Within a few weeks, Grand Forks should have new signs welcoming visitors to the city.
At a recent regular meeting, council gave final approval to the design of the new signs and voted to spend up to $20,000 on lighting the signs with both solar and wind power. “We looked at a couple of potential designs,” Grand Forks Mayor Brian Taylor said. “We chose one and then basically we modified it to some extent, putting in a different base than they had designed and also internal solar lighting.”
The additional cost to light the signs was unavoidable, according to Taylor. “There is no availability of power to the signs. It would be a considerable expense to put in lines to the actual signs,” he said.
The design includes a line that reads “Settle down.”
“There was quite a discussion about the line that was put on the sign,” Taylor said. “Council felt that ‘Settle down’ had enough of a cheeky edge to it that we should give it a shot.”
The vote on the line was not unanimous.Several councillors thought that ‘Settle down’ reminded them of admonitions they got from their mothers when they misbehaved. However, Taylor said that the line is a part of the sign that can be changed if council decides to do so in the future.