City Contractor Staples No Parking Signs to Trees in a No Parking Zone

Yesterday we spotted signs stapled into trees, telling neighbors around Ditmas Avenue and Glenwood Road not to park due to emergency sidewalk repair. Not only were they stapled, but the project, according to the sign, only ran until January 5.

There are a lot of instances where a sign needs to be posted temporarily by the city or by someone with permission from the city. Like the many signs posted about film shoots, those signs should be posted in a particular way (in fact, the city requires they use elastic bands or string, not tape), and removed promptly.

Whether you feel a few staples can cause harm to a tree or not, it’s clear the city feels it’s worse in some way than string or tape. The fine the Department of Sanitation imposes on a normal citizen for stapling signs to trees is steeper than for posting signs in any other manner:

“In addition, affixing any handbill, poster, notice, sign, advertisement, sticker or other printed material upon a tree by means of nailing or piercing the tree by any method shall have an additional penalty imposed equal to the amount of the original penalty.”

What really got us were the signs needlessly stapled up along Glenwood Rd, where there is no parking at any time to begin with. The sign pictured above was still there this morning (also dated through January 5), and construction is still ongoing at a nearby intersection.

We’ve wondered this before, but we’re still curious if the city imposes the same fines on its contractors as it does on regular people.