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Council votes to limit the size of election signs

With a municipal election coming up in October, city council passed a bylaw amendment to restrict the size of candidates’ election signs.

With the new guidelines, the signs would have to be between 1 and 2 metres in height and 1 to 3 square metres.

Mayor Melissa Blake explained why the ammendment was resubmitted to administration last month.

“In the first itteration of it , we did not have a mnimunm sign size, so an addition of a minimum size was important so people couldn’t stretch out endlessly long signs.”

Last year, many people were frustrated with the large number of small signs that were cluttering the city.

Blake says the new guidelines were made to solve that issue.

“It’s just a matter of cleaning up some of the experiences we’ve had in previos election and by-election,” she adds, “again, I think it just gives people an opportunity, if they have a concern, to have it addressed by legislation.”

Councillor Phil Meagher voted against it, saying the amendment still lacked clarity.

“I think keeping them uniform and within a certain height, you know, there’s a certain height here, but there’s no range,” he continues, “basically if it’s over 2 metres we get into what happens if it’s not? So it has holes in it I think.”

Council voted to submit the bylaw amendment back to administration on June 11, when it decided it would be too vague if the guidelines were based around surface area.

-Written by Evan Cooke

July 10th, 2013