Hollywood unleashes robocalls to fight illegal signs
March 08, 2012|By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel
HOLLYWOOD The city has unleashed one irritating business tactic to eliminate another.
A new robocalling campaign seeks to hassle, hound and harass out of existence those pesky signs that illegally clutter public medians with offers to buy your gold and junk cars, fix your AC or rescue you from foreclosure. .
The city, this week, began placing up to 20 calls a day to each number it has collected from the signs.
"It occurred to me that they want us to call," Mayor Peter Bober said. "So, we're going to call, and keep calling, until their heads are spinning."
As far as Bober knows, Hollywood is the first South Florida city to use the robocalling technique as a sign-eradication tool: "That's something that I think we're leading the pack on."
Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis loves the notion.
"I think Mayor Bober's got a great idea," Ortis said. "Just load up their phones with messages and maybe they'll get the message."
In Pembroke Pines, code officers take down 200 of the signs a week and regularly field complaints about them. "Otherwise you'd just be plastered with signs," Ortis said.
Pembroke Pines passed an ordinance last year classifying the signs as litter and allowing a police officer to issue a notice to appear in county court to anyone caught posting the signs.
Trouble is, the ordinance is only enforceable if someone is caught in the act, said John Earle, the city's code compliance administrator.
"We spend way too many man hours and resources removing these signs," Earle said. "It's an ongoing problem for us."
In Boynton Beach, code compliance officers gathered 6,794 signs last year. And from Oct. 1 through the end of January, they collected another 1,316, said Diane Springer, the city's code compliance coordinator.
"We try to keep it under control so it doesn't become a major nuisance," Springer said. "It's a daily chore for us."
For $300, Hollywood bought a software system that allows it to automatically call a preprogrammed phone list and inundate each number with pre-recorded phone messages.
When they answer, they'll be informed that their signs were illegally placed in a public right of way and must be removed. And if they want the calls to stop, they must go to City Hall where they'll receive a citation and fill out paperwork confirming that the signs have been removed.
A lone sign in a grassy center median on Sheridan Street east of Interstate 95 on Thursday advertised "A/C Installation & Repair."
Steve Hall, who answered the phone at All American air conditioning, said he hasn't yet been on the receiving end of the city's robocalls.
"It's just that right now, the economy is so bad. We're trying to do what we can to stir up some work," Hall said. "I wish there was a place we could put a sign where it wouldn't be a bother."
The tacky signs have been a longtime pet peeve of Bober's.
In 2010, he held a city contest and awarded $500 to the person who collected the most signs in a two-month period.
"I think any person with a brain in their head does not want to see their city being littered with these signs that nobody has any intention of ever picking up," Bober said.
Bober encourages citizens to continue collecting the signs and to join the phone-pressure effort by also calling the numbers to complain.
Although offenders will be fined when they show up at City Hall $75 for the first offense, $150 for the second and $250 for the third the program is not designed to be a revenue-producing program, Bober said.
He sees it as a means of decluttering public space and freeing up code-enforcement officers so they can tend to more important city tasks.
The calls began at 8 a.m. Wednesday. After a single day, Bober said the city received numerous responses from sufficiently bothered advertisers: "We've already heard from multiple people who want the calls to stop and as quickly as possible."
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