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Dear Editor,

I am John Lyons and I am a candidate for Town Council.

This year my campaign spent a bunch of money on plastic and metal lawn signs to distribute around town to promote my candidacy.  The same was done for the other 11 candidates for Town Council. Add in the four candidates for Board of Education and in all, I estimate nearly 3,000 corrugated plastic signs were printed and planted in West Hartford and every one of them will likely outlive me, and many of the other candidates running for local office. Signs are made of this “corrugated plastic,” which take 12 months to fade, nearly three years to become fragile and nearly 10 years to flake into fragments. The fragments can take decades to completely disintegrate. These signs (or remnants of them) will outlive many of us.

And many communities do not accept them at their recycling centers.

The cost of these signs is high as well. Just using general average costs, likely close to $12,000 dollars were spent producing these 3,000 plastic signs. The delivery and pickup of these signs leaves a significant footprint as well as gasoline is used, and exhaust emissions (which also pollute) are created while candidates and their surrogates run around in cars planting and picking up signs. Electric cars have cost of generation which also has its own negative impact on the environment.

We end up with a town that for three months every two years, is literally peppered with signs, often on top of one another. Every major intersection has signs literally designed and placed to catch the attention of every driver on the road. It is the polar opposite of the West Hartford Vision Zero distracting drivers with bright colors and bold names. Eventually, they topple over and blow away or are placed in the regular trash and not recycled. It is unsightly and crass and really crappy for the environment!.

Did you know that several trusted research organizations report that yard signs only move the voter needle 1-2 percentage points?  That is all. For this local election, signs are literally nothing more than litter … polluting sight lines and taking up green space.

I think it is not good for West Hartford to permit these signs. I’d like to see them banned in the future through action of the incoming Town Council (which I hope to be a member of). The data indicates they serve little to no purpose, they are unsightly, ruin green space, cause pollution, distract drivers, are expensive and use resources to construct. There is nothing good about them.

I promised to run for the good of West Hartford only. This is a great step in that direction. Let’s do away with them. For good!

John Lyons
West Hartford
(John Lyons is a Republican candidate running for election to the West Hartford Town Council)