Council to vote on sign variances, discuss regulations for food trucks

The City Council will be voting on a number of sign variance requests from local businesses at its Aug. 27 meeting, but council members did not seem pleased with some of these requests during discussions at the Aug. 20 special issues committee meeting.

The following businesses have requested variances from the city due to either the total number of signs or the square footage they take up: Beauty Trends, 201 Green Springs Highway; Tire Engineers, 215 Green Springs Highway; Smoothie King, 428 Green Springs Highway; and Maya Mexican Restaurant, 308 Oxmoor Road.

The size of a crown on the Smoothie King logo and the Tire Engineers' new Mavis Discount Tire sign both came under particular scrutiny by council members. The Mavis Discount Tire sign would take up about 198 square feet on the side of the building, while the city's allowance for a single attached sign is 50 square feet.

Special issues committee members also noted that Tire Engineers has a pylon sign, which the city would prefer to replace with a monument sign (a solid base instead of a pole base) and the company has requested multiple variances before.

City Council President Bruce Limbaugh said many of the sign variance requests the city receives are "out of control" and that a request for a sign four times larger than what's permitted in the city ordinance is “not what we should be considering.”

All of these requests will go before the full council for a vote next week.

The council's public safety committee is also continuing to consider changing its pop-up vendor ordinances with restrictions related to food trucks. The discussion arose because of food trucks that have permanently parked in lots along Green Springs Highway, including setting up tents or other semi-permanent structures.

The county's Health Department requires food trucks to move daily, returning to a sanitization station each night to ensure health standards are met, Homewood codes officer Scott Cook said. The only compliant food truck they know of in Homewood, Cook said, is the Taqueria Guzman truck that parks for lunch on West Valley Avenue.

City attorney Mike Kendrick said Homewood's pop-up vendor ordinances were written before food trucks became popular and don't deal with the specific issues of food truck health and safety hazards.

Council members are considering changes to the requirements to receive a business license as a mobile food business, or the possibility of limiting the time they can stay in one location or the set-up of tents, tables and other structures. Discussion of the ordinance will continue at the next public safety committee meeting.

The first presentation of the proposed fiscal year 2019 budget will also be held on Aug. 27, as well as a discussion of using permeable surfaces in construction and the maximum total space on a lot that can be covered by a home, business, driveway, parking pad or other "solid" surface.

The committee meetings on Aug. 20 discussed a number of projects under consideration around the city, including:

• New stone monument signs for the city's entry points, or "gateways," and repair of some existing ones. Discussion will continue while the city beautification board narrows the scope of where the signs would be placed and what work would be needed.
• A city traffic study bid was awarded to Volkert Engineering.
• ADA-accessible sidewalk ramps on Central Avenue and 29th Avenue South.
• A survey of Reese Street to see if it can accommodate sidewalks and parking spaces on the south side of the street and a single lane of traffic, eastbound from Central Avenue to Linden Avenue, on the north side of the road.
• Discussion of making Little Oxmoor Road a one-way westbound street between Northmoor and Oxmoor roads, to reduce cut-through and speeding traffic as well as recent car break-in crime. Police Chief Tim Ross said making the street one-way could reduce some of those crimes, but the proposal is complicated by part of Oxmoor Road being in Birmingham city limits and the one-way street would require the intersection at Oxmoor Road to be reconfigured. The public safety committee plans to do more research before making a decision on the proposal.
• A shelter to cover an existing bus stop on 18th Street South.