The City Commission reviewed and approved a one page Nights of Lights lighting flyer at its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, Sept. 14, and asked, in the city’s own quotation marks, that it be distributed “far and wide” and immediately. It applies to commercial and institutional owners in the historic preservation districts rather than to houses, and it carries exactly one legal citation, which is City Code Sec. 3-23(e)(6).

That subsection runs to four lettered paragraphs. Paragraph a says that “Only clear colorless or white lights may be permitted for the exterior display of seasonal or holiday lights.” Paragraph b sets the season from the first Saturday of November to the first Sunday of February, adds that “The lights shall not be illuminated at any other time,” and lets the commission set other dates by resolution each year.

Paragraph c, which opens with the words “Commencing 1996 and each year thereafter,” requires that lights below ten feet from the grade of the right-of-way, the sidewalk or the ground next to the building come down within thirty days of the close. Paragraph d exempts the entry corridors unless a property sits in a historic district too, and it is the only one of the four the flyer leaves out.

The flyer carries the other three accurately, and then carries five requirements the subsection does not mention. There is to be no animated, flashing or moving light effect, nothing forming words, objects or patterns on a vertical surface, and no inflatable, mechanical, cartoon character or figurine decoration.

Floodlights and spotlights are to be positioned away from the property next door and out of the eyes of motorists and pedestrians. The hardware itself is specified down to the wire: 18-2 commercial grade line in green or white with exterior grade insulation, carrying C-7 watt long life bulbs with nickel backing, clear or warm white only.

Where the rest of it lives

The city’s release is more direct about this than the flyer is, saying that the flyer “serves as a reminder that City Code Sec. 3-23 (e) (6) sets holiday illumination standards as well as other sections of code that outline regulations for illuminated and non-illuminated display signs.” Neither the release nor the flyer names those other sections, though the flyer’s own closing note says that figurines, lights, signs and other attention-getting devices “are regulated as advertisement under City Code” and tells the reader to “Consult the full code and staff for applicability.”

Two of them are a few paragraphs up the same page. Sec. 3-23(e)(2) reads “Flashing signs are prohibited” and Sec. 3-23(e)(3) is the floodlight and glare provision, both of them written about signs, which matters because the code has already said in the definitions at Sec. 3-22 that seasonal or holiday lighting “is not a sign under this Code, but must meet the illumination standards found in section 3-23(e)(6).” The clearest evidence that those provisions are written about signs and not about holiday lights is one paragraph further on again, where Sec. 3-23(e)(4) bans bare bulb illumination in the historic zones outright, while the definition of holiday lighting expressly contemplates lights “either bare or shielded within an enclosure.”

Sec. 3-23(b)(9) goes further and puts seasonal décor and seasonal or holiday lighting among the items that need no sign permit at all. Nothing anywhere in the chapter as posted specifies a gauge of wire or a bulb.

The reason the city gives

The release puts it in one sentence, and it is the only statement of purpose either document contains: “In recent years, downtown businesses and property owners have increased the intensity and creativity of holiday lighting displays which often times is met with criticism that it is contrary to the original intent of lighting the city, which was to highlight the historic architecture and create a warm, classic and consistent look throughout the city.”

That original intent has a date attached to it inside the code itself. The date is 1996, the year paragraph c starts counting from and the oldest thing printed on either page.

What the flyer asks a business to do

Clear or white lights and nothing bright white, colored or LED; nothing flashing, animated or moving; no words, objects or patterns worked onto a vertical surface; no inflatables, no mechanical figures, no cartoon characters and no figurines; floodlights and spotlights turned away from the neighbors and away from the street. What it encourages instead is architectural, which is to say outlining the windows, the doorways, the rooftops and the archways, wrapping the pillars and the staircases and the tree trunks and the canopies, and lighting the sidewalks, the walkways and the patios.

The flyer is a free download at CityStAug.com/NOLcodes, and an owner who wants the authority behind the part of it that is not in Sec. 3-23(e)(6) will have to go looking past the one line printed on the page. The lights may go up Nov. 7, and anything under ten feet comes down within thirty days of the Feb. 7 close, which is March 9.