The town of Signal Mountain’s new sign ordinance will be the guiding document for all the new businesses set to open shop in the near future.
The document still awaits its second and final vote to be formally adopted, but Councilman Dick Gee already sees the writing on the wall.
Signal Mountain Town Council representatives Bill Wallace, Annette Allen, Vice Mayor Susan Robertson, Mayor Bill Lusk and Design Review Commission Chairwoman Karen Rennich, clockwise from left, look over a pictorial guide to help business owners understand the new sign ordinance. The companion piece will be reduced down and put into book format and handed out with sign applications. Councilman Dick Gee is pictured, but not seen, behind Rennich.“We didn’t want to be so rigid so people couldn’t be creative, couldn’t do what they feel works best for them,” said Karen Rennich, chair of the Design Review Commission tasked with updating and enforcing the guidelines. “We talked about that some to say ‘This is what we want or isn’t what we want.'”
The ordinance instead relies on a companion book with pictures of acceptable, prohibited and exempted signs for easy reference. “The most substantive change” is that light box signs are no longer allowed, according to Rennich. This decision, as well as what is deemed acceptable, was based on public feedback as well as careful consideration by DRC members in light of what’s already present on the mountain, she said.
“If a business owner comes up with a sign that meets the requirements, then someone on the [DRC] board doesn’t like it, then I feel like you get into an area where the regs don’t apply,” Gee warned at a preliminary meeting to discuss the proposed ordinance before the first vote. “Then it becomes personal. Then it becomes a judgment call rather than whether or not it meets requirements. That bothers me. I think we need to guard [against] that; write that in.”