Now that the elections are over, campaign signs should start coming down. Each city has their own rules for how long after the election they can stay up.
"The deadline on the books is five days," said Alex Woodley, Assistant Director of Neighborhood Services for the City of Reno. "For us, because of our workload, and we have priorities for our cases, this is pretty low on our priority list. So our standard practice is not to start looking until two weeks after the election, because we know candidates are dealing with stuff and we have other issues that are higher priority."
Legally, all these signs should be on private property, so the enforcement process involves the landowner.
"If necessary, we'll start sending letters," Woodley said. "We won't pull them off private property, but we will send letters and we try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But after that letter, we start the enforcement process and the enforcement process goes to the property owner. We can issue a citation to the candidate, but we can also issues one to the property owner themselves but we've very rarely done that."
First-time County Commissioner candidate Alexis Hill's signs are all brand new.
"I'm really proud of how my signs turned out," Hill said. "I have an incredible team, I worked with the Ironworkers Union and they helped me put up so many of these."
And she's giving her supporters options when it comes to taking them down.
"I have some bee keeper supporters that want to use them for their beekeeping," Hill said. "So that's totally fine. If people want to use them for craft projects, that's great. But if they want to drop them off for me, I'm all about conservation. I want to recycle them and hopefully in four years I will be running again and I can reuse the signs."
This is Sparks Councilman David Abbott's second campaign, for him and most of this signs - the ones that made it through the first campaign four years ago.
"They do get stolen, they get graffitied, there's been some funny stories from that," Abbot said.
And when it comes to taking them all down, well, the buck stops here.
"It's kind of a one-stop shop here, but I love it," Abbott said. "I like being engaged in my own campaign. I have 82 signs to pick up soon, and that's me that's going to be doing it. I'll probably drag a friend along to keep me company."
And odds are you'll see these signs again in another four years - these exact same signs.
"I keep them in my garage and my room for the next four years," Abbott said. "It's interesting the things you can use these signs for, I've used them for weird things I never thought I'd use them for, but for the most part they just sit in my room and hang out there."
After the election he added notes on his larger signs to thank Sparks voters.
"I just wanted to say thank you to Sparks for giving me another four years," he said.
Questions about election signs should be directed to city code enforcement departments.
