Do This, Don’t Do That, Can’t You Read The Signs?
by John Weckerle
Well, possibly not, if you’re trying to read them in Edgewood. In what appeared to be a heavy-handed, divisive, and adversarial display of authority, the Town of Edgewood confiscated a substantial number of signs and chose to display them outside the Community Center as an apparent prelude to the Town staff’s presentation on signs at the July 2, 2008 Town Council meeting.
One resident, who indicated that one of the signs confiscated was a sign posted by his church for vacation Bible study, stated that he approached Town official Karen Mahalick and told her that this action was divisive and unproductive. According to that individual, Ms. Mahalick conceded that “this should have been handled differently” – but we question just how these signs could have come to be displayed thus without the involvement of Ms. Mahalick and Mayor Bob Stearley. According to the same individual, local resident Janelle Turner raised her fist and proclaimed “Ignorance of the law is no excuse!” In this case, however, it turns out that ignorance of the law may be the only option.
Review of the Edgewood sign ordinance reveals that, while the Town has the authority to remove signs placed illegally “within public property right-of-way,” the ordinance neither contains nor incorporates by reference any definition of “public property right-of-way,” “public property,” or “right-of-way,” nor does it provide those placing signs with any realistic guidance as to how signs must be placed to be in compliance. While the ordinance states “Signs on roadways without curb and gutter may not be placed closer than 10 feet to the edge of the paved surface,” this provision provides little value given the fact that most Edgewood roads have no “paved surface” from which people placing signs can measure.
It has long been noted that the Edgewood sign ordinance is plagued with problems – problems serious enough to have warranted a moratorium on enforcement, which recently expired. Supposedly to address the situation, the Town created a sign ordinance committee to provide recommendations on repairing the broken ordinance. However, committee members have recently complained that the Mayor and Town staff have apparently hijacked the process, refusing to present the committee’s recommendations to the Council, and instead substituting their own.
No documents on the Town web site appear to contain provisions for the proper care of private property confiscated by the Town, and the lack of such provisions was painfully obvious at the Town Council meeting. As outlined in this New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act request, submitted to the Town today, these signs were left outside in an unsecured location with no guards to ensure that they would not be stolen (assuming, of course, that they had not already technically been stolen by the Town).
In our opinion, the Town should return the improperly confiscated signs to their owners with a formal apology and suspend enforcement of the ordinance until such time as it is properly revised. The Town staff’s involvement, and that of the Mayor, should be limited to advisory support rendered upon request of the sign ordinance committee – and the sign ordinance committee should provide its recommendations directly to the Town Council rather than having it filtered by the Town staff. In future, the Town government should consider less adversarial tactics and seek to work cooperatively with local businesses, organizations, and individuals.