The overhaul of the Murfreesboro Sign Ordinance continues as the city council has recently settled on a revision to its ordinance limiting window signage to 25 percent of a business’ total window area, and discussed such details as whether the city should allow string lighting, white or colored, on vegetation or windows, and whether those light displays should be restricted to a certain time of year.

After debating the issue at length in its Dec. 3 meeting, the council considered amending the revision to allow a business in the city limits to cover 50 percent of its window space with signs, but that version did not fly, as Murfreesboro City Councilmen Bill Shacklett and Eddie Smotherman were the only yes votes for that version.

The original version of the amendment to the sign ordinance ended up passing, with Shacklett casting the lone dissenting vote to the ordinance revision.

The only change to the measure presented to the council by the planning commission and the version they passed was the removal of regulation on string lighting. The measure originally limited colored string lighting on a property to the time period between Nov. 15 and Jan. 15.

“I don’t really see why the lighting can only be shown during the Christmas months,” said Laura Walsh, a Murfreesboro resident who spoke at the council meeting. She said she enjoys seeing businesses using creativity and colors in their displays. “I don’t see how it benefits anybody to restrict lighting to white,” she said.

The council agreed with that, and struck the portions dealing with string lighting from the ordinance.

After that, with the remainder of the wording intact, the council approved the changes to the local sign ordinance, limiting a business’s available window signage space to 25 percent of its total window surface. However, Shacklett said he just could not support such a restriction on “a business’s right to express itself.”

“From a small businessman’s standpoint, this is not the kind of ordinance that says, ‘We support you, small business,’” Shacklett said at the council meeting, adding that, when pressed with the choice, he would “opt to stand for free enterprise and the right for the individual to do what they want.

“I’m concerned this is another brick on the load of small business that is not appropriate right now,” said Shacklett, co-owner/operator of Shacklett’s Photography.

Murfreesboro Mayor Shane McFarland, a builder, points out there are plenty of codes that affect what a structure can or can’t do, outside and inside, from which way a door should or shouldn’t open to where caulking needs to be placed, and sometimes a line needs to be drawn or a code set to give all structures in a municipality a common set of rules to work with.

Repeatedly, city officials cite “safety” as the driving force behind limiting window signage, continuously bringing up the hypothetical situation of a crime going down or a fire breaking out inside a business, and law enforcement or firefighters being impeded from doing their job safely and effectively by window signage that covers more than 25 percent of a window’s total surface.

“When we approve windows on the planning commission, we do that with the understanding that they will be used as windows, not extra signage space,” said Councilman Smotherman, also a member of the Murfreesboro Planning Commission. “Windows are being looked at as signage, and they’re not; windows are windows.

“I’m all about simplicity in government,” Smotherman said in addition to his other comments, yet he still manages to include terrorism in the local sign ordinance discussion, insisting that excessive window signage is a public safety hazard.

The council approved two readings of this section of the sign ordinance dealing with window signs—a third and final reading will come in January—but Murfreesboro Sign Administrator Amelia Kerr says local businesses can expect a “complete overhaul” of the local sign ordinance, with more changes coming this year.

For more information on the City Council’s meeting times and agenda, and other Murfreesboro civic issues, visit murfreesborotn.gov.