LAURINBURG — As ‘Tis the Season continues to make downtown Laurinburg into a Christmas destination, the group brought another idea to the city.
Terry Parker spoke to the City Council on behalf of the organization Tuesday to ask for funding, as well as give several ideas for the upcoming year. One of those was expanding the lights, while the other would bring something the rest of the year.
“We want to do a program called ‘Hometown Heroes’ program and it’s done in a lot of other towns, particularly in the Northeast,” Parker said. “What we want to do is hang these banners from the light poles … we wanted to do police in one section, firemen in another section and military in another.”
Parker spoke to the City Council because there is an ordinance in place that prohibits the use of telephone poles for anything except for the utility companies that rent those spaces. According to City Attorney Bill Floyd, if the Council were to allow the flags, the ordinance and city code would have to be amended.
“This would be a precedent for any nonprofit if the city is not doing it themselves,” Floyd said. “It would be a question of whether or not you’d be setting some kind of precedent for someone else that may have a similar idea or also want to utilize those poles.”
Parker had a map of all the utility and decorative poles throughout the city that could be used. It was asked how many decorative poles there were downtown and were told it was 36. Parker also explained the plan was to have them up the first week in May and take them down in November right after Veterans Day.
“I think what we need to do is, Council needs to make a thoughtful review of this request,” Floyd said. “That would start, in my opinion, with staff making an investigation and seeing the feasibility of it … I don’t think the Council, in my opinion, would be in a position right now to say one way or another without looking at the issue.”
The City Council was in agreement for Parker to work with staff and to bring more information back to the March meeting.
Reach Katelin Gandee at 910-506-3171 or at kgandee@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com
