You can’t please everyone.
That’s especially the case in the misinformation haven that is social media.
But here in the real world, the same applies.
We’re talking this time about the removal of election signs from properties across the municipality.
According to municipal officials, they received a plethora of calls to complain about the placement of such signage. Any signs closer than four metres from the edge of a road, or in a “visibility triangle,” faced removal.
Hundreds of signs were yanked by municipal staff and dumped at Public Works yards in various parts of Chatham-Kent.
It was interesting to see on social media where some people complained about one candidate, only to be offended when the signs of a candidate they support were pulled as well.
Other folks wondered why it was a mass sign purge rather than a mass education program. Why not speak to the property owner and educate them on the election sign bylaw?
Many of these same folks have argued the municipality needs to be more efficient in its spending – and in this case that translates to the amount of staff time utilized to address the problem.
Yanking signs in violation of the bylaw is as simple as pulling them up and lobbing them into the back of a truck. When talking about hundreds of signs, think of the manpower that would have been required to send someone to each property owner’s door to knock and to take the time to explain the violation.
It’s just not an efficient use of time.
Could candidates have been given, say, 48 hours to ensure their signs were in compliance? Absolutely. We think that would have been a better move, as staff would not have had to spend as much time removing signs as they did.
Was any one candidate singled out. No. However, when you have a lot of signs out there, and were first out of the gate as Michael Bondy was, naturally, you stand to have suffered the removal of the most signs.
Had the municipality gone to extremes and followed every letter of that bylaw, offenders could have faced fines. That would have rightly caused a massive uproar.
Now, is this election sign bylaw applicable at this point in time? That too is debatable and will be discussed in a story in next week’s Chatham Voice.
