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GoogleAlso, council members are hoping to reach out to Hispanic business owners about the appearance of their buildings.
Last month, Mayor Wallace Cartwright told the council he has been hearing many concerns from residents and businesses about the appearance of local Hispanic establishments in Shelbyville and wanted to alter the city's ordinance to say that signs cannot be painted on buildings, among other changes.
However, city manager Ed Craig said the current ordinance is complicated and pointed out to the council that the way it is written now, businesses like Wal-Mart and others would be in violation.
The ordinance states the signs can be no more than 100 square feet or 20 percent of the building space, whichever is less, Craig said.
Another section states that the total display surface area of a sign for any one business can be only 150 square feet.
"Keep that in mind as you drive around town and look at businesses where signs look perfectly great," Craig said. "There's no question that the signs in front of Lowe's and Wal-Mart are nice and proportional to the business, but they are more than 150 square foot."
Craig said, "There's obviously some tweaking we've got to do in this ordinance so that signs that are attractive and proportional are not prohibited by it."
The ordinance only deals with size of the sign, not the writing or the quality of the lettering, Craig explained. It also only deals with outdoor signs, not window signs, and ordinances in other cities limit the amount of window signs to 20 percent.
Craig said some business in question have nearly 100 percent window signage, which creates "a cluttered look." The city manager said he will continue to look into the issue and try to come up with something "appropriate in terms of size and colors."
Councilman Lee Roy Cunningham suggested adding a section to require professional lettering to have the "signs look nice instead of so trashy."
"Has anybody been to these people and told them they need to clean their buildings up in a nice way?" Cunningham asked. "I hate to go tell anybody to do anything."
He said he would rather approach the businesses to clean up on their own instead of having to pass an ordinance.
Craig said he did not know how to approach that, saying the city would be imposing quality standards on businesses.
Councilman Al Stephenson pointed out a statement in the Times-Gazette from Luci Taylor, a leader in the local Hispanic community, that the business people want to be good neighbors.
He suggested that the mayor, planning and codes director Kip Green and Taylor "go to the places in question and have Lucy talk to these people, we might be able to get some good results."
But council member Kay Rose said the issue was about more than one ethnic group.
"There are tacky signs all over town," she said.
Stephenson agreed and said that the council can do this also while looking at changing the ordinance.
Cartwright said he was "not against any group of people" and that the rules should cover everybody. He added he has also been talking to Taylor on a variety of issues, including this one.
"We need to make our ordinance reflect what is acceptable that would apply to Wal-Mart and Lowe's as well as everybody else," Craig said. But he added that the city can still address those businesses who are not in compliance.
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The information painted on the sides of buildings doesn't bother me nearly as much as those ridiculous flashing muti-color LED signs. It absolutely befuddles me to try and figure out why churches need those kinds of signs. They look like they belong on the strip at Las Vegas, not in front of houses of worship. The Sonic sign and all its buddies (the Baptist church, the eyeglasses shop, etc etc) are ugly blotches on the landscape.
To tweak or not to tweak that is the question!. Why bother writing an ordinance, tweaking an ordinance or wasting paper reporting on an ordinance that will probably never be enforced? I'm sure we have ordinances that pertain to all kinds of property in this town that never get enforced. There is one delapidated building on Elizabeth street that used to house a daycare that has now been an eyesore for years and what has been done about it? I know there have been numerous complaints about this property and yet it sits there as much an eyesore today as it was several years ago. Why can't the property owners be forced to clean-up that mess? There are other houses right in town actually across from Heritage Credit Union that have big numbers and letters spray painted on the fronts of them. I see those each time I go to make a deposit. Would that be covered under the new sign ordinance. House numbers can be purchased at a fairly reasonable sum, not much more than it would take to buy spray paint to paint the numbers onto a house. Shelbyville needs a lot of tweaking. Now all our streets are closed and you can't even get around town because they are in such a mess. Why wasn't this flume inspected and kept up before creating such a disaster? Let's hurry and recoup (?) all our money we spent on demolishing other people's condemned property for them so we can fix some of our own problems. We can rule, we can govern, we can proclaim, we can enact we can tax and we can negotiate until the cows come home, but will somebody for goodness sakes actually DO SOMETHING to fix our city? It is about as worn out, worn down, and decrepid as most of the members on our council.
writeattitude,
The old daycare on Elizabeth Street is being worked on; it should be taken down soon with some of the stimulus money from the feds.
Heritage Credit Union demolished those old homes, where have you been? They are gone; the codes office had a lot to with that.
My recommendation to you Write is to be more aware of what is going on within our community and not judge so much unless you are informed.
Listen, I understand how easy it is for a citizen to complain regarding these issues: However, the city of Shelbyville is doing its best to protect the public and ensure the safety of its population.
Mark Clanton inspected the Flume on an annual basis; he did his job. Other things apparently caused the recent collapse of the flume, not a neglect of the city.
Run for office then if you feel so strongly about these issues.
Don't sit back there in the background and complain about everything on these silly blogs then.
Brett the soon to be???????????????????????????
BRETT
What are you running for? Why is privately owned property once again at the mercy of Federal, state or local money being spent (MY TAXES) to demolish something that should have been taken care of years ago by the owners? Didn't we just go through this same scenario on Depot street, and how many years of litigation and lawyer's fees do you think it will take to get that issue resolved and the city's money recouped? I did notice that the houses close to Heritage had been demolished, but I might take issue with you that it had anything to do with codes or the previous owners, I'd better guess that new property owners took them down on their own volition.
Thanks for your suggestion to run for office, I'm sure I'm just as qualified as many who already hold positions. In fact, others have read some of my postings and suggested the same thing; however with a different attitude. I can definitely assure you of one thing, should I ever run, I would stand up for what is good, right, honest and in the best interest for the whole community, not just for a select few. If department heads are interested in keeping their jobs, I would want to see productive, efficient service from them or find someone from the millions of unemployed people who are displaced workers due to the economy and the sad position the world is in partly due to politics being played out in business and government. Ineptitude, Irresponsibility, Greed and Slothfulness have gambled long enough with the wage earners future and security. Don't encourage me in the least, because for every person who turns a blind eye to what is wrong in not only our city, county, state and nation, there are thousands of arguments that can be pointed out for things that need change and a new perspective.
writeattitude,
You're preaching to the choir here. I totally agree with what you just said.
However, the Depot Street issue had to do with public safety and needed to be addressed as soon as possible in my opinion.
The Credit Union purchased those properties and tore them down due to complaints of their customers after they put in the new drive thru banking service. They did coordinate this with the codes office.
We need more community members to be more active in a productive way by running for office if they feel so inclined. You seem so inclined, and I appreciate your comments and knowledge of the community.
LOL, I am not running for office, my current public servant job prevents me from getting involved in local politics.
Brett the soon to be Minnesota QB??????????????