Sign Pollution: There’s an Ordinance for That

By Guest Author Ellie Warner

Here in Winter Park we have a new Sustainability department with three full time employees and a yearly budget of $417,600.  We have a code enforcement department so alert that they flagged one political sign in my yard on a rarely traveled dead end because it was not precisely 10 feet from the curb.   Maybe the two departments could put their heads together and compare mission statements.

Natural Resources and Sustainability has an event coming up called Delivering Our City Knowledge Dock Party. I know this because they have littered two city owned narrow lakeside strips of land on Fawcett Rd. with that catchy acronym on signage.   

Is 10 identical signs on roughly 40 feet of otherwise pretty shoreline ridiculous overkill and perhaps not conservation minded?  It’s a clear violation our city’s temporary sign rules, that’s for sure. Code enforcement would be paying us a visit if we cluttered up our private property in this manner, but maybe it’s all good and unimpeachable if sustainability is in the mix.  

After a city website search turned up nothing, mention of the Delivering Our City Knowledge Dock Party was found only in the minutes of the Lakes Advisory Board. There’s a phone number on the signs, but why no mention or explanation on the city website of the kind of knowledge that will be ‘delivered’ for 2 hours?   So far they have demonstrated knowledge of high-volume clutter, but not of city ordinances the rest of us must live by.  But then again, what is the stated quest for sustainability if not a redundant sales pitch in which “success” means we pay higher taxes?