West Seneca, N.Y. (WBEN) - An excessive number of campaign signs on Union Road and Legion Parkway have been removed by the Town of West Seneca.
West Seneca Supervisor Gary Dickson says he has been receiving a number of complaints this year about the immoderate number of signage lining Union and Legion.
"The last couple of years, campaigns have always been respectful of each other, they put up a handful of signs. They're evenly spaced on Union Road and then there's a few on a Legion Parkway, which is the main entrance to the parking lot by the Community Center. So this year, for some reason, there were three or four times as many signs on Union Road and it also appeared that some campaigns were intentionally placing their signs to block other campaigns. We started getting complaints that it appeared that the Town of West Seneca was endorsing a particular candidate."
West Seneca's Community Center and Library is an early voting location, but not a polling place for the primaries. In previous years during the early voting period, campaign signage has been permitted. However, Dickson decided to put his foot down and decided to remove the grand number of signs.
"There aren't supposed to be signs on Union Road anyways. So we're going to treat the political signs, like we treat every other sign, and we removed them all and then we said on Legion Parkway, by the entrance to the parking lot, every campaign can have two signs that way, everyone is treated equally and fairly," said Dickson.
Dickson also notes that there have been instances of signs being placed on property without permission and that the Union Road ban will continue in upcoming years.
Dickson says that the Board of Elections told him that you can't have any political signage on a state right-of-way.
All signs are expected to be removed once early voting ends.