11/2008 The elections are over, and it did not go as I had hoped. I appreciate all of the support I got, especially the emails and the phone calls! The people of Ward 4 (Mandeville area) decided that Mike Hand was doing a good job and re-elected him! I guess serving zero papers and writing zero litter tickets over his last six year term means he can only get better. Eddie Schmidt isn't much better with no tickets in the last year and only a few in the previous eleven years of his service! Stay tuned for more photos. I really like the illegal Mike Hand and Eddie Schmidt signs I have photos of! Eddie didn't have many, but Mike Hand put out a lot on election day that stayed up for days. I assume the City picked them up. I will continue to do what I do, and encourage others to join in! A can of spray paint is cheap and can mark many illegal signs, as litter. If anyone asks why they are there, and not removed, explain that it is illegal for an ordinary citizen to remove such a sign from public property, according to an Attorney General's opinion! Explain that they are there because the elected official,s responsible for the law enforcement, have not and are not doing the job we elected them to do. Electing the same people to office year after year gives you the same problems year after year. Now we are stuck with them for another six years. I wrote the City around November 12th, and advised them that there were about a dozen off premises signs in the Magnolia Shopping center, advertising a pool table shop in Baton Rouge. The next morning I saw the city engineer and another driver, removing remaining (illegal) political signs along with the un permitted pool table shop signs. They must have filled up the bed of the truck because all of the illegal signs that I have seen, remaining from the election, were removed from inside the City limits. I'm not sure two employees, one an engineer, on the taxpayer payroll, should be picking up trash, but that's how the City handles it. Parish too, for that matter. Write some tickets and there could actually be an income stream for the city instead of a drain of resources. 9/15/2008 As you can see, I have decided to put my money where my mouth is, and run for the position that I have complained about for the last 15 years. Instead of spray painting the word "Litter" across illegal signs, I (if I am elected) can remove, or require that the violator remove his sign. I can issue litter tickets to offenders (if elected), and issue litter tickets to smokers who throw their butts out of car windows on nice days. Simply put, I will enforce your litter laws! Please check with your Justice of the Peace, Marie Taylor or Phillip Lynch and ask them how many litter tickets they have processed in the last 6 years (hint, one has zero tickets). That will tell you how effective the incumbent Constables are! Their phone numbers are in the phone book! Please call me if you have any questions, at 264-1123 Hew Hamilton 8/26/08 Of course there are new illegal signs that were put on public property over the weekend. Several Judges and even a JP candidate!
8/22/2008 Most of the illegal signs I reported on 8/12 are still illegally placed on public property! Most of these illegal signs were removed by someone on Monday, 8-25-08 after an email was sent to Rick Moore, Mayor Price, and several Mandeville councilmen & councilwomen. Whoever was responsible, Thanks!
8/12/2008 Many campaign signs are now posted... illegally, on public property! I am reporting them as I see them, but I don't expect the current elected officials responsible for the enforcement, to do much.... Several signs are for constable and JP politicians!!! My experience dealing with the Parish Government to obtain a permit to display my campaign signs on PRIVATE PROPERTY shows why I decided to run for this office. Every candidate MUST pay a fee and fill out paperwork before he can place ANY campaign sign on private property (seems like a restriction to your rights as a voter). On Friday, 7/25/08, after waiting in line, I discovered I could not complete this simple task at the Koop Drive permits office. I had to take the paperwork and get my signature notarized before they can accept it. Two times to the office, and a wait in line each time, seems like a monumental waste of time, huh? A government employee can't check a government issued drivers license? After filling out the paperwork and paying the Government $100, I had my permit. In conversation with the bureaucrat, she mentioned I must not place the signs on public property, and must have them removed by 10 days after the election. And she informed me that Code Enforcement was really cracking down on those illegal signs!!??!! That explains why the "James David Cain - Insurance Commissioner" sign is still nailed to a tree on Hwy 59, just south of the interstate, when his election was over 2 years ago! I asked her if she had been to lunch today. Because if she had, she would have seen the SUBWAY sign directly in front of the Koop Dr intersection with Hwy 59!!
How can every Code Enforcement officer, and every employee of the Parish complex, exit Koop Drive, and NOT notice the VIOLATION??
She didn't have much to say, but that she had not noticed it! This photo was taken on Saturday morning, the day after I was there to get my permit! Really cracking down?? I have to wonder if anyone but I even bothered to get a permit to place their campaign signs! You certainly don't have to worry about the Code Enforcement guys coming after you, and we know that the current constables don't do much either. One incumbent has written ZERO litter tickets in his 6 years of elected position!!
Sign still in place, making money for the litterer, on Monday afternoon, 7/28/2008, at 5:30! So I sprayed the word "LITTER" across it. I'll check tomorrow to see if it got anyone's attention. My guess is it will be embarassing to the Code Enforcement Dept and it will now be removed, but who knows! VOTE for me, and this sign would have been removed within minutes of my seeing it! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.stpgov.org/code/code85.html#H868 <== when you see those campaign signs on public property, you will know what law they are violating. Each candidate had to sign a form saying they understand that it is illegal to place campaign signs on public property. http://blog.nola.com/stpgov_org/2008/05/illegal_signs_targeted.html
It has been a few years since the last update to this web page, but I have continued to email weekly lists of violations to Parish officials. Recently, the Parish created a new job in the Environmental Services Dept, for a litter control position, currently held by Rick Moore of Covington. Reason for this change? I must assume that the constables are not doing their litter control jobs! Another legal change just made at the State level is John Schroeder's bill to allow local governments to enforce the State and Parish litter laws by using their Code Enforcement officers, and that enforcement body. This too, must be because the responsible officials were not getting the job done. Then again, as we have seen, the Code Enforcement Dept ignores illegal signs. http://www.stpgov.org/newsletter_archives.php?id=738
New Directions 2025 Sign Ordinance Proposal, along with my notes (in red) *********************************************************************** Illegal signs, on the "violations" pages below, along major
thoroughfares in the Mandeville/Covington area. All pictures taken by
me, Violations in early December 2002 As of 4/30/02, it looks like the Parish is going to start enforcing the law! At least Constable Richard Moore of Covington is. He has recently removed about 80 illegal signs (by his count) and issued citations for many of those. Keep in mind that not all of the photos, in the links below, are currently in viloation. Many stay up for months, but some are removed after the event, are stolen, or fall down into the grass. Most of the photos at the 4/30/02 page have been removed along with many others that I did not get photos of.
Contact list for JP's, and other FAQ's on litter - Not that they will do anything, but you can always hope. FAQ's on litter from the St Tammany Parish web site. Sign Ordinance and Enforcement procedures from Jefferson
Parish Official Parish Sign Ordinance - St Tammany - Go to Section 5.0.3 New Orleans Metro Area Realtors info page- Wow, if only the realtors knew that it was illegal!! Complete Codes of Ordinances for thousands of Counties and Cities can
be found online at:
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