Toney Stevens, owner of Rivers Total Car Care in Oak Ridge, brought attention to a Dec. 6 letter the city sent to 18 owners of electronic signs, telling them the city continues to receive complaints about the signs and asking them to fix violations within 10 days.
After a backlash from business owners, a proposal to change the city’s electronic sign ordinance has been removed from next week’s agenda for the Oak Ridge Municipal Planning Commission.
It’s not clear when the revisions, which would govern message display times and brightness, could be considered by the city.
Business owners with electronic signs had objected to the mid-December meeting date, the short amount of time they had to prepare, and a letter they recently received that gave them 10 days to fix any violations of the city’s sign ordinance. The letter, sent to 18 businesses with electronic signs, said signs that have messages that are animated, moving, or flashing are generally prohibited in Oak Ridge.
The proposed revisions would have required that electronic sign messages be static and shown for at least 10 seconds. Animations and movements between messages would not have been allowed and neither would animated video or continuous message scrolling.
