BY FRAIDY REISS
Correspondent
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP – As soon as next election season, you might need to post a bond before you put up a political sign.
Among several changes to the current sign ordinance under consideration by the Township Committee is a provision, suggested by Mayor Anthony J. Ammiano, that would require political campaigns to post a bond or deposit money in escrow before erecting political signs on public property. The bond or escrow would be returned upon the timely removal of the signs.
“Otherwise there’s no incentive to come back and take down the signs,” especially for candidates who lose an election, Ammiano said.
Township Attorney Duane Davison said he was exploring the provision to find out if other towns have passed similar measures and if municipalities are allowed, by law, to require such bonds.
“Unless we’re prohibited from doing it, I’ll incorporate the escrow-posting requirement into the ordinance,” Davison said. He said he did not yet know the dollar amount of the bond or escrow.
Currently the town’s sign ordinance allows signs to be placed only where permission was granted by the property owner, and it limits the display of political signs – on both public and private property – to no more than 60 days before an election and 14 days afterward.
The Township Committee is considering other changes to the ordinance regarding signs erected on public property, including a requirement that each campaign or candidate’s signs be placed 100 feet away from each other and 10 feet away from other candidates’ or campaigns’ signs. Additionally, all signs would need to be placed at least 2 feet from the curb or from the edge of the paved road.
These “positioning” requirements would “stop the infernal clutter we saw at intersections” during previous election seasons, Davison said. “It detracts from the aesthetics of the township,” he said.
“The reason we have political signs is to convey a message,” he added. “You don’t need 12,000 signs within 2 inches of each other to convey a message.”
The governing body also might add a provision to the sign ordinance that would allow “any interested party” to remove signs that violate the town code.
Of course, Davison said, this provision could lead to a situation where an individual sees two campaign signs within 10 feet of each other and mistakenly removes the sign that was put up first, rather than the sign that actually is in violation.
“I don’t anticipate this will ever happen, because people will be more practical than that,” he said. “They’ll put up the sign a proper distance away.”
However, if the provision did lead to problems, it would be amended, he said.
Furthermore, if sign proliferation ever becomes a problem on front lawns too, the governing body might extend the “positioning” provisions to cover more than just public property, he said.
“They may very well come back and have this apply to private property,” he said.
Davison said he and the Township Committee members hope to introduce the sign ordinance amendments before the end of August, in time for next election season.