Some business owners said the town's strict rules on signs are hurting their business.

"Cary is the only area that is really restrictive on signage," said Ida Terbet, a real estate agent with the Keller Williams Realty.

Cary's current sign ordinance restricts the number, size and even color of signs, among other things.

The law has been in effect for more than two decades and business owners can be fined if they don't follow the rules.

Just off Maynard road in Northeast Cary, Terbet is trying to sell homes.

"I have been trying desperately to show Cary, as well as the triangle, this lovely community," she said. "But without being able to have signage, it makes it very difficult because people do not know we're here."

Cary's sign ordinance stops her from putting signs closer to the road, attracting the attention of drivers who pass the neighborhood.

"It's gorgeous, but they think it's already established and it's sold," Terbet said.

Other businesses are also having problems with the law.

A manager at Chop House Grille in the Stone Creek Village shopping center told NBC-17 news business fell by more than 20 percent after he was forced to take a sign down.

"Nobody at town hall or in the planning department wants to see businesses go out of business," Town Planning Director Jeff Ulma said.

The ordinance says one of its main purposes is "to preserve Cary as a community that is attractive to business."

Ulma said the town can only do that by keeping Cary from looking too cluttered.

"You go to a shopping center, you have 60 individual tenants in a center and each of them have their own individual good looking sign," Ulma said. "What's the cumulative net affect for the community?"

Town officials know the recession is hurting local businesses, but Ulma said they cannot ease up on the restrictions.

"Our ordinance doesn't have a bad economy clause in it that says, ‘Well, these are the rules if things are going good and everything's fine, but if the economy goes south we don't enforce these rules and regulations,'" Ulma said.

However, Terbet said if the decorations are done right the signs would not be a problem and she has taken her fight to the Town Council.

It would take months to make a change, but Terbet said council members have contacted her asking for her to put her ideas in writing.

"What you don't want is to have signs that are not tasteful," she said. "I think everyone, including sellers, want to do everything they can to promote the city of Cary."

For now at least, she'll have to continue to sell without signs.