Signal Mountain Town Council and the sign ordinance

Before I launch into local politics, I wanted to thank everyone who came out for the coffee house last Saturday. We had a great turnout. My group played for the first hour, then Zach Laliberte brought his unique perspective to the receptive audience. If you weren't there, you missed a great show, but can still pick-up his CD at http://www.zachlaliberte.com/. After these two performances, we had open mike with performances by the two Sawyer brothers, Joe Laliberte, original tunes by Robert Thatcher and myself with some bass back-up by Alan Moss among others. Next coffee house will be July 31, again at Sweet Gipsy opening with John Harper and his band, Brownhaven, followed by Tarbell Patton. Jennifer at Sweet Gipsy is working on some dinner specials to compliment the evening, so stay tuned!

My group, the Orchard Band will be appearing at noon at the Lion's Club July 4th picnic at Althaus Park (on Monday July 5) and again on Friday, July 9 at 6:30 on the lawn at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church (or inside if weather threatens).

This past Monday we had our monthly council "agenda" meeting. Four council members were present as Annette Allen is spending the bulk of the summer at her place in New York where her husband works. Most of the meeting was pretty routine. We passed the budget on second reading. We were required to hold a public hearing for the budget which we had on Monday. No one from the public attended. I commented that in the future we should hold our budget public hearings at a regular Monday night meeting. While the budget was apparently non-controversial (I have had no comments from any citizens and there was no tax increase), I think it doesn't look particularly good to hold a public hearing on a Monday morning when most people are at work.

The one potentially controversial issue was a change in the sign ordinance. This was presented by Susan Robertson as a first reading. Since the agenda meetings were originally established to set the agenda for our regular Monday evening meetings and for discussion and routine business, on principal I did not think this was the proper time for this sort of issue. Susan assured us that these were minor changes and she may be right. However, I know that the sign ordinance has been a source of continuing aggravation from the local business community. I have wanted to have the DRC work with the Mountain Business Association and local businesses to revise it and make it more user friendly. While this proposal may have been a minor fix, I don't think it sends the right message of openness and cooperation to our local merchants. I recommended we table the ordinance until our regular meeting in two weeks. Ms. Robertson seemed to think this was too important to wait 2 weeks in spite of it supposedly being a minor fix. However, my motion to table was seconded by Mayor Lusk and I was gratified that the council agreed to table and therefore postpone this until it could be more adequately vetted by the business community with Ms. Robertson eventually going along. I think this was the right thing to do on principal.

Frankly, this may turn out to be a minor and non-controversial change, but since I don't run a business up here, I have never presumed to speak for the local merchants or tell them how to run their businesses, only to work hard to see that their voice is heard. I have always believed that regulations are appropriate to the degree that they protect the general public, but I feel they should be reasonable and clear. It should be easy for a business to come to this town. Our regulations should be clear enough that, if a business follows them their process should go like greased lightning. They should also be reasonable and consistent and not based on the personal whims and opinions of individual DRC and Town Council members.