Street Signs

We have folks who want to replace our county and state maintained street signs with fancier signs and assume responsibility for their maintenance. Anyone out there have experience with doing so, specifically the pros and cons of doing so? In virginia the HOA can do this with permission from the county and state provided it can be established that the county and state are not maintaining the signs - which by the way they are. Our attorney has said we can do this but I say no and am most concerned about the extra expense over and above our taxes and the potential liability issues.

Carol. I'm confused. Why would your HOA need a "Community Designed Stop Sign"? I thought that unless a stop sign was needed and approved by the state, it could not be used. I don't understand how someone can be ticketed by the police for disobeying a community designed and placed sign. Also, who maintains the Community signs?

Jack - specifically what signs are you talking about?
How can a STOP sign get "fancier"?

Are you talking about street-name signs?

Fancier refers to the posts upon which the signs are mounted. The issue is making the posts fancier but we cannot accept responsibility for the posts only, nor am I sure we want to even if we could. We already pay taxes for maintenance of these signs/posts.

We were in the county and we could make our own street signs. They were nice wood signs. However, when we incorporated into the city and turned our roads over to the city, we had to go with the City's street sign requirements.

It's best to check with your area's CODE department in reguards to street signage. We were able to work with the city's codes and make an ordinance which allowed us to paint our curbs instead of using "No parking" signs every few feet. The signs would have been intrusive on the property. Plus there wasn't enough room for people to park on both sides of the road and allow emergency vehicles through.

I would go to your city's council meeting and find out what your HOA can do about signage.

Our streets are maintained by the city however our developer opted to use fancier black wrought iron posts for the stop signs and street name signs. The red stop sign is the same size and design that the city uses, just a much nicer post. The street names are white painted names on black metal which is different than the green metal the city uses. We are responsible for the costs of installation and maintenance of all posts and signs because of our decision to not use the city signage and posts but the city did approve of the posts and signage that we use. They also notify us if they see a missing or damaged sign. We also get reports from homeowners, and through our regular scheduled drive through by the PM. We have not had any problems related to using the private signs, however in our area, this is also common practice--Most of the subdivisions since 1998 have used the black wrought iron posts and nicer signs. Generally only the roads not in neighborhoods have the typical plain silver posts and green signs.