City puts election sign issue on backburner

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on May 4, 2023.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

The Governance Standing Policy Committee of city council will revisit a motion to have election signs banned from public road right-of-ways in the fourth quarter of this year.
The SPC in its most recent meeting voted unanimously to have a proposed bylaw deferred because it was deemed too late to get it in place for the May 29 provincial election.
A motion was brought before city council in March by Jeff Carlson and Belinda Crowson calling for an immediate ban on election signs on those right-of-ways.
The motion said in part that the number of signs “creates visual clutter and unsafe distractions along the public road right-of-way” and notes in the last municipal election hundreds were illegally placed and confiscated which required an additional full-time employee during the election period to manage collection and distribution of them.
While other jurisdictions in Alberta and the country have considered implementing such bylaws, none so far have to the knowledge of Deputy City Clerk David Sarsfield.
At the Governance SPC, Carlson said the plan was to act before the provincial election.
“I believe that ship has sailed. I actually watched a couple of videos of local candidates unboxing their signs today so I think any change made now would be really impactful,” Carlson said.
“I don’t know that there’s much rush; I guess my thought is we can take some time with this,” said Carlson.
Sarsfield told the SPC the City isn’t aware of any communities passing bylaws yet.
“There are various ones which have proposed them but they have not completed the process,” Sarsfield said.
“Rather than barreling headlong into something – usually I’m a little less risk-adverse, I like to jump headlong into things – but there are other communities that are actually going to tackle this and it’s on their agenda. They’re moving forward. I’m wondering if it may be wise to just sort of sit back because . . . there’s been talk of constitutional or Charter challenges to these type of things. So it may be smart to sort of sit back for six months” and see what’s happening in the rest of Canada,” said Carlson.
The issue came up again this week on Twitter when NDP candidate for Lethbridge West Shannon Phillips tweeted “when city council recently proposed a bylaw that election signs could only go on private property, I was all for it. The UCP didn’t like it. They bylaw was pulled. LOL.”
Current City guidelines say signs can’t be larger than 0.6 metre by one metre in size and can only have two sign faces. Tops of signs can’t be more than one metre above the ground.
Signs must include the name of the candidate, telephone number or email address and political affiliation if that is appropriate. Signs must be kept neat and clean and all must be secure and free standing. Candidates must have permission from a property owner to put signs on private property.
Signs can’t be placed closer than 20 metres from the same candidate’s other signs, or on any physical roadway structure including sidewalks, pathways, crosswalks bridges, guardrailes, fences, concrete barriers, retaining walls, fire hydrants or street light poles.
They also can’t be put on interchange ramps such as those at Whoop-Up/University Drive West or Whoop-Up Drive/6 Ave. S. at Scenic drive. Signs aren’t allowed t4o block traffic control devices and and also are banned from roads, centre medians, traffic islands and roundabouts.
Nor are signs allowed within 30 metres of an intersection with traffic signals or 15 metres of an intersection without traffic signals.
Signs also can’t be placed within 500 metres of a construction zone or within a playground area or school zone.
Signs can be placed on provincial right of ways including 43 St. S. between Highway 4 and Crowsnest Trail, Highway 4 and Highway 5. Signs on provincial right of ways can be up to 1.5 square metres in size.
There is no limitation for the size of signs on private property.

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