E. Olive homeowner takes down signs

An East Olive Street man who kept election-season signs on his house, even after city officials instructed him to remove them in December, recently took them down.

Richard Boodman removed seven custom-made signs — some blaming Long Beach Republicans for a man's death — when he learned that the city would continue a traffic study at the intersection of East Olive Street and Monroe Boulevard, where a cyclist was killed in 2008, after the city and the Long Beach School District settled a lawsuit filed against them in February.

Boodman had the signs nailed across a wooden deck on his home on Sept. 23, and on Dec. 1 the city posted a letter on his front door, warning him that his display violated city code and had to be removed within 10 days or he would face a fine of $250 a day or 15 days in jail.

Boodman said he posted the signs — one of which read "If this corner had a stop sign, a bicyclist might not have died" — and left them up to bring attention to what he believes is the city's failure to put up three-way stop signs at the East Olive-Monroe intersection, outside his home. He contends that the two stop signs that are there now were insufficient to save Joseph Shannon, a 76-year-old Florida man who was hit by a school bus there while riding his bicycle on July 28, 2008, and died two days later.

"I didn't keep the signs up for the purpose of keeping signs up," Boodman said. "I kept them up to encourage these people to address the issue of traffic safety."

When Shannon's family filed a wrongful-death suit against the school district and the city, the city initiated a traffic study at the intersection and the surrounding streets for litigation purposes, according to Corporation Counsel Corey Klein. After the suit was settled in February, the city could have ended the study, but decided to continue it.

"[The study will address] not specifically the question of that intersection, but overall the traffic flow within Long Beach," Klein explained. "We're looking at the Olive Street area ... We will just have the traffic people give us a report about the traffic conditions."

Boodman said the decision to continue the study prompted him to remove the signs, and that he applauded Klein's attempt to address the issue of traffic safety in the city. "I expect [the study to] result in Long Beach becoming a safe city when it comes to dealing with traffic," he added.

But Klein maintained that fault for the fatal accident lies with the school district's bus driver, not with the city's placement of signs. "Everything else that has been generated by this, having a stop sign there had nothing to do with the accident," he said.

Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.