The electronic sign in front of the Millsop Center in Weirton is supposed to let residents know of events in the city; however, right now it's just a blank screen, and the city is suing Signs Limited LLC, the vendor who installed the sign.

"It was put up in June of 2009 (and) started having problems immediately thereafter. I think the first repairs were sometime in September of 2009," said city attorney Vince Gurrera.

According to Gurrera, after the city spend more than $60,000 of taxpayer money on the sign, the company notified them that it will take $20,000 more to fix it.

Ed Rice, the owner of Signs Limited, said his company has fixed the sign multiple times for free, even after the one-year repair agreement was up.

"That agreement actually failed on their part after two or three months, so we were giving them the chance to come in and keep trying to make the repairs, and all of a sudden they say, 'No, we're only supposed to do repairs for a year.' Well, actually, their repairs started three months after we got the sign," Gurrera said.

Rice said his company even tried contacting the manufacturer, but the company has since gone out of business, so there is no way to make the sign work efficiently without replacing it.

Rice said he was shocked to find out the city is suing his company. He said he and city officials had a discussion in May, and Rice was told that the city would look at its options before deciding on what to do with the sign. He said he never heard an answer back from them until the lawsuit was filed.

According to Gurrera, the city does not feel it is responsible for paying more money to make the sign work.

"It's a notification, and it just doesn't look good if we have a notification up there and half the sign's working so that you know there's something going on at Starvaggi Pool, but you don't know when, where, or what time," Gurrera said.

Both sides said they hope the issue is resolved out of court. There has not been a court date set.