DemocratsPittsford.org

The Village has a reasonable Temporary Sign ordinance but gentle suggestions by me haven’t gotten it enforced recently.

I’ll use a club this time by using maps, pictures of the signs and references to the Village Code. If you know someone at the Village Hall, please suggest to them to look at this page.

If these aren’t illegal under the code, please register and enter a comment explaining why not.

Here is the first map.

Red Dots approximately indicate signs in question

Double click on the thumbnail to see the full image. The image was created with Monroe County mapping tool and the three red dots were added to indicate the locations of the signs in the following image.

The red dot in the upper left corner is the where the Brizee signis  in front of Village Green.

2007 picture of Higgins sign in same place that Brizee sign is now

As you can see from this 2007 pictures of a JJ. Higgins it is well into the right of way let alone 10 feet back from the property line. Today a Brizee real estate sign approximately in the same place. This past winter I counted four different signs at the same time in this location.

Where is the property line? Based on the map image, I think it is a good 10 feet plus off the sidewalk. Given the 10 foot setback requirement, these signs have been 20 feet closer to the sidewalk than required by Village Code.

In the lower right of the map image above are two more red dots on the property on the southwest corner of Monroe and Sutherland. One is on the Sutherland side and the other is on the Monroe side where at the time this picture was taken around 9:50am on 7/25/09 there was another illegal sign.

The Pierson sign is the one of interest

Forget the sign to the right, it was gone on Monday afternoon, 7/27/09. But if were removed by a Village employee why did they ignore the Pierson sign?

It is a three time loser. A close look using the mapping software indicates that the property line is approximately where the tree is. This sign may not even be on the property let alone have a ten foot setback.

Then there is the size. The Village says four square feet maximum. With the sold sign on top and the realtor addition below, this one might make six or seven square feet.

For the third strike, check out the ‘Sold’ sign on the top. I think it was there all last week and was still there on Monday afternoon. That makes it somewhere more than four times the maximum 24 hours allowed by Village code. Look it up – I think is section 168-6.

On the same property is this sign around the corner.

Same three strikes

Yes, it legal to have a sign on each street frontage. But the same three strikes make this one illegal, too.

Isn’t the owner of this real estate firm a newly elected member of the Village Board?

Pierson real estate is an equal transgressor in the Town, too. Another post or two about Village signs first before going back to signs outside the Village.

Am I wrong? Register and Comment.

Am I right? Call the Village Hall and ask why they allow all these illegal signs.

One egregious example of apparently illegal temporary signage in the Town is a 3750 Monroe Avenue. There are two ‘temporary’ signs advertizing space available. I say ‘temporary’ since I believe the signs have been there for at least a year.

An oversize temporary sign at 3750 Monroe Avenue

First a note about how I go about checking if a sign is in my mind illegal. When I get annoyed enough after seeing it I’ll remember to bring my camera with me and take a few pictures, estimating how far the sign is from something like the sidewalk or the stripe on the side of the road as well as the sign size, if necessary.

The hard question is trying to decide where the sign is in relation to the lot boundary. I got no end of grief when I complained at the Town Building department about where a sign was. Even after I got them to pull out some plot maps they were not willing to concede that the sign was in the right of way. They were very reluctant actually go out and check the sign for themselves. They claimed they were too busy with the CheeseCake Factory construction even though they passed the sign in question in going from Town Hall to the CheeseCake Factory location!

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I basically like the temporary sign ordinances in the Village and in the Town.

It is the lack of enforcement that I have a problem with.

The town revised the October 2006 version in March of 2007 after a dispute over essentially the restriction on free speech. Not that I expect the Town to admit it, but there was a behind the scenes discussion with the local chapter of the NYCLU that created a new version that that would avoid a lawsuit.

The town ordinance is section 185-138.1 which can be found online through the town website http://townofpittsford.org through the town code link on the left side. Use the link http://www.ecode360.com/?custId=PI1657 to get to the Town Code directly and enter 185-138.1 in the block on the left.

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Michael Slade, Democratic candidate for Pittsford Town Supervisor

My reasons can be summed up in three words:

Frustration.

Despair.

Hope.

Frustration: I’ve lived in the same house in Pittsford for more than thirty years now. During this time my interest in town government has waxed and waned. I’ll go to town board meetings for a time or two before becoming frustrated again over how tight knit and resistant to change it is. If you aren’t a member in good standing of the Republican in group, forget it.

Even if a Democrat wins a single seat on the Town Board they would be outvoted 4-1 so there would be only exposure of what is going on but not much of a change.

Despair: Over the years there seems to be less interest in what is going on inside our local governments.

When Andy Wolfe ran the Brighton Pittsford Post, there seemed to be at least some coverage, even if it did seem biased. Now the BPP looks like one person is writing the whole paper each week. Notice I wrote writing not reporting! The way to get good press is to send in press releases for verbatim or lightly rewritten coverage.

Gannett coverage of Pittsford Town Government has essentially disappeared. Coverage of Town elections barely is more than a listing prior to Election Day and the results the day after Election Day. Gone are the days of a reporter appearing at Board meetings or even following up on a press release. Of course there are the feel good Pittsford sections occasionally but little hard news coverage.

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