Signs, Signs Everywhere There's Signs

This week in MY FRIDAY COLUMN I take a look at the plethora of Signs throughout our community.

SIGN, SIGN EVERYWHERE A SIGN

“Signs” tells the story of a young man who seems to be upset at the proliferation of signs around his world “Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind...” among the problems he sees with all the signs.  Luckily the guy who the song is about has never had to spend any time in New Albany of 2011.

I can understand the man's frustration about all the signs around.  It seems to have gotten out of hand.

When you travel into our city from Clarksville you immediately are inundated with the vision of signs.  God forbid you come into town when a furniture store is having another “Going out of business” sale, when they line up  the entrances to our city with rows of colorful identical signs directing us that “everything must go”, again.  

While so far most of the political signs that have been put up this year are not on public property or right of ways it won't take long.  Many of the signs we see around town, whether it is on the side of the road or stapled to a telephone pole are placed illegally.

Before January was even over I had heard rumors that someone had started putting up political signs.  I just sat and shook my head that someone felt that it was necessary to get the jump on the other candidates by putting yard signs up the first official week of his campaign

I am not sure why they have decided to get such a jump on the signs this year...

This year I have also noticed that the signs of gotten larger.  In prior years almost everyone went with a standard size yard sign and a few of the bigger types in key locations.  This election season many of the signs seem to be on steroids, but with the bigger signs the mayoral candidates have been able to put catchy slogans on them.

Along with websites that may or may not go anywhere, they can tell us important  things like "making it happen" or "a common man for a common cause"...

I understand that political yard signs are not going away anytime soon.  I would hope that I don’t have to tell voters not to pick their candidates by the number of signs they see or the color scheme that was chosen.  I am sure that some do.  I would hope that you would take the time to do some research on the name you see on that yard sign.  Look at the candidates website for how they feel on the topics that are important to you, or go to an event that they plan to appear and walk up and ask them about their platform.   You might even let them know how you feel about all of these signs.