Political signs are a fact of life for New Iberia residents every election, but some members of the New Iberia City Council say complaints have arisen about the prevalence of signage and have suggested putting limits on them.

Mayor Pro Tem Ricky Gonsoulin said the issue is in the public eye as election season kicks into high gear in the city, and suggested it is finally time to create an ordinance that would limit the amount of time political signs can stay up on public property.

“We put political signs out as a competition with your opponent and I think it’s becoming an issue,” Gonsoulin said at Tuesday’s New Iberia City Council meeting. “Other communities are much more appealing in how they handle it.”

Gonsoulin added that he wanted to ensure that a person’s right to speech was not violated, and his proposal would only limit the time signs can stay up between qualifying day and election day.

However, other council members said a limitation could open the city up to potential litigation and be unfair for newer candidates.

“If you’re new to the game you need to get your name out there early,” Councilwoman Deidre Ledbetter said. “Are we going to just do it for local elections? What about the state and national candidates? That’s not fair.”

Ledbetter added that a sign law could even force companies that advertise with public signs to take theirs down as a consequence of an ordinance.

Councilwoman Deedy Johnson-Reid also asked how many complaints other council members had received about the issue.

“This might be an issue for some people, but that percentage is so minute that we want to be careful about making laws because a very small number of people don’t like something,” she said.

The issue has been discussed by the council before, particularly in 2016 when a similar suggestion was proposed. Ledbetter, who was running for her first time in office back then, said her position had not changed.

Mayor Freddie DeCourt said the only compromise he could see was giving a certain amount of time that a candidate had to pick their signs up following an election due to the complexity of the issue.

“I understand we want to clean our community,” DeCourt said. “We are our own entity, we are uniquely different and, in many ways, very different from those communities. I don’t know if we have a cookie cutter way to do this.”