A sign advertising the Thing In the Spring sprung up on the Eneguess’s iconic oil tank over the weekend, and just as quickly, Peterborough’s code enforcement officer trampled it down.
The oil tank, which sits in the field at the intersection of Elm Street and Route 101 in Peterborough, has long been used as a hub to advertise community events, like pancake breakfasts, or as giant political sign, often adorned in recent years with endorsements of Obama and Kuster.
Until last weekend, the message on the tank simply read, in all capital letters: “BE HAPPY.”
But in advance of the ninth annual Thing In the Spring music and arts festival, which starts on June 9, organizer Eric Gagne went out over the weekend with a small crew and festooned the tank with an ad announcing the event. By Tuesday, that installment had been brought to the attention of code enforcement officer Dario Carrera, who inked a certified letter to the Eneguesses explaining the painted tank was in violation of the town’s signage ordinance. Specifically, the letter reads, the sign is over 20 square feet in area, and it was erected outside of the two-week window in which signage for community events is allowed.
Carrera said he’d discussed this issue before with the Eneguesses.
“My understanding was that the property owner understood the sign ordinance,” Carrera said.
“I don’t know why the property owner would allow someone to use the tank as a sign that violates the sign ordinance.”
Sally Eneguess said that she and husband Sandy would comply with the request within the allotted 48-hour time period.
“We’re going to comply with them,” Eneguess said, “but we have 48 hours to take down the sign, and I was notified at noon today, so I figure we have until noon on Friday.”
Eneguess said they plan to appeal the ruling, but until then, she plans on rolling the tank over or just painting over the lettering – temporarily, she hopes. It wouldn’t be the first time the Eneguesses had to remove a sign from the tank. “We got ‘Trumped’ last fall,” she said, referring to an incident in which vandals spraypainted an unauthorized endorsement; and, signage for the Peterborough Players was removed after it was deemed not a community event.
Thing In the Spring co-founder Eric Gagne was frustrated by the ruling, saying that adding red tape to a process which ultimately has the town’s best interests in mind seemed counterproductive.
“All of this money is being spent to research economic development and get young people to move to the area,” Gagne said. “when we are doing this very thing at no cost to the town. I think when someone is doing an event, a community-based event, it’s a nonprofit and you’re bringing hundreds of people into town to spend money, it seems really strange that you would want to stop that from happening or hamper people from trying to get the word out. It’s on private property, it’s something that we talked about with the property owners, so why the town would want to try and stop that is beyond me.”
Editor Ben Conant can be reached at 924-7172, ext 226, or bconant@ledgertranscript.com.