Tim Ryan, tryan@wolfrivermedia.com
Contributed Photo The South 40 at 704 S. Main St. is proposing this mural for the outside of its building. While city officials didn’t object to the mural, concerns were raised at a plan commission meeting Wednesday about whether the city should have regulations for murals.
A request to paint a mural at a local business led to a Shawano Plan Commission discussion this week about whether the city should or can regulate what goes up on privately owned walls.
As it stands, there is nothing in the city codes preventing property owners from painting just about anything they want on their buildings.
Plan commissioners Wednesday debated whether some limits should be put in place.
The city has received a request to allow the mural to be painted on the South 40 building at 704 S. Main St.
Officials did not express any objection to the mural being requested, which would be a logo of the five clans of the Menominee Tribe and seven generations represented by seven eagle feathers. The logo was created by Menominee artist James Webster III.
What concerned plan commissioners was future murals and the city’s present inability to regulate their content.
City Attorney Tim Schmid said the city cannot put any limits on content.
He was asked if that would apply even if someone wanted to paint a swastika.
“That’s free speech,” he said. “Under the Supreme Court rules, I think it would be.”
Schmid said the city is in its rights, however, to regulate what color palette and building materials can be used in certain districts.
“That’s a little bit different than content,” he said. “You could pass a code if you want to that says you can’t use the color purple.”
City Administrator Brian Knapp said the bottom line was whether the commission felt there should be any city oversight of the issue in the city code.
“Do you want to be able to review murals or not?” he said. “Do you care?”
The general consensus was negative.
Assistant City Administrator Eddie Sheppard also noted that regulating murals has never been an issue for the city before.
“You’ve been able to do it all this time, and how many murals have you had?” he said.
The city does have other regulations, however, that could limit what goes into a mural, particularly advertisements.
“There’s still going to be a determination that you can’t do some of those things,” Sheppard said.