Kevin Leininger has a fascinating column in tonight's paper about one small-business owner's struggle to comply with a 20-year-old sign ordinance "that can seem goofy even to the people who must enforce it." The sign for his business would extend a few inches above the top of the wall, and that can't be permitted, which even City Planner Bryan McMillan can't explain:
Don't ask me why (signs can't extend above the roof line). I never understood that,” said McMillan, who had reviewed 10 requests for sign-ordinance variances through September after receiving nine all of last year. The ordinance governs signs' size, location and other factors.
It would be unfair to blame McMillan and others like him for the bureaucratic hurdles Woodruff and other business owners must face. But it is even more unfair and unwise to subject the people who fuel our economy and create jobs to regulations that are arbitrary at best and economically counterproductive at worst.
As she has seemed to in so many stories lately, Liz Brown provides the voice of reason:
It's almost comical in its absurdity,” said Woodruff, who could seek the Board of Zoning Appeals' blessing to install a sign that extends above the roof line
