Ovid Town officials look at emergency signage procedures

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The village of Ovid may be getting on the house numbers bandwagon a little, but not too late. Dr. David Dresser came to the Feb. 10 Ovid town board meeting with a plan to help the village get house number signs at reduced cost.

The town of Ovid has just finished wrapping up its house numbers program, providing green number signs that will be visible at night to emergency responders. Dresser said that in talks with Ovid village mayor David Terry, he had come up with a plan to obtain similar signs for village residents. The village would be posting a notice to residents in local newspapers, to the effect that they can get number signs for $20.25 by leaving their name, number, street address, and phone number at the village office. Village personnel will be erecting the signs.

Al Deming put in that he had talked with Mayor Terry, too, and “he doesn't think there's going to be a huge influx” of people wanting signs.

Ovid town attorney Steven Getman said he had some concerns about the process of paying for the signs, since the plan is for the town to order them (to take advantage of the bulk discount attached to buying all those town signs) and the village to pay the town back. “What if someone doesn't pay? It's a financial obligation created for the town by the village,” said Getman.

After some back and forth Getman said he would be satisfied by a Memorandum of Understanding from the village that detailed the terms of the deal. Deming said there should be a time limit on the whole process; at this time, the plan is to ask residents to get their orders in by March 15. Regarding the town of Ovid signs, a lingering issue is that some residents removed the signs posted for their properties. Borst said he had communicated with the new sheriff, who is extremely busy and responded via voice mail; “He believed the enforcement should be done by our code enforcement officer. We don't have a code enforcement officer... It didn't sound like the Sheriff's real interested in this.”

Officer Leon Anderson, Interlaken Police Chief and School Resource Officer for South Seneca, had offered to do it, but attorney Getman said it would be outside his jurisdiction. Getman suggested that supervisor Prouty schedule a meeting with the sheriff and find out once and for all “what the sheriff will or won't do.”

John Hubbard returned to a pet peeve, which is the cost of the signs for owners of trailer parks. Although the signs for the trailer numbers are smaller and cheaper, the cost is borne by the property owner- the owner of the park. Hubbard's opinion is that the cost, around $1000, for a certain trailer park owner, is “unfair.”

Getman reminded him that charging everyone else in town for house number signs while giving them to the trailer park owner for free isn't legal: “The law says, they've got to pay for them.” The town can't make a gift of services or goods to an individual, said Getman.