Garage Sale Signs Prohibited!

I know it's tempting. . . You're having a garage sale, and you want everyone to come.  You think to yourself, "I need some highly visible signs in order to compete with all those other garage sales here in the 'hood!"  But WAIT!!  PLEASE. . . Don't be so overcome with garage sale euphoria and enthusiasm that you forget your manners.  Those neon pink, hand-written, or standard-issue Home Depot "Garage Sale" signs are not welcome on our beautifully landscaped, well-maintained medians.  Imagine it.  Everyone in the neighborhood who's having a garage sale each weekend (at least 5 or 6 during the summer months) decides to plant two or three signs all over the medians (which, believe me, has happened).  What a lovely place Mesta Park would be, especially when, in all their after-the-garage-sale exhaustion, those very same people forget to remove all that hand-written neon cardboard.

Guess what?  A group of your neighbors raises $18,000 per year to plant flowers, mow, fertilize, edge, trim, overseed, and repair our medians along NW 18th and Shartel.  The City doesn't do it.  WE DO!  I know this because I'm the chairperson of the Shartel Boulevard Development Authority, Inc., a non-profit organization we created seven years ago to maintain our medians.  It's my job to make sure we raise the money necessary to fulfill our organization's mission--and it takes a lot of work!  The great reward is that our beautiful medians have caused the houses along NW 18th St. to be reclaimed, one by one, over the past five years, which has increased property values and added to the charm and beauty of Mesta Park as a whole.  So. . . when I see cheesy garage sale signs planted smack dab in the middle of the flower bed on the corner of NW 18th and Western, or anywhere else along the medians, I truly do see red (not pink)! 

Here are some good manners guidelines:

1.  Put signs up on the day of the garage sale (not before).

2.  Remove signs promptly when the garage sale ends.

3.  Only place signs on the easement (the area between the city street and the public sidewalk). 

4.  Use as few signs as possible, preferably none (newspaper notices work best!--Our neighborhood is not hard to navigate!)

5.  Be advised that any garage sale signs placed on the medians will be removed and thrown away.

Please do your part to keep the neighborhood looking its best.