No sooner did we begin writing about the differences in village and town sign-law enforcement than a new annoyance arose. If you’ve been out and about in the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed them — new street-number signs placed by a certain home security company on which a red oval corporate logo is actually larger than the digits.
Adding insult to injury, at some driveways the new signs accompany existing ones, repeating the house number for no reason other than the security firm’s branding. The red guys are not alone; there are freestanding blue ones and others, all left out in what seems to us to be obvious violation of the law. Does anyone in East Hampton Town government care? Apparently not. Why not? Nobody knows. What we do know is that no one is doing anything about it. Makes you wonder.
The law is clear, and does not allow for commercial messaging of this sort along the roadsides. Simply attaching a brand logo to a required house number sign does not magically make it legal. In cases where these signs are within a public right of way, the East Hampton Town Police, Building, Ordinance Enforcement, and Highway Departments are all authorized to remove them, no questions asked.
As we have said before on this subject, either enforce the laws or seek to change them. Ignoring them should never be tolerated. Town staff attorneys who look the other way should answer for their failure to see that the code gets the respect it deserves. And Peter Van Scoyoc, Sylvia Overby, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, David Lys, and Jeffrey Bragman: What do you have to say?