Opinion ID: 2102202
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Heading: Jurisdiction. The dispute as to whether the council or the board has jurisdiction involves the question of whether the sign ordinance is really a zoning ordinance.

Text: Section 364.1 of the Iowa Code of 1983 confers home rule power on cities: A city may, except as expressly limited by the Constitution, and if not inconsistent with the laws of the general assembly, exercise any power and perform any function it deems appropriate of the city or of its residents, and to preserve and improve the peace, safety, health, welfare, comfort, and convenience of its residents. This grant of home rule powers does not include the power to enact private or civil laws governing civil relationships, except as incident to an exercise of an independent city power. Section 414.1 of the Iowa Code authorizes cities to adopt zoning ordinances and, in such cases, requires them in section 414.7 to establish boards of adjustment with power to grant variances in appropriate cases: The council shall provide for the appointment of a board of adjustment and in the regulations and restrictions adopted pursuant to the authority of this chapter shall provide that the said board of adjustment may in appropriate cases and subject to appropriate conditions and safeguards make special exceptions to the terms of the ordinances in harmony with its general purpose and intent and in accordance with general or specific rules therein contained and provide that any property owner aggrieved by the action of the council in the adoption of such regulations and restrictions may petition the said board of adjustment direct to modify regulations and restrictions as applied to such property owners. We believe for three reasons that the sign ordinance comes under the home rule section rather than chapter 414. First is the ordinance itself. It does not deal with zoning, or restrictions of that sort. Its purpose is stated in section 6-7.01 of the Algona Municipal Code of 1978: The purpose of this chapter is to provide that signs and awnings are safely constructed and kept in a safe condition, and that signs shall not be located so as to cause a safety hazard. Its requirements deal with extensions, numbers, width, security of attachments, projections, support, swinging signs, construction, wind stress, placement at railroad crossings and intersections, anchors, and illimination. The ordinance is a typical signboard regulatory measure, as distinguished from a zoning measure which regulates the use of property in designated areas and not necessarily with construction. Indeed, section 6-7.13 of the ordinance cross-references to zoning: All signs and posters shall be located, constructed and erected in compliance with Zoning Regulations. Hawkeye is not seeking a variance from a Zoning Regulation in the city ordinances but from a requirement of the sign ordinance itself. The second reason is historical. Prior to adoption of city home rule, section 368.6(4) of the Iowa Code of 1971 provided that cities have power to regulate and license, inter alia, the construction, location, and maintenance of billboards. This section was separate from chapter 414 on zoning. The General Assembly subsequently repealed the long list of city powers in section 368.6 and substituted general home rule power in present section 364.1. The clear implication is that the General Assembly previously regarded billboard regulation and zoning as distinct subjects. Nothing in the adoption of general section 368.6 in place of the specific items in prior section 368.6 indicates the contrary. Finally, section 414.21 in the zoning chapter itself points in the direction of simultaneous zoning regulations and other regulations. This section provides in pertinent part: Wherever the provisions of any other statute or local ordinance or regulation require a greater width or size of yards, courts or other open spaces, or require a lower height of building or a less number of stories, or require a greater percentage of lot to be left unoccupied, or impose other higher standards than are required by the regulations made under authority of this chapter, the provisions of such statute or local ordinance or regulation shall govern. If any other statute or local ordinance or regulation requires a greater width or size of yards, courts or other open spaces, or a lower height of building or a less number of stories, or a greater percentage of lot to be left unoccupied, or impose other higher standards than are required by the regulations made under this chapter, the other statute or local ordinance or regulations governs. We hold that the Algona sign ordinance is not a zoning measure and that it does not come under chapter 414 of the Iowa Code. This being so, the authority of boards of adjustment under chapter 414 is inapplicable here and the Algona board of adjustment had no jurisdiction in this case. II. Hardship. Hawkeye argues that the record does not support denial of a variance. Apparently Hawkeye relies on hardship for a variance. Whether Hawkeye introduced evidence in the city council hearing of claimed hardshipsuch as necessity for twenty-six foot height for visibility of the signswe do not know. If Hawkeye did introduce such evidence, the difficulty is that it apparently did not make arrangements for a record to be made of that hearing. It admits that it had the burden of proving hardship. Smith v. City of Fort Dodge, 160 N.W.2d 492 (Iowa 1968). City councils in places such as Algona normally do not make a vertaim record of oral proceedings. Parties desiring such a record make their own arrangements. Hawkeye apparently did not do so. A record was not presented to the trial court. Nor did Hawkeye proceed in the trial court under rule 315 of the rules of civil procedure, which allows the court to receive additional evidence for the sole purpose of determining the legality of the proceedings, and the sufficiency of the evidence before the assigned tribunal, board or officer to sustain its, or his action, unless otherwise provided by statute. The city, in answer to the writ, presented all the written records which existed. Those materials do not contain a scintilla of proof of hardship. Hence the record which exists does not establish hardship; on the contrary, as a matter of law hardship is not proved.