Election sign bylaw – Kingston knows how to make the simple complex

Jeff Green | Aug 31, 2022

The 2019 City of Kingston Election Sign Bylaw, which repealed and replaced an election sign bylaw that was passed only 5 years earlier in 2014, is 15 pages long.

It includes 9 whereas clauses, 4 pages of definitions, and 12 general provisions, 14 other specific provisions, 11 special provisions, and 11 more provisions for signs on private property.

Essentially, however, there are two key provision. The first 7.3 “No Person shall Place or permit to be Placed an Election Sign on or abutting Public Property including a Street.”

The second is 19.1 “Every Person who contravenes any provision of this By-law is guilty of an offence and upon conviction is liable to a fine of not more than Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000) for a first offence and not more than TwentyFive Thousand Dollars ($25,000) for any subsequent offence.”

Those who are still interested in posting a sign promoting a council, mayoral, or school board trustee candidate in Kingston on their own private property, would be wise to also look at clause 17.2, which says that the sign must be located at least 2 metres from “the traveled roadway or a ‘sight triangle’.

I don’t know what a ‘sight triangle’ is, although it is one of the defined terms. See below*

Given that $10,000 is the fine for a first offense, a private property owner would need to know where the road allowance in front of their property, and understand a ‘sigh triangle’ well enough to ensure themselves it does not apply to them, before allowing their local eager political wannabe to put up a sign on the property.

One Kingston council candidate this time around has requested that all of the candidates in their ward adhere to a ‘no sign policy’.

There is some opposition to restricting signs to private property

A Queen’s PHD candidate Tim Abray said, in an article in the Whig Standard by Elliot Ferguson, “quite frankly, that is an asinine position,” pointing out that the bylaw results in only property owners having the ability to express their political viewpoint by allowing a sign to be put up.

Luckily, election sign bylaws, where they exist in Frontenac County, are not so restrictive. That saves us all from measuring the distance from the centre of our road to the side of the road to make sure election signs are far enough off the roadway to be legal.

The turnout in municipal elections is very low in Frontenac County, and many people do not know their district boundaries very well, because the boundaries based on township boundaries from pre-amalgamations days from pre-1998, when many current residents were not living here.

When the nomination period ended and candidates were formalised a week ago, the election was officially underway, but it was not until signs began starting going up at the side of the road that their was any real sign that the election was underway.

Candidates will be using social media more than ever this time around, and at the Frontenac News we will be doing election coverage and hosting candidate meetings, but that is later and only attracts the attention who are already engaged in the election to some degree.

Seeing road signs popping up with different names on main roads and even back roads tells us that people are running, all of the positions are being contested, people are engaged in how our municipalities operate.

And the fact that township staff and councils are not spending their time regulating election signs at the side of the road, is an indication that our townships may not be as over-staffed as those in places like Kingston, where there is staff time and money available to spend on these kinds of frivolous pursuits.

*“Sight Triangle” means the triangular space formed by the Travelled Roadways of the Streets abutting a corner lot and a line drawn from a point in one Travelled Roadway to a point in the other Travelled Roadway, each such point being 5.0 m (16.5 ft.) from the point of intersection of the Travelled Roadways (measured along the curb lines or edge of pavement). Where the two Travelled Roadways do not intersect at a point, the point of intersection of the Travelled Roadways shall be deemed to be the intersection of the projection of the curb lines or edge of pavement.”

(Editors note – readers who understand the above definition have warned the admiration of our staff, but please do not call or write in to explain it. We don’t really want to know)