Why not just play this straight.
Call the county the next time someone parks there, sign or no, it is a no parking zone.
Given the likely state of their finances, they will probably come out & put a ticket on the car(s). A few tickets and people will start to park in the right place. Even if they can go to court and fight the ticket because the sign has been stolen, this is a huge PITA compared to parking in the right spot.
And, the county will replace the signs. One that you recovered and put back up yourself has dubious validity.
There seems to be some disagreement with the county. The county actually dropped about 5 of these off for me to put up since they didn't really understand where the 'parking issues' were. This was done after a meeting with the Sheriff himself, TVA and TWRDA (or what ever Tennessee Wildlife Resources is called)
Signs came to me. The first one that I put up, quickly had someone parking right next to it. I called the Sheriff dept. The officer that came out looked at it and said he couldn't give them a ticket because the sign was facing the wrong way.
Don't know if I can type this easily...
As you come to this dead end, you have lake on left, our driveway on the right. It's a little culdesac for lack of better word. Since it was a no parking "area" I put the sign on the right BUT, the sign...how to say...was parallel to the road. Meaning it was "broadcast" to the entire (very small) area.
Someone parked just past the sign. The Officers logic was "the sign means you can't park "BEHIND" the sign so technically, they can't park in the woods. They can park BESIDE the sign. The sign has to be simply rotated 90 degrees before he can give them a ticket.
I was floored. This was after his boss and TVA agreed to make the entire road no parking (narrow road and parking on side can at times, prevent emergency vehicles from being able to pass if need be). Anyway... his statement was "I'll instruct my officers to ticket EVERYONE and let the courts decide"
Now this guy says he can't because the sign is not faced the right direction
My reality here is, it all comes down to which officer might respond. Some of them see the fact that if a firetruck (heaven forbid) needed to get through, might have a problem, therefore people shouldn't park on the shoulder of this narrow road. Other officers don't seem to really care. I never know which one might show up.
I also get 'flack' (disgruntled employee at county who's upset about Sheriff department who doesn't enforce some of the rules) from the County guy who puts signs up because "why should we keep putting them up when the sheriff department never does anything about them" (or some paraphrase of that)
Unfortunately, it's a bigger balancing act for me than I anticipated going into it.
Heck... One time, they put the no parking sign in a location where no on in my 25 years here has EVER parked. This is when they told me to move it to where the problem was (simply around the bend, off of the hill). As I was bolting the sign ONTO the post... ironically, a sherriff drove up. Sunglasses on, he said "I sure hope you are not stealing that sign"
The irony that they come by when I was putting the sign UP and have never lucked by when others are ripping them down!
