Town Talk Church Point
Town Talk Church Point
Enhancing Our Streetscape: Tackling Sign Pollution and Promoting the Clean Town Initiative with Mayor Spanky
Are the countless small signs plastered on our town’s utility poles ruining our streetscape? Join us as Mayor Spanky sheds light on the issue of sign pollution affecting our town's aesthetics and safety. Mayor Spanky passionately discusses the laws against these signs due to safety concerns and how their removal can help create a cleaner, more beautiful environment. He offers viable alternatives for businesses to advertise without breaking the rules, ensuring our town remains both visually appealing and safe for all residents.
In the next segment, we turn our focus to the Clean Town Initiative for Church Point. This program is designed to enhance the town's charm, making it a magnet for visitors and potential new residents. By maintaining a pristine environment, we boost our town's image, inviting people to shop, explore local attractions, and consider moving here. Through initiatives like litter management and the demolition of abandoned buildings, we aim to transform Church Point into a welcoming and vibrant community. Tune in to learn more about our shared vision for a cleaner, more attractive town!
We're back here, another episode of Town Talk, chris and Mayor Spanky. Mayor, I know you had a topic that you wanted to discuss and that was signs Signs that are put out in the public, or maybe put out on stakes, or maybe nailed on to utility poles. You wanted to discuss some of that. Tell us your thoughts.
Speaker 2:Number one on that. I'm not talking about business signs, big signs, I'm talking about these little political signs. Or you know, the beekeepers, the tree guys, the this and that, and I'm not against any of those businesses and any of that advertising. But what happens is on the telephone posts is the easiest place to put them. Posts is the easiest place to put them. But there is a law out there that says that you can't put them on a telephone post because if they would ever have to climb the pole which I know they don't do that much anymore but that would get in their way and they'd have to do all that. So that is a law that's out there.
Speaker 2:But the main part that that I don't like is it's sign pollution, that's what they call it, and it's a form of littering. What happens is the sun you put up there is very nice and it's brand new, but after about two months the sun's cooked, it, it's rotten, it's falling to pieces. You got a half of a sun and then they add more and look, it can get away from you real quick. And we showing pictures right now of a four-way stop not far from here. I guess I can say it. I mean, it's not a big deal. I wouldn't think it's in Mir where the signs are on every pole, eight, nine foot up. They're rotten and I mean you're going to see in the video of all the signs just sitting in the grass they're just being chopped up and garage sales and all this stuff. So when people come and they're like why you take down my sign, well, first of all it's on public servitude. If you put it eight foot back onto your property, there's no problem with that. You get it on a stake or a metal stake, just like a political sign would. But on these public areas that is the town's right of way and all electric poles are in those right of ways. So that's why we can't go ahead and take them down.
Speaker 2:But the big reason is sign pollution. I mean we want to keep our streets as clean as we can and it's hard enough to keep up with people throwing a drink bottle or a bag out the window or whatever it may be. But this is something that we can take care of. Now, if you want to go, put it on a telephone post a half a mile out of town. That's the side of my jurisdiction, you know, but in town we've did a big initiative to tear down buildings, abandoned buildings down Main Street. We're still working on some and we're just trying to make the town look better and this is a small step and I know some of the business owners maybe of those companies may not like what I'm saying and I understand that. But I hope they understand where I'm coming from. It's not to hurt their business, it's nothing to do with their business. It's the look of the town. I go to other towns and I see those advertisements all over and it just trashes up the place. That's just how I feel, not everybody.
Speaker 1:There's going to be some disagreement.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a disagreement with everything and that's okay.
Speaker 1:So there is a law in Church Point to where you cannot have those signs.
Speaker 2:It's in the state, Okay, a state law. It's in the state. Now is it enforced? Not really.
Speaker 1:If you drive around different areas. You know it's not enforced.
Speaker 2:You know it's not enforced, but we enforce it from a fact of.
Speaker 2:we want to keep our town beautiful you know, we're doing as much as we can with all the amenities that we have and look, it's a five day a week job to keep this just a trash, you know like, and we don't get everywhere. So anything that can help us to keep the place looking right, that's what we try to do and that is one that, uh, I think is very important, and it keeps our town looking good. And look, if you don't believe me, keep your eyes open, start noticing, because you may have never seen that at the mere full way, you may not have, but now you're gonna notice you're gonna see it now it's everywhere.
Speaker 2:So that's just one thing I wanted to talk about and I just wanted to kind of explain it to you. So if you do want to put up those signs on telephone boards, just do it outside of town yeah not inside probably not going to get taken down outside of the city.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, inside is going to get taken down. That's why I want to make sure that I say it, I make sure I talk about it that way. It's not a surprise when a person puts one up and it goes down you know, and it's nothing against those businesses. If they're working for someone in town and they want to put their sign in that person's yard, that's perfectly fine. It's just not on state right away.
Speaker 1:So let's just say, for instance, if there's a company who does roof work for a home and they want to put out the sign of blank roofing company and that is inside that homeowner's property, perfectly fine, that is okay, no problem at all. We're talking about telephone poles, right?
Speaker 2:aways and I'm kind of I understand the advertisement of hey, we did this roof on this house. And here is our number. Well, that's good advertising. Putting a roofer on a telephone post on Main Street in Church Point is not proving that you do good work, right right, showing that you could nail a sign on a pole To a pole yeah, you wanted to be in front of a home.
Speaker 1:Look at my work. I did such a great job. You should call me.
Speaker 2:Exactly and, like I said, we're not talking about the guy that puts a sign up there and has a beautiful sign and changes their mouth. And there are people like that, but 95 percent of them nail that sign on the on the pool and they forget about it and they become ugly and rotten and nasty.
Speaker 1:Half of it falls off when a storm rolls through exactly, and there we are dealing with it or, if it comes off, the nails are still on the telephone pole, and that's what you're trying to. That's what we're accomplished not not having that. Look that trashy, trashy polluted trash.
Speaker 2:Look, yeah, exactly so, and I mean I've been many, many classes on how to build a community, how to make it sustainable, and in actuality that is a class of its own. It's called sign pollution, and I mean it's down to the point of, like we changed some laws in town. When a business comes to town, their signs have to be so far off the ground it might have to be in a brick encasing something like that, because another form of sign pollution is when you're driving down the interstate and there's a McDonald's sign and a Taco Bell sign and this and they're a hundred feet up and they're one sign is 12 feet, one sign is 50.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go higher than yours. I'm going to go higher than yours, yeah no, that one is harder to conquer.
Speaker 2:But that is another part of sign pollution. You know, when you get to johnson, off of like by cajun dome, you take where camellia is. Yep, when you take that right, look to your right yeah, there's hundreds of light up signs. You can't pick out one business. I know because it's all over the place and that's going into a deeper dive yeah than what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:But in our case, the biggest part is and I, you know, I have seen some people that are like well, why you do that? That's the reason. No, you may not agree with, and I understand that, but it keeps the town cleaner and that's our main objective absolutely.
Speaker 1:We want people who pass through town to think oh man, church Point, that's a great clean place. Maybe I want to live here.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's the whole goal.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm going to come back and hit up the splash pad, or maybe I'm going to come back and I don't know, Shop and whatever. Go to the museum.
Speaker 2:It's all about getting people that are live two or three miles out of town to shop in town, or to get them to move two or three miles out of town. You know, yep, because that's a win for us, even though they're out of town. That's a win for us yeah all right well that sounds good.
Speaker 1:We'll catch you again on another episode of town talk. Thank you.