Monday, March 3, 2008

Political Signs – Time To Go

It’s now a month past Election Day, and it’s time for the political signs to disappear.

This afternoon I noticed a large Bianchi sign still up on Donovan alongside the Woodstock Food Mart on Route 47. A little farther south there were several Jack Franks signs and some Regna signs.

What will it take to get the City to remove these signs? Should they have been removed right after Election Day? Or perhaps, generously, within a week after Election Day?

A month is too long. When Lou or Jack or Dan is driving around, he ought to be pulling his signs. Or calling on his election committee to pull the signs.

And if he doesn’t? Code Enforcement could always pull the signs and send a $25.00 letter to the candidate for each sign removed.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

the title should be Gus - Time To Go

Anonymous said...

Why don't you pick them up Gus? You have the time and it seems to bother you enough. You could send your own little bill and/or citation too. Win-win-win.

Gus said...

I would be happy to pick up political signs that have been abandoned, but there are two problems. Last year I inquired whether people in Woodstock could remove Garage Sale signs from public property (utility poles, traffic signposts, etc.), and the Woodstock City Manager "cautioned" me against doing so, inferring that I would be (I don't recall his exact words) stealing them and therefore subject to prosecution. So I would assume that the same "caution" (warning? threat?) would apply to removing political signs from the right-of-way.
If the old political signs are on private property, then it would be necessary and appropriate to contact the property owner to secure permission (written would be best) to remove old signs.
The job of removing them belongs to the City. There is a sign code that can be enforced.
An efficient and economical way to handle it would be by mail. For $0.41 and 1-2 minutes to prepare a pre-formatted letter, the City could request a property owner to remove abandoned political signs.
The Florida Department of Transportation trains and authorizes volunteers to remove unlawfully-posted signs from the right-of-way. Illinois would rather pay employees to do so and, even then, they don't do so.

Anonymous said...

The job of removing them belongs to the candidate whose name is on them.

Anonymous said...

Right! Politicians have volunteers put them up why should taxpayers pay when the same volunteers could pick the signs back up?

Gus said...

Do you have suggestions for getting the politicians to accept responsibility for having their signs picked up? And what do you do when the politicians do not have their signs picked up?