By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

NAPLES — Someone called the Naples town hall asking about a business permit to open a sex-toy retail store.

What was born from that request was a moratorium on adult entertainment.

The moratorium is short-term fix until such time the town can draft and put into place a permanent ordinance.

The Adult-Use Establishment Moratorium is among the nine ordinance-related documents that are headed to Naples Special Town Meeting. (The special town meeting is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 6.)

Before those items can become Warrant Articles at a future special town meeting, they must face the scrutiny or the praise of the public.   

Public hearings will be held for the two moratoriums and a half-dozen ordinance amendments. The public hearings start at 6 p.m. Monday. It will be a joint meeting of the Naples Board of Selectmen and Naples Planing Board. The Naples Ordinance Review Committee (ORC) will also be on hand.

The ORC has been particularly busy this year as it worked on a couple ordinances dealing with the permits that businesses are granted to have outdoor music and other sources of live entertainment during the year. During the process of re-writing those ordinances, the ORC invited business-owners to the meetings to get input and shape the ordinance changes.

The resulting documents are the Outdoor Gathering Ordinance and the Entertainment Ordinance. The most recent public hearings for those two ordinances was Dec. 18. Essentially, the permitting process for both the Outdoor Gathering permit and the Entertainment Permit becomes the selectmen’s responsibility.

ORC Chairman Skip Meeker summed up the Outdoor Gathering Ordinance.

“The outdoor gathering was designed to protect the town during major events, large groups of people on private land or public land, festivals, and concerts. [It is designed] to help the town deal with parking, lighting, restrooms, make sure it is safe — firemen on call, rescue on call,” Meeker said.

Naples Code Enforcement Officer (CEO) Renee Carter said the Outdoor Gathering Ordinance also addresses the signs and banners used to promote these gatherings.

“We decided signs for events of large gatherings should be approved through the select-board versus the Sign Ordinance,” Carter said. “We put a limit on signs. They can have five 32-foot signs.”

There is also a time limit when the signs need to be taken down after an event ends to prevent area of town from getting cluttered with signs, she said.

In the Entertainment Ordinance, the town is proposing a decibel limit of 70 decibels measured up to 200 feet away.

Regarding an Adult Entertainment Ordinance — that has yet to be written. Residents will be voting on a moratorium instead.

This past spring or summer, a potential business-owner called the town office and asked about bringing into town a store that sold sex toys and other products geared toward adults, according to Naples Selectman Jim Grattelo.

Almost immediately, the selectmen passed a moratorium to put a halt to this type of businesses until an ordinance was written, he said. The moratorium buys that town some time to draft an appropriate ordinance to determine where this type of business might best be located, he said.

Another document that is part of the public hearings on Monday is: The Marine Safety Division Enforcement Ordinance. This ordinance was accidentally overlooked when the department was beefed up last summer. People will be allowed to make comments on this ordinance during the public hearing.

If the ordinance passes at Special Town Meeting, it will allow the Naples Marine Safety Department to not only enforce rules on the water but also to collect fines in the courtroom.  

To view to proposed ordinance amendments and moratoriums, go to the homepage of the Town of Naples website, that is townofnaples.org Scroll down to the blue box on the right-hand side and under ‘Public Notices & News’ is a link for the proposed ordinances for special town meeting. Also, copies will be available at the time of the public hearings.