Graduation weekends give parents and visitors a terrible welcome to Potsdam. Picture their entry – big, red temperature reading, landscaped supercenter and electric supply and stoplight, nice “Welcome to Smallings Motel” sign. Then the sadness begins – bent no parking signs, trucks 45, snowplow turnaround, yellow intersection, three large warehouses, cement block piles, three dying cedar trees dwarfing the illegible, shabby, small (only 4’X6’) Potsdam sign in a swamp field. Around the corner – empty businesses, nice garden center, old strip mall, endless swamps on both sides. You go over the bridge and see old businesses, speed zone, no parking 2-6 a.m., zoning enforced, Tree City USA (given by Arbor Day Association.) Finally, you see two large green college signs for SUNY Potsdam, Clarkson, eventually the Clarkson turn-off. There is no SUNY sign for three blocks. (Easy enough to get lost.) We don’t need to spend out money on a park or downtown pavement when we don’t show a nice place to be. How about we take the gigantic town of Potsdam sign down, edit and it could be the village entrance? Kidding, but the problem is not funny.