A tennis-court-sized American flag still won’t fly over Camping World’s dealership south of Exit 49 on Interstate 77 after a divided city council voted Monday to leave Statesville, N.C.’s flag regulations unchanged, according to the Statesville Record & Landmark.
It was the second time Camping World was blocked from having any chance to legally install a 40-by-80-foot flag on the grounds of its dealership. The city denied a request by Camping World in August 2015 to fly an oversized flag there.
The flag issue was run up the pole again on Dec. 4 when Councilman John Staford asked city staff members to explore ways to exempt Old Glory from Statesville’s 8-by-12-foot size limits for flags flown at businesses.
The renewed flag flap began in June when Marcus Lemonis, CEO of the Bowling Green, Kentucky-based Camping World, called out Statesville to his 1.3 million Twitter followers as one of a dozen cities nationwide that wouldn’t allow oversized American flags at the company’s dealerships. Camping World began installing the flags in 2014.
On Monday, Mayor Costi Kutteh broke a 4-4 tie in a vote to leave the flag ordinance unchanged.
Staford, who supported allowing larger American flags, said he saw a “danger of more negative press” for the city. He added that a Camping World executive told him that the company would move its dealership from Statesville if the flag regulations weren’t changed.
