County sign shop plays valuable role in the community

With the amount of rain that hit Lincoln last week, the county sign shop was hard at work.

Making street signs may not be the first thing you think about during a major weather event, but the county sign shop has an important role to play.

There are about 14,000 street signs in Lancaster county, and over 95 percent of them are produced in the county sign shop.

The Lancaster county’s engineering department’s sign shop is in charge of producing all kinds of signs, including the special ones you saw last week after flooding.

"We made a lot of water over the road signs last week, we still have a couple more roads that are still closed because they are still saturated and damaged from the storms," said County Engineer Pam Dingman.

During windy storms, like the one back on September 1st, county engineers say its not uncommon to lose some signs. The county lost 15 on that day alone.

So who replaces them? There are two full time sign guys who have been with the county for over 20 years.

"We have one guy, and that’s all he does is hang signs all day long, every day," said Dingman.

Apart from heavy weather events, the county replaces all of its signs on a consistent basis, usually every 3 to 5 years.

Dingman says the county has a big problems with vandalism each year.

"We replace about $25,000 dollars worth of signs a year due to vandalism," said Dingman.

Dingman wants the public to know it is a crime to tamper with the signs.

There is a warning label on the back of each one showing the penalty for theft or vandalism.

The sign shop has a storage unit that has a copy of every street sign in the county, just in case they get lost, vandalized or stolen.

With all of the signs being replaced, the sign shop saves about $11,000 dollars a year in reusable aluminum.