One would think that this close to Election Day, policy, instead of political process, would be at the top of everyone's mind - yet political signage seems to continue to resonate.

Maybe it is easy to debate bad sign etiquette instead of touchy issues. Here are a few different perspectives on our annual sign wars from conversations within and outside the local political establishment.

Staples, the national office supply chain, has tried to brand its company with the “easy” red button and slogan. If one looks at the property down the slope from the Grant Avenue store, it looks “easy” to put any sign there in various shapes and sizes.

A cynic's first response is that the property owner/or developer never wants to say “no” by not having to choose sides, but more importantly not alienating someone who may be able to help them down the road.

What sometimes isn't “easy” is getting rid of political signs where they don't belong. Send a city crew out to remove the signs that litter right of ways - like one mayoral candidate's that line the Arterial - and they can unfairly be tagged as picking sides. Sometimes the only route is to contact the candidate and ask them to get rid of the illegal signs.

What happens if they won't? Citing someone for having construction debris in the right of way in front of a home or putting out solid waste long before regulations allow, is easier than doing the same for candidates, who often didn't (one would hope) put the sign in an illegal area, but their energetic supporters did.

If anything it almost takes a new policy, to be written and adopted by the city council in an off-election year, long before the fall campaigns, to say that as solid waste trucks go around their routes each week, they will remove signs that are illegal and compact them.

Then there are those homes where families are clearly split - with signs for two opposing candidates for the same office - a house divided, so to speak - those who drive by must ask themselves if the home owners just can't make up their minds.

Then there are those houses that allow the forest of signs in their front yard (news to some candidates was the limit of two signs per lot - which begs the question: which one(s) do you pull if you have more than two?). In those cases one wonders if the visual overstimulation does nothing but cloud out what is seen - resulting in no positive name recognition, the point of signs, since everything is a blur.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com