The Austin City Council is again deliberating their sign ordinance, which currently bans yard sale signs from being posted on public right-of-ways. Signs must be posted in the Skinner’s Hill parking lot or near Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street Northeast.

Essentially, those who want to cruise sales on a Saturday, for instance, have to drive to one or both locations and look at the signs with a pen and paper if they don’t check the classifieds, where not all sales are listed.

Does this make any sense at all? And to make it worse, the council now wants to prohibit all private signs in right-of-ways, including real estate, auction, performance and other signs, citing a need to preserve public safety.

It would be understandable to require all sign-posters to remove their signs once their sales are over, but ban them altogether? Is there really a good reason for this, other than to confuse people who aren’t aware of the ordinance or prevent citizens from having sales in the community? It’s also a waste of law enforcement’s time to routinely pick up these signs from public right-of-ways.