The City of Ann Arbor's Community Standards Department routinely removes signs from the right of way when someone puts something there that doesn't belong. This might be an advertising sign, a political yard sign, or something else that fits the bill. The city's sign ordinance sets the standards.
I asked the city in a FOIA request to give me more information about sign removals, and after we went back and forth a while to get a request that was easy to fill, here's what I got: a count of the number of signs removed each month.
I am responding to your request under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act received November 6, 2012 for a copy of monthly logs of confiscated signs for 2012. Your request is granted. The number of confiscated signs for the 2012 year to date is 285. The number if signs collected each month of this year is as follows:
January - 37
February - 41
March - 23
April - 55
May - 65
June - 82
July - 63
August - 114
September - 34
October - 206
November to date - 105
There's certainly a followup request that tries to go deeper into detail for each of these sign confiscations, but what I thought was interesting was the definite connection between the political season and the number of signs taken down.
