Call it a sign of the times, but the City of Kelowna is no longer comfortable with election missives cluttering local lawns.
Monday afternoon, council voted in favour of a new bylaw to restrict residents to posting two signs, no larger than 1.8 metres, or six feet tall, per property.
“If you get 50 signs on a front, they kind of cancel each other out,” said Coun. Robert Hobson.
The first time the City of Kelowna wrote an election sign bylaw was in 2009, in preparation for a by-election. The bylaw included the two sign restriction, which was then rescinded at the request of council in 2011.
The directive to put it back into the bylaw once again came from council. As some councillors secured their seat without signs in 2011, the topic has generating an ongoing conversation behind the scenes.
Kelowna typically has an inordinate number of candidates run for election and the waste and visual clutter has also generated complaints from the public, often voiced in Letters to the Editor of both local newspapers and online comment forums.
Initially, city staff upped the anti, with the agreement of council, by working in a requirement to have each candidate find 25 nominators. The directive did nothing to stem the tide of interest.
“We either have a really engaged community who want to contribute to the community, or want to better the community, or we don’t know (what it is),” said Karen Needham, deputy city clerk.
The new bylaw includes adding sponsor information to the sign, either the financial agent’s name or the candidate’s name, a B.C. telephone number or B.C. mailing address, or an email address.
This last piece came out of the Local Government Elections Task Force, which made its recommendations in May of this year. Among the more controversial was a decision to require third-party advertisers to register with Elections BC and for campaigns to publicly identify donors of $50 or more.
