FOLEY — It won’t be long until regulations on temporary signs in Foley will once again be enforced.

During a special-called meeting Tuesday morning, the Foley City Council approved the first reading of an ordinance that would rescind Ordinance 1080-09, which had placed a moratorium on regulating temporary signs in the Forward City.

As previously reported, last week Foley Community Development Director Miriam Boutwell asked the City Council to repeal a moratorium on such signs.

According to the city ordinance passed on Jan. 5, 2009, a moratorium was placed on Foley Zoning Code restrictions found in Section 9.12, thus relaxing limits on temporary signs posted in the city. However, last week Boutwell told the City Council that use of temporary signs has become problematic.

With its vote Tuesday morning, the Council agreed.

“We’re having some issues with some people exceeding limits,” Foley Mayor John Koniar said.

Those limits restrict temporary signs to a 12-square-foot size. City Councilman Ralph Hellmich explained that the moratorium’s placement had been intended to help businesses affected by difficult economic times.

“But now, things are slightly better,” he said during the meeting.

Hellmich added that another problem that temporary signs are causing is their placement on right-of-ways of public roads.

“It has never been permissible for temporary signs to be on public right-of-ways,” he said.

In an interview following Tuesday’s meeting, Boutwell said that another motivation for rescinding the moratorium is to remind campaigners about regulations of temporary election signs.

“Temporary election signs have never been allowed on the public right of way,” Boutwell said.

She explained that banning signs from public right-of-ways is done to make sure driver visibility is not impaired.

“It’s a safety issue,” Boutwell said.

As previously reported, Foley Police have the authority to remove any sign that does block a right-of-way, according to city zoning laws.

Boutwell added that the zoning laws in Foley don’t limit the number of election signs that are allowed.

“You can put as many election signs up as you want,” Boutwell said. “They just need to be on private property.”

As for Tuesday's vote to limit the size of temporary signs, Hellmich explained that the ordinance does provide exceptions for several non-profit entities, including civic organizations and churches.

But Boutwell said she has counted approximately a dozen signs in Foley that will need to be removed once the new ordinance takes effect. According to Foley City Clerk Vickey Southern, that will be soon.

“Normally, the procedure that we follow to change an ordinance is we do a first reading and a second reading,” she said following Tuesday’s meeting. “If they (the Foley City Council had wanted to approve it today, they would have had to suspend the rules.”

Since that did not occur, the ordinance’s second reading will take place during the Council’s next regular meeting, which will be 6:30 p.m. Monday, July 2.

“After the second reading, it has to be advertized one time,” Southern explained. “That’s what makes it a law in the state of Alabama.”