## Facts

- Creative Displays, Inc. owned and operated billboards in Boone County and the City of Florence, Kentucky.
- Florence adopted a zoning ordinance in December 1962; Boone County adopted a zoning ordinance in February 1966.
- In September 1966, a county-wide planning unit was formed: the Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission, covering Boone County and certain municipalities.
- In October 1966, the Commission adopted a “comprehensive plan” that consisted solely of the preexisting Florence and Boone County plans.
- Kentucky’s planning statute (KRS ch. 100) requires a comprehensive plan to include, at minimum, goals and objectives, land use, transportation, and community facilities components.
- It was undisputed that the separate Florence and Boone County plans, considered individually, satisfied the statute’s substantive elements.
- Creative Displays challenged the validity of the comprehensive plan and the billboard-regulating zoning ordinances, alleging statutory noncompliance and constitutional violations (Ky. Const. § 2; U.S. Const. amends. V, XIV).
- The trial court dismissed the complaint, finding the ordinances constitutional and duly enacted; the Court of Appeals affirmed on a “substantial compliance” rationale.

## Issues

1. Whether the county-wide planning commission complied with KRS chapter 100 when it adopted a county-wide comprehensive plan by merely combining preexisting city and county plans.
2. Whether zoning ordinances regulating billboards are valid when their statutory predicate—an adopted comprehensive plan under KRS chapter 100—is defective.
3. Whether the billboard regulations violated Kentucky and federal constitutional provisions, if statutory defects were dispositive.

## Decision

- The Kentucky Supreme Court granted discretionary review and reversed the Court of Appeals.
- The Court held the Commission’s county-wide “comprehensive plan,” which only aggregated preexisting plans, did not satisfy KRS chapter 100’s statutory scheme for county-wide planning.
- Because the comprehensive plan was invalidly adopted, the zoning ordinances grounded on that process lacked statutory validity.
- The Court resolved the case on statutory grounds and did not rely on the asserted constitutional theories.

## Legal Principles

- Under KRS chapter 100, a county-wide planning unit must adopt a comprehensive plan in the manner required by statute; compliance concerns both required plan content and adoption by the proper planning unit through the statutory process.
- Substantive adequacy of separate, preexisting municipal and county plans does not cure the failure to adopt an integrated county-wide comprehensive plan as required for a county-wide planning commission.
- Zoning ordinances regulating land uses, including billboards, depend on a valid comprehensive plan and lawful statutory enactment; defects in the planning foundation can render ordinances unenforceable without reaching constitutional claims.
- Courts may decide land-use disputes on nonconstitutional statutory grounds when statutory noncompliance is dispositive.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated the county-wide comprehensive planning action because merely compiling existing local plans did not satisfy KRS chapter 100, and it reversed the judgments upholding billboard-related zoning ordinances that depended on that defective planning process.


Creative Displays, Inc. v. City of Florence, 602 S.W.2d 682 (Ky. 1980)