Take a good look at the streets of your community. Start at the edge of town. Look at the big box strip, downtown, and residential intersections. Check out the billboards, the flashing electronic signs, hand-painted signs on walls and windows, sandwich boards, balloons, banners, and flags. Businesses seem to be in a destructive contest to see who can build the biggest and most flashy sign.

If you are a community that is working on building neighborhood identity, sign clutter is a good place to start. Visually unpleasant signs erode community identity, dominate the streetscape, ruin scenic views, detract from historic ambiance, and blight entire neighborhoods. Too many signs aren’t good for business either. When there is a surplus, the message of each is lost.

Sign control is good for consumers too. Drivers do not like to scan a confusing mass of clutter to figure out where they need to turn. It’s stressful and unsafe. Studies show that when the size and number of signs are reduced, the viewer actually sees more.

Sign control is also good for tourism. When one town looks just like the next, there is less reason to stop and visit. The more a community can do to enhance, not detract from, its unique identity, the more people will stop and explore.

If you are a community interested in sign control, an excellent reference is “Municipal Control of Signs”, issued by the NYS Department of State, Division of Local Government. It is available free of charge at www.dos.state.ny.us/lgss/books/munisigns.htm.

This reference will help you identify the difference between regulating the physical characteristics of signs (size, type, number, duration, and location) versus the content of signs. Courts have ruled that sign messages constitute a form of speech protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

If you are a business, this reference will help you understand to what extent a municipality may legally regulate the placement and content of your sign.