Street Spam, or Strictly Business?

Advertisements hanging from public lampposts and utility poles – what some call “street spam” – have become familiar signage along U.S. Route 1 in College Park.

“We pay up to $300,” read one such sign spotted recently at the 9300 block of Baltimore Avenue, offering to take any junk car, van or truck off your hands. “Towed free.”

The phone number listed on the flyer leads to Armando Cortez, who would not divulge the name or location of the auto-recycling business but insisted it was in Maryland.

“It’s not like we’re out there committing a crime,” Cortez said of the advertisements he and fellow businesspeople hang on public poles.

That’s not true, said Sandra Dobson, spokeswoman for the State Highway Administration, which has jurisdiction over U.S. Route 1. “Basically, it’s illegal,” she said in an e-mail.

And the law is about to get tougher. As of Oct. 1, College Park and other local governments will have the authority to both remove illegal signs from state roads as well as collect $25 per sign from violators.

A Marketing Necessity

To businesspeople like Cortez, this could mean trouble.

“The signs are the only way we can get our message out to people,” Cortez said. “I mean, that’s how people pay for life, for their family,” he said.

The signs are largely about building a brand and bringing more business to College Park, said Bob Schneider, the man behind another sign recently spotted at the 9300 block. It read “Liberty Tax — Own a Top Franchise,” printed in red, white and blue.

Schneider, who used to own a Liberty Tax franchise and now helps recruit new owners in Southern Maryland, said the signs work. “I put 100 [signs] up within a one-mile square radius, and my business almost doubled overnight,” he said.

However, Dobson said the stiffening law is not intended to hurt small business, but rather to avoid accidents on the road.

Distraction on a Placard

“It’s a safety hazard,” she said, claiming the signs pose risks to motorists who may become distracted, as well as to those charged with taking them down.

For its part, College Park’s city code states that “No person shall … fasten or cause to be fastened any advertising matter to poles within the city.” A $100 fine may also be levied against violators, but this is only enforceable for city roads in College Park, not U.S. Route 1.

Brenda Alexander, College Park’s deputy director of Public Works, said the city sends out crews to tug down the signs every now and then, even though U.S. Route 1 technically falls under SHA’s jurisdiction.

Despite city and state efforts, and the violation fees, the signs proliferate, Alexander said. “It’s an ongoing problem and seems to go in cycles,” she said.

After calls from Patch to the city for this story, many of the signs appear to have been removed.

Costly Removal

Each year SHA spends some $600,000 to take down unauthorized signs, and in 2008, street maintenance crews removed about 69,600 signs, Dobson said.

That would mean each sign that SHA yanked from its roads cost roughly $8.62.

Bob Ryan, director of the city's public services department, was unable to produce any specific numbers related to College Park's own sign-sweeping efforts. He said in e-mail, however, that the city “will use the authority granted by the new state law to remove signs and enforce the law on SHA rights of way.”

Ryan said that the city attempts to contact the sign owners for an initial warning that they’ve violated the city code.

"Many of the advertised businesses operate from a cell phone and advertise no business name or fixed address, which makes investigation and follow-up harder,” he said.

As of mid-July, neither Cortez nor Schneider said they had been contacted by the City of College Park or SHA to remove their signs.