What will they think of next?

The Santa Rosa County Board of County Commissioners has directed staff to study the current sign ordinance.

Proponents of change are now coming back with a proposal to move Santa Rosa to a concept under which businesses must move toward “monument-type” signs. You may have seen this in other communities. It is a move to create a “quaint” look and limits the size and placement of businesses signs. In this latest suggestion, the signs themselves could only be 12 feet tall and only a few percentage points wider than the base.

Sounds all well and good when you think about how pleasing things will look to the eye, but there is more to an issue like this than aesthetics.

One thing that would make many of the business fronts and roadways look more pleasing to the eye would be to enforce the ordinance currently in place.

One provision of the current sign concerns those blinking/portable signs.

They are only supposed to be in a location for a brief period.

There are some locations where these signs have been there for so long the weeds beneath are half-way up the sign.

Nothing has been done about this.

When you talk to the county about the matter, officials refer to budget cuts and reduction of staff. So we must wonder were the money would come from to make sure all businesses switched from their nice, large easy-to-read signs and went to small “monument markers.”

Again, if Santa Rosa can’t enforce existing laws…why create new ones?

Signs are expensive. Times are tough. Quite frankly, these are not the times to straddle businesses with having to spend thousands of additional dollars.

If officials pass this new sign ordinance then they are considering making sure all those currently in existence are grandfathered in until they are beyond repair.

Again, we ask: who will decide when a sign is “beyond repair?” And how will we enforce that when we have all the problems with the current laws?

Without an enforcement mechanism it will become a judgment call and be open to a court challenge.

And what about the disadvantage a new businessperson would be facing?

Until all those current large signs get old and are replaced, the new business would be sitting with its little 12-foot maximum monument sign going against the huge signs of their competitors.

None of this makes sense.

But we are left to wonder what other signs will be illegal if this new sign ordinance passes?

You see them on the roadside on occasion and it is held by an individual. It reads: “WILL WORK FOR FOOD!”