What a way to welcome a soldier home

Ribbons and signs, not here you don't!

From The News-Press, this article describing how one families efforts to welcome home their daughter from Iraq ran into a few snags, thanks to not obtaining permission for placing the ribbons and signs in the public property areas.

More fun with the strict interpretation of the laws and rules that exist around us.

Headline is linked.

Mom upset after Cape (Coral) official pulls 'Welcome Back Soldier' sign

Cape Coral - May 4, 2005

By PETE SKIBA
PSKIBA@NEWS-PRESS.COM
Published by news-press.com on May 4, 2005

A Cape Coral mother was upset Tuesday when a city worker removed a small, homemade sign and yellow ribbons, welcoming her daughter home from Iraq, for violating a local ordinance.
"After my daughter is risking her life for our country, for me, for you, for code enforcement," Kelly Smith said. "I think it is a shame they are so shallow. What harm does it do?"
Smith, 44, and her friends put up a cardboard "Welcome Back Soldier" sign — the size of a desktop calendar — in the median strip along Country Club Boulevard to greet U.S. Army Pfc. Amanda Smith, 19, as she approached home.
Besides the sign, 500 yellow ribbons on knee-high stakes lined the roadside for about two miles from the Smith house just south of Nicholas Parkway to Veterans Memorial Parkway. They also put ribbons in the median for the 2003 Cape Coral High School graduate.
A code compliance officer came along and took the sign down and some of the ribbons. He also was removing garage-sale signs, said Grace Teague, a Cape Coral resident and district manager for The News-Press. She watched the man remove the sign and ribbons.
"The officer took down illegal signs," said Angelo Bitisis, Cape Coral Police Department spokesman. "No signs or ribbons on private property were touched."
The city does not allow temporary or commercial signs in medians unless they are also advertising city-owned facilities, or providing road information, such as street signs or stop signs.
Teague said some of the yellow ribbons over the long stretch survived because the officer became fatigued. "The man was sweating and gave up taking all the ribbons down. He just took down the signs." Teague said.
Cape Coral Mayor Eric Feichthaler said he didn't know the signs were illegal. "I think it would have been fine if they left them today," he said. "I thought there were official exceptions."
One less sign or not, Amanda Smith was just glad to be at her flag-decked, yellow-ribbon festooned home with her family and friends.
After coming from the airport in a donated limousine with Rolling Thunder Vietnam Veterans riding along, Smith changed into civvies.
"I'm going to get a pedicure and get my hair done," Smith said.
She's home and all right and it is time to relax.
Stationed at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Smith said she didn't have much time to relax, think, or be afraid. Soldiers there work, work, work and then work some more, she said.
"We're too busy to notice the time," Smith said. "It just goes by so fast."
Smith returned home on leave for 15 days after serving five months in the war zone with the 18th Airborne.
After she finished hugging and giggling with her sister, Alex, 16, and her "best friend in the world" Miranda Blusiewicz, 20, Smith described the war.
"I'm more safe than most others," Smith said. "I can't go off base. But I hear the bombs go off at the gate, and I can see the smoke."
The young woman who wanted a pedicure got a wry grin and said, of course she's had combat training, and of course she can fire an M-16. She's Airborne. "I am in the Army."
She slept in her bed at home Tuesday night. Her mother should sleep well, too; she put a lot of time and effort into the welcome home.
"If any of those code enforcement guys have soldiers in their family, I'd put signs and ribbons up for them, too," Kelly Smith said. "That's just right."
City Councilwoman Alex LePera said there were ways the family could have gotten permission to put the sign up on a high traffic median. "We cannot let people just stick signs up," LePera said. "The city would look like a mess."
LePera said the family might have been able to get special permission to place the sign in a specific area had they contacted the code compliance office.

Yup, a city couldn't possibly welcome home one of it's soldiers by allowing one of it's citizen's to put up a sign in public space.

I hope the up-tight and tight-azzed individuals with a stick up their rear over the placement of these signs don't find themselves having to face the possiblity of welcoming home a loved one, or worse yet, having the honor of not being able to welcome home one. After all, we wouldn't want them to have to obtain special permission in advance now, would we.

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Coral Gables... Isn't that the same place that wouldn't allow a former Marine to fly a U.S. Flag in his own yard? Not sure, but sounds the same.

This is the line that got me the most:

The man was sweating and gave up taking all the ribbons down. He just took down the signs.{/quote]

I guess it's tough work being that anal about piddly victimless "crimes". If he had have just waited a day, Kelly Smith and her family just might have done the job for him.

Here in my city, we see things a little differently, the ribbons and flags here were actually put up by the city, the signs were made by school kids and there was a whole reception ceremony to welcome the 330th MP Det (Army Reserve) home from Iraq.

I guess we were raised wrong. ;~D

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