Belmont to Lose Its Identity In Court Battle

Belmont made headlines again when the City recently passed an ordinance to stop the illegal trafficking of signs on “public property”. Friday, the City of Belmont learned in a last minute injunction that the city itself is in violation of their own ordinance by placing signs displaying the name of the City, “Welcome to Belmont” in public areas.

When asked for comment one city council member who wished to remain anonymous said she was startled. “We ran this by our attorney and thought it was fine [the ordinance]”. All we were trying to do was trounce on the freedom of speech of a few individuals and unwittingly we affected a much larger group—and for that we apologize.”

Coming from a council who rarely apologizes for anything it does, this in and of itself is breaking news.

She went on to say, “One must understand that when you rush these oppressive ordinances through the pipeline mistakes can happen. We ran into a similar situation in the contract with Recology—we just did not devote enough time to read the contact and it costs the citizens of Belmont thousands of dollars. But please don’t print that. We’d rather let sleeping dogs lie”.

The implications of this are far-reaching. Belmont may be best known as the first city in the nation to pass the most restrictive anti-smoking policy and now they will be faced with being the fist city in the country that must remove its signs displaying the name “Belmont”. “We’ve come so far with this ordinance and we want to thank the Advertising Intolerance Committee for its hard work. The city has benefitted greatly by citing more than 100 REALTORS for their open house signs—money that will have to be made up elsewhere.

In an emergency closed-door session on Saturday the council hinted that a new, more restrictive ordinance will emerge that will allow Belmont to keep its name; but, “Still preserve the anti-business policies we treasure”.

[END]

*********************************************************************************