Beauty Begins at the Roadsides

East Hampton Town Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch has quietly been doing a very good job since taking on the job in 2012. But one thing he should be more aggressive about is the cordoning off of public roadsides by private property owners.

Ostensibly, the rows of stakes, and sometimes rope, are placed to protect well-tended grass from the wheels of passing vehicles. Given the substantial cost involved in terms of time — and more realistically landscapers’ invoices — one can sympathize with the impulse. The thing is, it is wrong and potentially dangerous.

Time and again we have seen runners and pedestrians remain in the roadway rather than step onto a staked-off grass apron. A couple of bad places that have caught our notice are on Sayre’s Path in Wainscott and at the east end of Further Lane in Amagansett. Also on Further Lane, some time ago the town allowed a property owner to raise the side of the road by more than a foot, eliminating the shoulder and creating a precipitous little cliff impossible for a bicyclist to climb in an urgent situation.

As far as we can tell, the roadside stakes are illegal and should not be tolerated. That they are tacitly allowed through inaction is wrong and speaks to what might appear to be improper kowtowing to mostly wealthy property owners at the expense of the rest of us.

Also on the subject of roadsides, East Hampton Town officials need to reconsider the approach to so-called temporary signs. Placards announcing builders’ names and subcontractors’ firms and architects looking to drum up a little more business are far too many, and they are allowed to remain up far longer than the limits imposed in the town code. Frankly, the rules regarding size and how long signs of this kind can remain in view are impossible for the town to enforce, which means the only realistic solution is for them to be banned entirely. 

Notable among the offending signs are those that are not put in front of construction sites at all but are set out on a contractor’s own property, in effect becoming a small billboard not unlike those the town banned decades ago. Come on, East Hampton Town, if we know who these folks are, you certainly should, too. And we would lump in the real estate “for sale” signs that stay up until a place is sold, which in some cases means for years.

We believe any harmful effects on businesses of a crackdown are overstated. East Hampton and Sagaponack Village have very strictly enforced limits, and property values have hardly been hurt. In parts of coastal Florida, Palm Beach, for example, “for sale” signs are no bigger than a sheet of letter-size paper. 

The public roadsides are just that. They should not be allowed to continue on as private extensions of lawns, nor should they be tarted up with commercial messages. A beautiful town should begin right at the pavement’s edge.