Some things are relatively straightforward for city councils. Developments, zoning, roads. They're all par for the course. Routine.
But City Council members here clearly weren't comfortable Tuesday while discussing a new city ordinance regulating sexually oriented businesses. The 29-page document defines in excruciating detail various sexual terms and activities, and council members tittered while poring over it.City Attorney Kent Christiansen drafted changes to the existing ordinance based on changes South Salt Lake made to its law last month.
North Salt Lake is faithfully riding the coattails of its similarly named southern neighbor because its current ordinance is also based on its South Salt Lake counterpart.
The council considered but did not vote on the proposed changes.
As in South Salt Lake, North Salt Lake's proposed new ordinance tightens the law, expands its definitions of regulated activity and prohibits sexually oriented businesses from locating less than 600 feet from churches, residences, schools or each other.
That last won't be a problem. The proposed changes include limiting the number of sexually oriented businesses to one for each 6,000 inhabitants. North Salt Lake's population is 7,000, making sexually oriented business opportunities somewhat limited.
No sexually oriented business is, or ever has been, licensed in North Salt Lake, though a large and visible strip club is located on Salt Lake City's Beck Street not far from the North Salt Lake border. Police Chief Val Wilson said some entrepreneurs have started (though never completed) the licensing process, primarily for home-based businesses such as escort services.
A few years ago the city revoked the business license of a dime store in part because it was illegally selling pens adorned with sexually explicit pictures.
Wilson has pushed for a stricter ordinance, especially as it regards sex toys, or "in the vernacular, marital aids," as Mayor Clare Jones put it. Christiansen said he had researched numerous ordinances and laws, including those of other states, in preparing the changes. But even so Jones, himself an attorney, said he's a little unsure of the city's power to regulate devices such as many sex toys that in themselves are not obscene, as well as things like lingerie.
"Sometimes just walking through the Kmart I get just a little embarrassed," he said.
It was only in the course of discussion Tuesday that Councilman Lee Snarr discovered, to his surprise, that sexually oriented businesses exist featuring nudity (topless and bottomless performers) and are legal in Utah. State legislators have tried to change that from time to time but with no success.
If lawmakers pass a bill banning nudity, opponents say it would almost surely be challenged in court as constitutionally suspect.
Christiansen said it is important to distinguish "sexually oriented" from "obscene." Something sexually oriented or pornographic is not necessarily obscene, and thus subject to total prohibition by municipal or state law. While authorities may not be able to totally ban sexually oriented businesses, however, they can strictly regulate them.
The council will take up the issue again in two weeks.