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Out came the signs.
Every year, large signs, small signs, bland signs, colorful signs all came out. All promoting a candidate who was better than the rest. School board seats, county officials, city council, mayors, and then the federal candidates put their two cents out for the public to see.
Paxton Simmons had been attending the monthly City Council meeting ever since he moved to the city three years before. He believed in trying to keep the Council accountable for the things they did and didn’t do.
At the beginning of the monthly open Q&A forum, Simmons stepped up to the microphone, introduced himself to the Council – though he was a regular fixture at the meetings and spoke up at least two or three times a year – and stated his concerns.
“Honorable council members, citizens of the city of Abbington, it’s election time. And with that comes the hundreds if not thousands of hideous signs that spring up in empty lots across the city. I would like you to introduce a new ordinance for Abbington that requires the winners of local elections to be in charge of cleaning up all the campaign signs for all the campaigns in the area. Requiring a losing candidate to clean up just puts salt in the wound of a loss, but the winners? They have the momentum and team on their side to make it all happen. Too often, the signs are still up a month after the elections, and quite frankly, they’re an eyesore before the election and doubly so after the folks are already elected and about to be seated. That’s all I have to say on the matter. Thank you for listening to my request.”
“Mr. Simmons, we appreciate you taking the time to express your concerns with this body,” Mayor Tinley said. “This is the first I’ve heard of the signage being a public nuisance or an eyesore as you put it. We will take it under advisement and consider ways to reduce the burden on the public.”
Simmons took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He knew what that terminology meant because he had heard it many times before when an independent citizen brought issues to the attention of the City Council: “go pound sand. We’ll take the signs down when we’re good and ready.”
But now his two cents were in the official records for the City. The likelihood the politicians would self-police their own signage was better than even odds now that they knew at least one person was watching.
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