Lynn DPW boss sick of signs

LYNN – “It’s time to take the city back,” said city Public Works Commissioner Jay Fink on Friday as he displayed bins stuffed with advertising signs city workers removed from trees, telephone poles and public medians.The signs advertise services ranging from home sales to health remedies and junk cleanup businesses and Fink said the public locations they end up on are not included in the city’s sign ordinance.”We’re not going after the lost dog and yard sale signs; it’s the for-profits who think every utility pole is a billboard. If you want a billboard, call Clear Channel,” Fink said, referring to a major advertising company that owns local billboards.Fink views temporary signs typically stapled or taped to poles or mounted on metal wire legs and stuck in the ground as visual trash detracting from the city’s appearance. After leaving Quincy six years ago to run Public Works, he focused on improving street cleaning efforts, especially downtown. That initiative started him focusing on temporary signs cluttering local streets.”The last straw was when I saw a junk removal sign stuck into the grass on the veterans’ island near City Hall,” he said.Fink met with local real estate firms and was surprised to win realtors and home sales agents over to his side in the fight against sign pollution.”I thought I’d have difficulty convincing them. Times are hard and you’re talking about dollars and cents, but they said, ‘As long as the playing field is level for everyone, fine.'”He said sign clutter is also a threat to drivers, who may miss a “Slow, Children” or “Yield” sign in the split second their eye is diverted to a temporary sign.”It’s a driver distraction,” he said.Fink said the city solicitor’s office has assured him he is on solid ground when it comes to removing temporary signs. The signs are stored in the Public Works building on Commercial Street until they can be cut into paperback-size pieces for use as section and seat markers in Fraser Field.Fink encourages residents and merchants to remove the signs when they come across them.”If they’re in your neighborhood, take them down.”