Harrison to Offset $70,000 Cost of New Street Signs By Selling Old Ones

You may soon be able to take a small piece of Harrison home.

Town and village officials are planning to launch a program allowing residents to purchase old street signs. The revenue from those sales will be used to offset the costs of that requires every local government in the country to replace its street signs in the next few years.

Mayor/Supervisor Joan Walsh said the sign sale would not begin until all of the signs have been replaced, in order to avoid "a bookkeeping nightmare." That could be as soon as late this year, she said, but DPW workers have so far been too tied up to take an inventory of the existing signs.

"The actual replacement should go fairly fast, but what is delaying us now is knowing how many signs we need," she said.

The DPW estimates there are about 1,300 signs throughout Harrison; the replacement project will cost around $70,000.

Supporters of the federal law say it was designed to increase safety on roads by making signs more reflective for night drivers and changing to mixed-case lettering (Which Looks Like This) instead of printing entirely in capital letters. The deadline to replace signs is 2018, though the state has handed down a tighter timetable.

The law caused some uproar when it first passed. New York City, for example, said it would have to spend $27.6 million to replace tens of thousands of signs. But supporters, including the American Transportation Safety Services Association, a trade group that represents companies that make street signs, said signs should be replaced as part of routine maintenance, allowing cities and towns to spread out the cost.

Walsh said the details of the sign-selling program, which is already under way in the city of Rye, had not been worked out.

"First it's going to be 'come [to town hall] and get them,' and then a marketing campaign," Walsh said.

Rye pioneered the unique revenue raiser earlier this year. According to City Manager Scott Pickup, as of this week 63 signs have been sold at $20 each, for a total of $1,260 in revenue. He also said new blank signs cost about $13 each, while rolls of white "high-intensity" reflective tape cost $800 each.

"We're taking lemons and making lemonade," Rye City Councilman Joe Sack told Patch, referring to the sign sale, "drawing attention to an onerous and arguably unnecessary unfunded mandate, while giving residents a chance to own a sentimental keepsake."

Walsh said the commissioner of Harrison's DPW "has a plan" to get the replacements done swiftly in the fall, but she was not ready to disclose all of the details.