The crack-down on private property may
seem uncommon or targeted, but a city ordinance that limits the presence
of signage on private property has been on the books for the past 13
years.
While residents are allowed to have
temporary messages up only around certain holidays, there is an
expiration date surrounding just how long billboards and posters can
remain on display.
The “God bless America” signs at the
center of the first debate were originally handed out by First Church of
Bartow, a local house of worship, to commemorate the July 4th holiday.
TheBlaze called the church and spoke
with a representative who told us that someone made the signs and left
them out for parishioners to take and use back in June.
Now, three months later, the city
believes that some of the 300 placards that were distributed and posted
have overstayed their welcome, WTVT-TV reports.
The City of Bartow Code Enforcement
asked residents to remove the messages within the next three days, as
July 4th celebrations are long past.
While WTVT-TV reports that residents
will be hit with a $25 per day fine if they fail to remove the
sign, Bartow Code Enforcement Director Gregg Lamb told TheBlaze that
financial penalties were never threatened and that his office does not
have the right to enforce them.
“We were just hoping for some
cooperation and understanding about the ordinance,” he said of requests
made to the 20 to 25 families that still have the sign on their lawns.
Lamb also made an important point that
he says was lost in local media reports: The “God bless America”
message had absolutely nothing to do with the crack-down. Even if it was
a for sale sign for a vehicle, the same rules would apply, he told
TheBlaze.
Regardless
of the motivation, the regulation has some locals so outraged that they
plan to attend the Bartow City Commission meeting on Monday to request
an exemption that would allow them to continue displaying the signs.
Lamb said that if residents want to
change the rules governing messaging on private property, then they can
do so through the ordinance process. The current regulation, he said,
was created to “keep communities and neighborhoods from being cluttered
from all sorts of messages.”
“If they want to make an ordinance to allow a particular type of sign, then they need to change that by ordinance,” said Lamb.
Some of the residents do appear ready to fight for the right to display whatever they’d like in their front yards.
“I personally feel if it were on a
city right-of-way, they would have a right to remove it,” resident
Emmett Purvis told WTVT-TV. “But this is my yard that I’m paying the
taxes on. It’s my right.”
Others agree. Marcus Seger, a veteran,
said that he felt as though he was “kicked in the gut” when he heard
that regulation would be enforced.
Some residents plan to keep their signs on their lawns to show that patriotism has no expiration date.
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