Sign Language

It is not exactly what we might consider a classical Jeffersonian principle of government.

In an attempt to appeal to a sort of highbrow perception of the Naples area, Collier County has created maybe the most restrictive sign ordinance in the state-perhaps in the country, if anyone kept track of such things.

"We have a very elite class of people who have made their money," says Collier County Commissioner Jim Coletta. "Their expectations of life are a little above middle America."

The 2000 ordinance, which the county began enforcing in the spring, bans neon signs if they are visible from the street. County officials relented and approved a narrow exception for "open" neon signswith a lot of strings attached. Also, any interior lit signs visible from the street are prohibited.

Further, the ordinance drops the maximum height of signs from 25 feet to 15 feet; caps wall signs and window signs to a small percentage of the space; forbids signs in the shape of a logo; and even regulates the placement of logos on signs.

The case against such incredibly invasive sign ordinances on a personal-liberty level is ironclad. Such laws would have been guffawed out of Colonial Boston's debates on freedom. Government that is meant to provide for the public safety hardly ought to be empowering bureaucrats to regulate where a company's logo should be placed on its signs.

That gives new definition to "overweening."

"It is quite intrusive and restrictive," Colletta admits. He pushed for the exception for "open" signs and says he would like to do much more, but the ordinance was approved before he was on the commission.

In addition to the loss of more freedoms, another problem is the way these types of ordinances sanitize and homogenize a community. Rather than the hues of personality that would normally blossom from individuals' free expression, we get what a panel of bureaucratic planners agrees to like.

Those results tend to be small-minded, colorless and all comparable, sort of like the bland rows of old Soviet Union peoples' apartments. Come to think of it, those were the handiwork of a central planning bureaucracy also.

This is not to insinuate communism among planners. But there is a consistency to government insertion into private enterprise that results in excess. The more it is allowed, the more intrusive it will become, smothering creativity and individuality with more layers of regulations.

Sign ordinances are a symptom of a conceited government, one that presumes to represent the aesthetic tastes of an entire metropolitan community of diverse opinions. It buys trouble for itself by leaping beyond the bounds of representing the health, safety and welfare.

Rock Oil Co., a Missouri company that owns the Site Food Mart convenience store north of the city of Naples in the unincorporated county, filed suit against the county on the grounds that the sign ordinance violates the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. The company argues that the ordinance is arbitrary-which seems pretty obvious-and unconstitutional.

More trouble is the inherent unfairness for businesses on the county line with Lee County, which has a less-strict sign ordinance. Collier businesses will be more difficult to find and see than those literally across the street.

"Small-business people today are really hurting," Coletta says. And the sign ordinance is not helping them any.

The majority of Collier County commissioners nevertheless say that the community is too nice for neon. That sort of intrusiveness into private property is dangerous enough on its own. However, it's possible that a majority of Naples area residents see the community as just a little too highbrow for the Las Vegas look, although the Collier sign ordinance covers all the way to Immokalee, which is not a Mecca for snobbish predilections.

But this sort of meddling seldom ends where it begins.

What happens when commissioners continue on the track of regulating appearances? How will some of the anti-neon folks feel when the government decides that pink buildings are just a little too tacky? Well, maybe most don't care for pink, so that is all right. But what if a majority of the commission decides that the community would just look nicer if all of the houses were beige?

Perhaps you think I'm just being ridiculous now. Check a few miles up the coast. The city of Sarasota is implementing a downtown master plan by Miami consultant Andres Duany that seeks to regulate the exterior color of buildings within a very narrow range of colors.

Edmund Burke issued a warning on this incrementalism. "The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."

And there are very real financial repercussions.

People make business decisions based on the rules of the moment. Changing them in the middle of the game not only is unfair to those who have invested money in the community, but also anti-business and profoundly presumptuous.

The entirety of the sign ordinance is personal taste on which there is huge disagreement in every realm of life.

This is not an issue of public safety or welfare, but one of what looks pleasant to Collier government leaders. It is a method of thinking that would have made people shudder at one time.

But incrementally over the years we have ceded more and more to government so that now it can reach in and tell you what color to paint your building and the percentage of your window that a sign can take up.

And none of that, gosh, neon, please.

Rod Thomson can be reached by e-mail at rod@plow.org