You might not have noticed the large paper signs attached to telephone poles all over Durham Tuesday afternoon. At almost 2 feet by 3 feet, the bright orange and yellow signs were hard to miss, but rain and paper don't mix well. With only a few staples to hold them, they became colorful litter by Wednesday morning.

In case you missed them, they read:

" Clean House Yard Sale / Sat. Dec 5th / 9am-1pm / World Market / 1515 N. Point Drive / Durham, NC / *BE ON TV!*"

Those eyesores were posted illegally. I suspected the lawbreakers were folks who saw that parking lot of the former One World Market as the perfect location for their yard sale. If so, they would be trespassing, so police could take care of them, right?

Answer is maybe. They could, but only if the owner of that commercial property has a valid agreement with Durham's Police Department to arrest trespassers there. Valid means in the last 90 days, because our agreement only lasts three months. Why do they only last three months? Surely DPD wants cooperation from commercial property owners. Is asking them to re-confirm that every 90 days, the best way to earn it?

Without that silly form, our police can't confirm (often with an out-of-state landlord), on a Saturday morning, that the folks having a yard sale on that parking lot are doing so without the owner's permission. Durham police respect private property, which is good, but that form is required to protect against trespass, which is why the form needs to be redesigned. DPD, can you tell what I want for Christmas?

Now to the zoning/planning department that enforces the sign codes, the laws broken when the signs were put up on those poles. The poles are private property also, owned by power and telephone companies.

Notice this issue has come full circle and there's a lesson to be learned.

I witnessed the InterNeighborhood Council take a poll of the neighborhoods' top concerns around 2003, and the top manageable problem was illegally posted signs.

That resulted in City Council suggesting some staff work on weekends, which resulted in the first actual collection of the fines those enforcers can impose. First one was $14,000, that got everyone's attention, and our illegal signs disappeared for about five years.

In subsequent INC polls, that problem didn't even register, which can be seen as an A+ on both the city's and INCs, report cards.

Former City Manager Patrick Baker, once said his Wake counterparts asked him how he kept his roadways so clear of these illegal advertisements. All it took was a couple staffers to work the weekends for awhile and aggressively enforce that code, and collect those fines.

Then, when the problem nearly disappears, it becomes illogical to keep that many employees waiting for a violation, so when the last enforcer left, their position was left unfilled.

That's one reason you've been seeing the slow return of illegally posted signs recently, which I predict will continue until it becomes a serious enough issue to put pressure on City Council again, ya da, ya da, ya. The cycle takes a number of years so enjoy the signs in the meantime.

As to this obnoxious yard sale, the violators turned out to be a television show called "Clean House" from the In Style Network. Seems they come in, clean out someone's house for them and sell the items at a yard sale.

Thank the good staff of the City-County Planning Department for figuring out who had posted those signs, now soggy heaps of fluorescent paper at the base of those telephone poles. Let them know how much you appreciate their work in what is generally a thankless job.

While you are at it, thank our police officers, too. When they redesign that form, they should do it electronically, which would end the antiquated practice of pawing through a folder full of mostly expired agreements. Police are higher-tech these days, and these forms should be in a central database, so officers can pull them up at will. They should last one year, instead of 90 days.

I plan on attending that yard sale, but don't expect to see me on TV like the signs say. I'll be there to thank that TV network for cleaning up one Durham household, while I scold them for littering our entire City in the process.

Bill Anderson is lives in Durham and is a past chair of the InterNeighborhood Council.