ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Orange Beach City Councilman Jeff Silvers cut short his spring break vacation to attend a meeting to vote on an ordinance sparked by controversial spring break T-shirts.

A couple of weeks ago shirts considered offensive and vulgar by city leaders in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores created a ground swell of concern about how to regulate the display of those shirts.

Since then the stores, Surf Style and Alvin’s Island, have pulled the shirts off of shelves and racks and Gulf Shores officials decided an ordinance wasn’t necessary.

On Tuesday the Orange Beach council approved the new ordinance with Silvers casting the lone vote again a law requiring the shirts be placed in an “adults only” area of the stores.

“I have discussed this matter with Shaul Zislin (of Surf Style) and Dror Levy with Alvin’s Island and basically they said they are going to take them out,” Silvers said. They don’t see the need for the city to police them and I agree. That’s what we were going to do in the first place was reach out to them before we moved forward on the ordinance.”

Mayor Tony Kennon has been a staunch supporter of the new ordinance from the beginning. He along with councilmembers Al Bradley, Joni Blalock and Jeff Boyd voted for the ordinance. Councilman Jerry Johnson did not attend the meeting.

“It’s time to put an exclamation mark behind the statement that we’ve made,” Kennon said before the meeting. “There are other stores in town and other stores may come to town and these stores may sell to other stores.

“The point is people need to know what our expectations are and what the rules are. We put the ordinance in place, we can amend it as necessary, but again I think it is important to lay it out.”

The two cities were poised to pass identical laws, but in the wake of the stores removal of the shirts, Gulf Shores tabled its law.

Mayor Robert Craft said opening the lines of communication with these businesses has solved the problem for now and will be helpful as other issues arise.

“When they voluntarily took them down then I felt like that I had established a relationship that I could work with them in the future on problems,” Craft said. “There’ll be more problems that we’ll have down the road. To legislate through ordinances or litigate through suing to solve problems is not near as effective, in my mind, as having a relationship where you can talk to people and get them to help you do the right thing.”

Craft went through both stores with owners and managers to point out shirts he considered offensive and would fall under an ordinance if one was passed.

“I pointed out the things that I thought were detrimental to the brand of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and to our family-friendly reputation,” he said. “I explained to them that I thought the vast majority of folks that came here did so because of that brand and reputation. I was encouraging them to help protect it, not just for our sake but for theirs.”

Silvers said he had hoped the same thing would happen in Orange Beach.

“I think that the relationship you have with business owners in your community, you need to reach out to them and talk to them to discuss what issues are at hand about what our image is, what our brand is and they agreed,” Silvers said. “They took the T-shirts we found that were offensive and vulgar off the racks.”

Kennon was thankful for the gesture, but wanted something on the books in case the issue comes up again.

“I appreciate that, I really do,” he said. “I’m glad they listened to us. But I also want everyone to know there were a lot of other stores that never put them up in the first place. I want those guys to know how much I appreciate that they didn’t look to prostitute our community for a buck.”

Craft said he thinks the understanding reached will be sufficient enough to keep the merchandise out of stores in Gulf Shores.

“But if they don’t or someone new comes in and won’t, we can always pass an ordinance,” he said. “It’s sitting there ready to go. And it is the right thing to do.

“It goes back to the philosophy of creating a team that’s supporting the same goal and ideally will prevent us from having to solve these problems.”