Illegal Signs

Undressed light poles. Naked medians. City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, hoping to see less on more in Baltimore, has introduced a bill to make it happen. Her "Take It Off, Take it All Off" bill would double fines for illegal signs found on public property and encourage residents to take the signs down by offering community associations a share of the fines collected. "We need an army of bounty hunters, basically, that know they're authorized to take them down," Clarke said. "It's small recompense for putting up with the litter, but at least there's hope of return."

In Baltimore City Elderly man killed in fire at house on North Broadway An elderly man was killed yesterday in a house fire on North Broadway, Fire Department officials said. The blaze started about 2:30 p.m. in the 1800 block of N. Broadway, said Kevin Cartwright, a department spokesman. Firefighters had the fire under control within 15 minutes after they arrived, Cartwright said. As they fought the blaze, search and rescue workers scoured the three-story house and found the victim inside.

They cropped up yesterday the minute Mark Gawel steered his county-owned Jeep Cherokee onto the Beltway exit leading to eastbound Liberty Road - so many signs in red and white and black and yellow, all illegally stuck in the grass or on telephone poles. Gawel and fellow Baltimore County code enforcement officer Ed Creed hopped out. They uprooted signs advertising stores, real estate deals and church functions, clipped others off electrical poles, dumped them all in the back of the Jeep, then drove a few yards down the street and started over.

Most days, Dave Desmarais cleans clothing for a living. But when election time rolls around, his focus turns to cleaning up city streets. Desmarais, a Northeast Baltimore dry cleaner, is co-founder of Communities for Clean Campaigns, a grassroots organization dedicated to eliminating illegally posted and abandoned campaign signs from public property. In Baltimore, such signs are legal only on private property. Campaign signs are in the news again this primary season, with a city crackdown making headlines and sparking claims of enforcers playing politics, treating the mayor and at least one of his challengers unequally.

City workers have ticketed the campaign of Democratic mayoral candidate Andrey Bundley 79 times for raising illegal signs, but cited Mayor Martin O'Malley only twice, prompting accusations of politically motivated enforcement. Officials say the city hands out citations - which carry fines of at least $100 each - based solely on the law. They point to a large number of Bundley stickers posted improperly on public utility poles. "It doesn't matter who it is. If a candidate or somebody else has an illegal sign up, the enforcement officers will write them up and take the signs down," said Kurt Kocher, Public Works Department spokesman.

Candidates for local office blanketed Baltimore with thousands of signs this weekend, as the "green machine" campaign team of Mayor Martin O'Malley and placard-waving volunteers of his opponent Andrey Bundley -- among many others -- took advantage of the first weekend that it was legal to put up lawn signs. City sanitation enforcement workers have ticketed the campaigns of Bundley and O'Malley for illegally posting signs on public property, utility poles or other forbidden areas. More than a dozen improper Bundley stickers were observed on utility poles yesterday, and the candidate said no one told him that this was wrong.

As Election Day nears, the piles of illegally placed political signs are growing at Howard County's three highway maintenance yards. "This [year] has been the worst it's ever been. I don't know why people spend so much money," said James M. Irvin, the county public works director. Virtually every candidate is a violator, from County Executive James N. Robey, a Democrat, and Steven H. Adler, his Republican opponent, to lightly funded school board candidate Barry Tevelow. Election signs are prohibited on public property of any kind, including road rights of way. Of course, Republicans tend to see only illegal Democratic signs, and vice versa, and candidates say they never place signs in road rights of way. Only over-exuberant volunteers do that.

Want to make lots of money at home and be your own boss? Need a new day care center? Want to drop your waist size fast? Just look at the signs posted illegally along roadsides all over Howard County. But lately, you may have to look twice, because of those big, bright orange "Violation" notices pasted over the phone numbers. Robert C. Porter, the county's only sign inspector, gets the credit for that. He and community leaders say many more people hate the signs than benefit from them.

With a tug, slash and slam of his trunk door, community activist Harvey Schwartz wins another quick skirmish in his crusade against illegal signs tied to fences and fastened to light posts on city property.Whether they're pushing a sale on cigarettes in Baltimore or promoting a church social in Baltimore County, the signs are transforming too many streets into "carnival midways," Schwartz contends.Though city and county officials admit the signs are illegal, they say they lack the workers to enforce regulations.