McHenry County Board member Terri Greeno’s recent column about how the Village of Prairie Grove handled yard signs gets the central facts wrong. The record is public, so correcting it is straightforward.
It started with one sign. A resident placed a plant sale sign in the right-of-way along Nish Road. The sign was removed, and the resident came to Village Hall to accuse the Village of taking it. The Village had not taken it. Village staff explained the rule that applies everywhere in the community: no signs may be placed in the public right-of-way (or on another’s property) without consent. The resident then complained that signs were sitting in the right-of-way all over the Village. Acting on that complaint, over the course of two days while conducting routine road maintenance, the Village’s Public Works staff gathered signs that stood in Village rights-of-way and held them at the Public Works for owners to reclaim.
No one was ticketed or fined.
Greeno’s column tells it differently. She writes that the Village swept signs off private property by stretching a setback rule. It did no such thing. The Village applied a separate and long-standing rule, Section 24.03 of the Village Code, which bars signs in the public right-of-way. It removed nothing from private property. It even left standing the private property signs that broke a different 20-foot setback rule in Section 24.05(A)(6). Only signs in the right-of-way were removed.
The column also claims that signs opposing a proposed battery facility were taken first, while signs for goods and services were spared. That is false. The pickup spanned two days and progressed by Public Works’ crew location, not by message. Photographs of signs still standing in the middle of a two-day job were passed around as proof of alleged bias.
They were proof only of a job not yet finished. A sign against the battery project and a sign for a weekend yard sale were removed the same way, because the rule looks at where a sign stands, not at what it says. In fact, the majority of the signs gathered had nothing to do with the battery project.
None of this is a local invention. Illinois law, 605 ILCS 5/9-117, prohibits obstructions in a public road without the highway authority’s permission, and the Village is that authority for its own streets. The purpose is to keep the right-of-way clear so crews can mow and maintain it safely, and to spare our roadsides from clutter. It has nothing to do with anyone’s opinion. Ironically, McHenry County, on whose Board Greeno sits, specifically authorizes local authorities to remove signs placed in rights-of-way. (McHenry County Code of Ordinances, §16.72.040(B).)
Lastly, no one’s voice was silenced. Any resident may post any sign, including one opposing the battery facility, on their own property, within the parameters of the Village’s Sign Ordinance. The rule governs where a sign goes, never what it says. Keeping the right-of-way clear and protecting free expression are not in conflict, and in Prairie Grove both were honored.
• David Underwood is the village president of Prairie Grove.