Dear ‘Sign Police’

To the editor:

I was an exhibitor at the Valley Arts and Crafts Guild craft show this past weekend, at the Menard Center. The guild has been around since 1984 and the arts and craft fair in the spring is a wonderful opportunity for crafters to come together to sell their wares, and for people to get out with the family on a Saturday or Sunday and see what the crafters have thought up this past winter.

I am not writing this to promote a show that happened last weekend, what would be the point? I am writing to ask you, Mr. or Ms. Sign Police, how the six banners that were put up around town letting people know about this free event, affected your life so negatively that you felt compelled to call the muni and insist that they be taken down? There were over three dozen small businesses that lost money because people who love the show didn’t know about it. Was it your plan to harm small, local business?

Families who would have stopped by after church to browse and chat with crafters and neighbors didn’t have to opportunity to because they didn’t know about it. Are you angry that people might spend more time out with their families and not holed up in various rooms in their houses staring at their phones?

I, personally collected and paid about $4.75 in sales tax to the city, although I was planning on contributing eight times that, if the show had been well attended. Multiply that by 35 other vendors who paid significantly less tax because people were not reminded about the show. That’s money that goes to educate kids and maintain the roads. You have a problem with supporting the infrastructure?

Every garage sale, every church bazaar, should get the permits but, sorry, no one does. You have a right to complain about signs that are posted without the proper permits, but with rights come responsibilities. Did you really mean to harm the people who were affected by your actions, or were you mad at something else?

If, in some way, the existence of the signs was a true hardship for you, I apologize because I didn’t understand. But I want to understand. What, exactly was your point?

Susan Dunsmore,

owner Arctic Pups Dog Gear

Eagle River