GREENWOOD – Signs asking drivers to slow down because there are children at play may seem innocuous enough, but not so, according to some town officials.

The signs, Greenwood Town Manager Kim Sparks said last week, do little to deter speeders and create a false sense of security for children and their families.

They also, she added, attract sexual predators.

For these reasons the Greenwood Board of Selectmen decided against placing a “Children at Play” sign on Irish Neighborhood Road, where one was requested by resident Jaime Colby.

“It’s well documented, those reasons,” Selectman Wayne Hakala said. “I’d just as soon see the parents teach their kids properly.”

By properly, Hakala meant parents should be cautioning their children against going in the road.

Sparks said she was recommending against the sign on the basis of a conversation with Brian Keezer, a traffic engineer who works out of the Maine Department of Transportation’s Dixfield office.

Keezer could not be reached for comment, but Herb Thomson, the department’s director of communications, said DOT has no policy against the signs based on the activities of sexual predators.

They are discouraged because they are simply ineffective, he said. “More to the point, keeping track of where children are at play isn’t something we could accomplish very effectively.”

Assistant State Traffic Engineer Stephen Landry said the department doesn’t recommend the signs, but he’d never heard they attract sexual predators. Landry spoke with Keezer and said the engineer had suggested Sparks may not have wanted to “advertise where your children are” by posting the signs.

But Sparks doesn’t feel she was going out on a limb when relaying her conversation with Keezer to the selectmen. DOT officials warned against the possibility of attracting sexual predators with the signs when she worked in Bowdoinham as well, she said Monday.

Hakala, who just retired from DOT’s Dixfield office, said sexual predators were not an official concern of the department, but they were discussed in relation to the signs.

There also have been news articles and programs that have documented how sexual predators are attracted to the signs, he said.

While there may be an unofficial line DOT holds on the sign issue, law enforcement officials such as Steve McCausland of the Maine Department of Public Safety were surprised to hear “Children at Play” signs may be considered dangerous.

While the signs are not effective at slowing down speeders, he said, “A sexual predator isn’t going to go running around towns and cities looking for a Children at Play’ sign.”

Oxford County Sheriff Skip Herrick for the most part agreed. In a phone message he said he supposed “one could look at that as an opportunity for sexual predators,” but he said he believes the signs do more harm than good.

On Tuesday, Red McAllister and a man who asked to be identified only as Don were standing near a sign that warns motorists on Ellingwood Road in West Paris to slow down because of children.

The sign hasn’t caused a problem, the men said. Nor has it helped.

“What they need to do is they have to be there and they have to start giving people tickets,” McAllister said, calling for more police patrols in the neighborhood.

“It’s just that they do 89 miles an hour through here,” Don added.

The speed limit, the two said as the occasional car sped through, is posted at 35 miles per hour.