By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

NAPLES — Signs popping up on the Causeway is one of the things that make people upset enough to complain. Therefore, the local selectmen and the town staff have heard their share of complaints about signs cluttering up the Causeway.

In fact, temporary event signs were addressed when the Naples Sign Ordinance was revised.

In the first granting of temporary signs since citizens passed the new Sign Ordinance (SO), the Naples Board of Selectmen decided that the Causeway is off limits to signs.

The selectmen defined the Causeway as basically from the Bob Neault Memorial Bridge to the seaplane dock, near Freedom Cafe. In other words, it is the area where the boardwalk is, the green space. 

Chairman Jim Grattelo commented on the importance of this first decision regarding the placement and the number of signs advertising events and festivals. What the selectmen decide sets a precedence, he said.

The first group to ask to put up signs was the Casco Days Association. Tom Mulkern, Casco Days co-chair, appeared before the Naples board on Monday night. 

“Last year, I received a call from the Naples Town Hall, asking us to take down our Casco Days signs from the roadway because we did not receive permission to” put them up in the first place, Mulkern said

He requested to put up three (3) signs in the late spring to early summer. Those three signs would be placed by the Big Apple, the Naples Fire Station and P&K Sand & Gravel, Inc., off Route 11. The plan was to put up three more signs on the Causeway prior to Father’s Day weekend to capture the attention of people at the Maine Blues Festival. The last phase of signs would be two weeks prior to Casco Days, with about a half-dozen more signs going up around town, Mulkern explained. 

The board resounded a loud, ‘No’ to signs being put up on the Causeway.

However, the selectmen agreed to a total of 14 signs: three signs six weeks prior to the event; another three signs on Blues Fest weekend; and six to eight more signs to be erected two weeks before the event.

During the discussion the board addressed excluding the Causeway as a location for signs; the section of the ordinance that says signs will not go up sooner than six weeks before and event; and keeping signs off the Naples Veterans’ Monument.

“The issue has always people don’t like signs on the Causeway, on the bridge,” Chairman Grattelo said. 

Mulkern said, “The Causeway — I understand your concern. Could I appeal to do it just the weekend of the Blues Festival when we get all that walking traffic?”

Grattelo was pondering, questioning the short-term placement of the signs on the Causeway. He said the town has discouraged all types of signs in that space.

“Whatever we do, this is first one so we have to decide what we want to do because then with everyone else coming forward, we have to be consistent,” Grattelo said.

Selectmen Jim Turpin said that the Causeway “looks cleaner without the signs.”

Obviously this does not include business signs; it applies only to temporary signs.

Turpin told Mulkern that the decision was nothing against the event, just a way to preserve the look of the town’s infrastructure.

“We fully support Casco Days,” Turpin said.