The public had a loud and clear message Monday night for Los Gatos city leaders: When it comes to solar power, cut the bureaucracy and let the sun shine in.

Speaker after speaker - from environmentalists to tech entrepreneurs - appeared before the Los Gatos Town Council to urge city leaders to allow the owner of a Los Gatos solar power company to leave solar panels on his roof - even though some are visible from the road below.

Late Monday, by a 5-0 vote, the council turned down the solar entrepreneur, and directed its planning staff to come back in six months with some draft rule changes to ease barriers to construction of solar-power systems, even if it means relaxing rules requiring they be hidden.

"I have to sleep on it and think about it," said Barry Cinnamon, president of Akeena Solar, on University Avenue. "This creates a problem for our system, but for other solar customers next year in Los Gatos, there seems to be some hope."

The vote means Cinnamon will have to build a wall around the top of his roof to hide the panels.

Cinnamon ran afoul of Los Gatos town planners earlier this year when he installed solar panels on the roof of the new business. Because three of the 18 panels were visible from the road, Los Gatos Community Development Director Bud Lortz refused to give final approval of the building permit, declaring that the panels are "roof mounted mechanical equipment." That put them in the same category as industrial air conditioners, which have to be shielded with a wall or latticework under town rules.

Monday, more than a dozen members of the public told city leaders to ease up on Cinnamon and change city regulations to make solar panels less expensive and less cumbersome to install.

"This is embarrassing to us as citizens," Los Gatos resident Darrell Miller told the council. "The impression given is that you are impeding people who want to help solar energy. Solar energy is special to us. It shouldn't be put in the same category as air conditioning units."

Miller, a former Novel vice president, said he hopes to put solar panels on his house.

"You should be giving this guy the key to the city, and let him put panels all over his roof so Los Gatos is at the forefront of this technology," Miller said.

City leaders, however, argued that Los Gatos, an upscale village of 28,000 known for Victorian homes and its quaint downtown, deserves architectural excellence. They said they were trying to find balance.

"We're about as solar friendly as they come," said Los Gatos Mayor Sandy Decker. "But we're asking to keep the aesthetics intact in this town."

Cinnamon's offices are in a commercial area surrounded by auto shops and metal Quonset huts.

"It's very important to me that whatever goes up there improves the neighborhood," said councilman Mike Wasserman.

Lortz, the town's chief planner, said Los Gatos has approved more than 1,000 solar power systems. The city requires they not be visible form the road and that they follow the same pitch as the roof.

But Cinnamon said he already has spent more than $4,200 in permits for his $15,000 solar-power system. To build a wall around it will cost more, he said. He wants the city to change its rules so solar panels will not have to be hidden fro streets.

If the city insists on shielding solar panels, Cinnamon said he asked that he be allowed to do so by installing other solar panels around his roof.

"Aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder. I'll admit a certain amount of bias," he said.

The council turned him down,

Dozens of California cities are making life difficult for people trying to install solar-power systems, according to the California Solar Energy Industries Association, in Sacramento.

The trade organization has sponsored a bill, now headed for Gov. Gray Davis' desk, which would ban cities from imposing restrictions on solar-power systems that add more than 20 percent to the cost or reduce efficiency by 20 percent. Cities that violate the restriction would not be eligible to receive state assistance for municipal solar-power systems.

Some speakers Monday took a wider view.

If Los Gatos thinks solar panels are ugly, said Kurt Newick of Campbell, aren't oil derricks, nuclear power plants and coalmines uglier?

"Solar systems are a benign way to create electricity," Newick said. "It is important the town support them."