The Salem Planning Commission took less than 10 minutes Wednesday night to give its endorsement to a set of revisions to the city code regulating where adult businesses can locate.

No citizens asked to comment on the proposed regulations that will limit the places where sexually oriented businesses can locate and how they can display their wares.

City Council, which must give final approval to any changes, is scheduled to take up the matter at its Sept. 25 meeting.

Melinda Payne, Salem's director of planning and economic development, told the board "there has been some confusion about what we're proposing. We're not promoting the establishment of adult businesses," she said. "Basically, we're moving to strengthen the existing code to more adequately regulate such businesses."

The new code sections were "patterned after existing ordinances in surrounding localities," Payne said.

They define a sexually oriented business as any "that regularly exploits an interest in matters relating to specified sexual activities or specified anatomical areas or regularly features live entertainment intended for the sexual stimulation or titillation of patrons." They range from bookstores to theaters to nightclubs, and the legal changes impose a variety of regulations on them.

Adult entertainers, for instance, cannot expose their pubic regions or genitals, "less than the majority of each buttock," or a woman's nipple or the lower half of her breasts. The new rules would prohibit real or simulated sex acts, lap dancing or tipping an entertainer directly.

Payne reminded the commissioners that, "by law, we cannot ban such businesses or write the law in such a restrictive manner" that they effectively could not exist.

The regulations would limit such businesses to areas zoned Highway Business District and enforce a 300-foot buffer between them and day care centers, educational facilities and schools, places of religious assembly and most residential and agricultural areas.

In effect, Payne said, that means such businesses would only be allowed on certain sections of West Main Street, East Main Street and Apperson Drive, where much of the city's commercial property is concentrated.

Some 679 acres are zoned for Highway Business District uses now. About 46 percent of that, or 312 acres, could potentially be used for such adult businesses, Payne reported earlier.

The new rules would prohibit the display of sexually explicit materials from the windows of such businesses, limit signage, specify lighting levels for entrances and parking lots and require continuous videotaping of those.

Owners would have to pay a $500 application fee for a permit from the chief of police and undergo a criminal background check.

Commission Chairman Gardner Smith told the handful of people in attendance Wednesday that "the lack of comment [by commissioners] does not mean we have not had detailed discussion on this in a work session today. There's been a great deal of exchange related to this matter."

The revisions complement the city's comprehensive plan, Smith said, "adding more meat and strength to what we have now."

Commissioner Bruce Thomasson said that "based on everything I've read, the city staff has done a great job looking after the interests of our citizens while protecting the rights of business owners. A lot of effort was put into this."

Payne reiterated that "I just want to clarify for the public that we are not trying to establish such businesses ... and not trying to restrict adults from sexually oriented material" to which they have a constitutional right.

She quoted the language of the new rules that are intended "to promote the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the citizens of the city.

"We're just strengthening the ordinances we currently have."