Socialism

The priorities are off because of capitalism, not because lit signage remains lit.

It is absolutely nothing like seeing an ice cream truck on a road that's been limited to emergency vehicles.

Spending time and effort and political capital and writing the laws and regulations and doing the enforcement simply because you think the optics matter that much is just not a good use of time. If the city wants to address power usage, lit signage is incredibly low on the priority list. Meaning if the priorities were in order, lit signage would stay on and the ACs would be managed by cycling them on and off using a planned controller. Because the reality is that turning the signs off would only allow for a very very little bit of additional uncoordinated cooling systems, but managing cooling systems would allow for literally billions in savings on infrastructure investments into the power grid.

So, in fact, the signs remaining on while ConEd chases after AC management is evidence of priorities being in place correctly