensive the last piece of this and another question that we're getting a lot is what about time restrictions for these political signs if we're going to allow this carve out exception can we create a certain time period and we say yes one of the most common time periods that we see is allowing signs to be placed anywhere from 45 to 30 days before an election and then requiring that the signs be removed anywhere from the day of the election to a few days after maybe seven again these rules and regulations are subject to change based on the community but they're one way for us to implement these regulations in a way that encourages political expression but keeps us from having eyesores on our front yards i'll go back to jay awesome thank you guys that was great so a couple of thoughts uh my thoughts again you know very practical and i think the most important thing to me is the look nobody likes community associations right now we are we are not the most favorite status people and you guys know courts are not always right and they can be political just like everybody else and while we think the law conceptually is very clear that if we if our covenant say signs are prohibited that's enforceable that doesn't mean we don't get skewered by a judge or by media or social media and if we completely prohibit political science and by political science we are talking about both campaign signs and the social justice sides which you know you already have in your communities so we think the better approach is or people want them and they are our constituents make regulations that control it limiting it to just the official signs not the mock d up people going crazy making their own signs but very limited number very limited location specific time period and let them do it and um one of the things that this lets us do a couple people mention this is probably in some of our communities we have let people do things like put up their clemson or university of florida flags or they're you know thanks to the healthcare industry signs we have not enforced and it's a big risk to us if we don't enforce our covenants and our rules and regulations and some boards have asked you know how do we get control and can we stop it now and stop the political signs when a third of our community has these other things and we think one way to do that is make a policy that's going to cover all of it now i said here's what we're going to allow in signs in the time period signs and flags and whatever and all of this ends five days after the election so we completely clean house regain control of everything the social justice side the political signs the graduation signs that may still be up in the communities we think that is the right approach taylor mentioned that um you know there's obviously a difference between subdivisions townhome communities where people have access to yards and the condominiums where maybe they only have patios windows and other things and and some of our documents allow us to regulate even inside windows from what we can see outside we treat that the same the message is the same regardless of what space people have our regulation or policy may be different for a high-rise condo for example than a subdivision where people have front yards but the message we think is still the same that people are going to do it they want they want to do it they're going to do it we're going to have signs let's regulate it instead of trying to fight the world and social media and tv on keeping everybody from putting signs up again though i think the answer is limited in time to limited to official candidates signs the ones you get from them keep it clean keep it easy so thank you guys we had some great topics suggestions for future ones so we are definitely going to give out some prizes to people and we will do that in future ones we hope you come back we love hearing from you we miss you guys so much hopefully the the shutdown of the world the threats to all of us willing soon and we'll be back to some sense of normal where we get to see each other again soon we really miss you guys thanks for joining us lj law resources visit that jen taylor awesome job thank you guys we're going to keep the op this open for another two or three minutes so you can send your last suggestions or questions we'll get back to those of you who we didn't answer but take care stay safe you