This used to be one of, if not the, most active state forums. The last post here was in April. What's up?

Is Texas sign free now, or has has apathy set in?

In Austin, some parts of the city are now pretty much, but not totally, sign free. In my area of operation, for example, I used to easily get 100 signs or more in an hour or 2 on a morning, mostly the typical coroplast scam signs. And frequently, I would have to go out several times per week because the signs would be back, sometimes overnight.

Now I am only getting about 30 per hour when I go out and they are mostly garage sale and lost pet signs. And that is if I only go once out every 2nd or 3rd weekend instead of several times per week.

Illegal Signs in Austin

Yep, we are very much still here and as vigilant as ever.
However, a lot has to do with activity.

Used to be that we could go out on a given Saturday morning and have a pickup bed full in a couple of hours.
Now we're lucky to get that much in a month.

Yes, there's still a lot of sharked signs around but there's no where as much as five years ago.

In addition, the economy has a lot to do with the activity.
The spammers don't have the extra time or money to throw away.


GW

>Now we're lucky to get that much in a month.

That is good news. We have made a difference!

Illegal Signs in Austin

A little late to the party but if anyone wants to come up to Avery Ranch in north Austin, please feel free to remove all the Fitness19 signs you can. These slobs put out signs every week and leave them until someone removes them...a day or two later, they're up again...usually in the median but frequently on the shoulder. A new tactic is throwing 6" x 9" bags of rocks(about a half-cup per) and their fliers into the yards of nearby homes. Talk about a great marketing plan! A call to 311 was placed by some residents but no direct response so far.

I'll keep getting what I can!

>A new tactic is throwing 6" x 9"
>bags of rocks(about a half-cup per) and their fliers into the
>yards of nearby homes.

Next time they come through your neighboehood, throw their bags back at them.

Making a difference and keeping it clean

This is far from new. We had this very same thing happen in the Far North Dallas area some ten years ago.
We got it stopped or nipped in the bud after one of the neighborhood teenager's who was mowing a yard, hit one of the bags or rocks. Only in the particular case it was marbles rather than rocks.

The rocks scattered in several different directions, some breaking a window and others hitting a car and making some serious scratches in the paint and chipping one car's windshield.

Upon investigation, and finding numerous yards in the neighborhood with the bags of marbles, the police were called whom in turn got code enforcement involved. They used every possible tactic they could to identify and bring the individual into custody.

The judge made the individual pay for all the damage done and told the parties involved that if it ever happened in Dallas County again, they would file on them for criminal mischief. Depending on the amount of damage done, the charges could go as high as a Class "B" felony. In Texas, this is an extremely serious offense.

Needless to say - the bag throwing stopped almost overnight.

All you have to do is file a police report and indicate the danger involved when the bags are hit by a mower.

GW

Since the new bandit sign law was placed into effect in Sept 2007, it has tamed down a lot in Houston, especially with the home builders. It seems to had some its desired effect. At least most of them are back on private property. The other normal spammers still do their work. After catching a professional spammer (a woman) and delivering a number of sign pieces to her yard over a several months period, she either stopped or moved to another part of Houston. But you can always come home with signs, but maybe not a pickup bed full like in years past. I spend a lot of time in a smaller town, (100,000 population) where there are some signs but not the number in Houston. There have been articles in the paper,small town, about the local code people enforcing the law as more signs had appeared. I hope to introduce myself to the local code officials and offer my help. They did have a posting for a code officer but the pay is only $12.00 per hour, full time. It would have to be a labor of love. I would like to find if I could get paid $1 per year to just enforce sign codes and be able to write citations.

Still collecting signs every weekend.......seems to be slowing down a bit in the Alliance area.