Candidates contravene sign bylaw
A handful of city council candidates have put themselves in contravention of a city bylaw by posting signs larger than allowed for the spots where they have been posted.
Signs measuring four-feet high by eightfeet wide in support of Garth Frizzell, Frank Everitt and Dave Fuller have been posted along Austin Road East at Highway 97 – a spot where the width is limited to 1.5 metres or four feet under the city’s election and political signs bylaw.
As well, although those posted on private property are limited to 16 square feet – effectively four-feet by four-feet – three signs measuring four-by-eight feet were up on residential properties in support of Brian Skakun, Kyle Sampson and Frizzell as of Wednesday.
Reached for comment, Frizzell, Everrit, Skakun and Sampson said they will all make changes to put their campaigns back in accordance with the bylaw.
“Everybody has to abide by the bylaw, so when I find out anything that’s off, I’m going to go and absolutely make sure that I abide by it,” Frizzell said.
“When mistakes are made, you go and fix them.”
Frizzell and Sampson followed up with phone calls Wednesday to say they were in the process of taking the problem signs down.
As incumbents, Frizzell, Everitt and Skakun were members of the city council that passed the bylaw in July 2017. It designates specific areas around the city where election signs can be posted in answer to concerns about unsightliness and safety.
However the bylaw, as it applies to Austin Road, poses a wrinkle. It’s the only spot where the width is limited to 1.5 metres, while those for most of the other 13 spots where signs are allowed around the city range from two to as much as 20 metres.
The lone exception is a 70-metre stretch along 15th Avenue, along the north side of the Exhibition Park soccer fields, where the limit is 0.5 metres.
Candidates remain free and clear to put up signs along Highways 16 and 97 – which includes First Avenue – because they are under provincial jurisdiction. A Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure policy is much more wide open but does require that they not pose a traffic hazard, be posted on or obstruct a traffic control device and be further from the roadside than standard traffic signs. They are also prohibited from bridges, overpasses, tunnels or other highway structures.
City spokesman Mike Kellett said the city’s bylaw services department, which enforces the bylaw on a complaint-driven basis, has been notified.