Summit County, OH Fence Regulations: Material Restrictions (2026)

Summit County Code of Ordinances Sec. 07, titled Fences, restricts two specific fence types wherever a fence abuts or is adjacent to a sidewalk in unincorporated Summit County. Subsection (a) flatly bars erecting or maintaining any fence charged with electrical current next to a sidewalk, with no exception written into the text; an electrified fence line along a public walk is prohibited outright regardless of voltage or purpose. Subsection (b) bars erecting or maintaining a barbed wire fence abutting or adjacent to a sidewalk, but it carves out a narrow exception: a property owner may still top a different kind of fence, one that is not itself a barbed wire fence, with not more than three strands of barbed wire, so long as those strands sit at least seventy-two inches above the ground.

That height threshold keeps the barbed wire above where a pedestrian's head or hands would reach while walking the adjoining sidewalk. The section reaches only fence lines that abut or sit adjacent to a sidewalk; it does not regulate electrified or barbed wire fencing set back from any walk, which falls instead under whatever township zoning resolution applies to that parcel, since dimensional fence standards away from sidewalks are not a county zoning function here. Subsection (c) makes any violation of either restriction a minor misdemeanor, giving the county a direct criminal remedy against a fence built or left in place along a sidewalk in defiance of subsections (a) or (b).