MOULTRIE, Ga. — The City of Moultrie’s current moratorium on signs was extended for 90 more days on Nov. 22, allowing the city council more time to craft a new sign ordinance. City Attorney Mickey Waller said it won’t be a tailored ordinance for one company’s request but an overall update.

The company the moratorium was made in response to, New South Media, had applied for nine signs — all electronic — ranging from sign sizes accepted under the existing ordinance (less than or equal to 120 square feet) to those outside its limits.

The request caused the council to review the current ordinance to see if it was up to date. According to Waller, it was not.

Thus, he got to work, alongside the council and representatives from NSM, on creating a modern ordinance.

“It’s honestly nothing out of the norm,” Waller said.

And it’s not. Back in 2014, the council was brought a similar issue, specifically in regard to electronic signs.

They passed a 120-day moratorium regarding the signs on Sept. 16 of that year “to give the councilmen and the city attorney time to look over the existing ordinance” seeing if it meets community needs, the Oct. 8 story read.

The moratorium ended Dec. 16 when a new ordinance was introduced.

Its primary change stated that no sign can be more than 120 square feet in area and if a business has more than one sign, their added areas cannot be more than 120 square feet.

The ordinance also stated that 30 percent of a sign’s area, up to 36 square feet, could be a multi-message variety (i.e. digital display, flipping panels of advertisement, etc.).

This new ordinance, though similar, will handle everything in a general sense rather than one sign type. In example, it would handle electronic and stock signs, sign size, sign content, and on/off premises advertisement.

Waller said Moultrie at-large won’t be able to see the specifics until everything has been verified and approved, but he told the council he has a draft of the ordinance at a called meeting on Nov. 22.

It was recently revised with insight from former Planning and Community Development Director Daniel Parrish as well.

City Manager Pete Dillard said he welcomes the time extension as the council doesn’t want to skip any details.

“We just won’t accept any[thing] for 90 days,” he said. “Otherwise, someone can come along later and say ‘No, you didn’t post it a proper number of days,’ ‘You didn’t have the correct amount of time before you made the ordinance,’ [or] ‘You didn’t allow the correct time for public comment.’”

In agreement with looking into the sign ordinance, NSM will allow the city free ad space for public announcements and other related information. But again, this is just the norm for Moultrie.

“Laws change all the time,” Waller said. “We just do these on occasion to keep up with the changes.”