Rules change in 2025 for election signage

Following consultations with key city officials, the city clerk’s office proposed amendments to the election signage bylaw in Kawartha Lakes. The council passed these amendments, with a minor change, at their December meeting.
These changes will impact the kinds of signs that can be used, the location of where signs can be placed and the cost to candidates who place their signs where they should not.

Deputy Clerk Joel Watts told council that with the potential of all three levels of government going to the polls in 2025, “it was felt now was a good time to update the signage bylaws.”

Watts said that before the new bylaw amendments were brought to council, not only had senior city staff been consulted, but some of the candidates who ran in the 2022 municipal election offered useful insights into how the rules regarding signage could be improved.

The first change of significance to the existing bylaw is the recognition that both flags and banners are now accepted as election signs. As well, billboard advertising will now be allowed at election time.

“Candidates may purchase advertising space on an existing billboard as an advertising expense similar to an expense for purchasing a radio or newspaper advertising spot.”

And in Lindsay, the new bylaw amendments will stop all election signs from being put up on the public medians on Victoria Avenue between Kent Street West and Peel Street. Watts feels that this area, with its proximity to municipal buildings and the Lindsay Farmers Market, should be free of signage as signs have been “excessively damaged, altered or moved” in the past.

Signs will be limited on the remaining median strips on Victoria Avenue to one sign per candidate or registered third party to every two median strips.

Watts hopes this will make the rules around election signage in that area more easily understood for both candidates and bylaw officials, and reduce the clutter of signs that seem to occur every election on those municipally owned strips of grass.

The new bylaw amendment also clarifies that signs that have been collected by municipal law enforcement due to illegal placement shall be charged $20 per sign and $5 per day if they have not been collected by their owners 10 days following the election. The new bylaw amendments also clarify that candidates will need to contact municipal law enforcement prior to the collection of their signs to allow staff to be present at the appropriate depot to facilitate pickup.

Watts made it clear that the placement of signage on private property and the rules associated with that are not impacted by the new bylaw amendments.

It is believed that the Ward 5 municipal byelection, which is expected to occur in the first three to four months of 2025, will be the first opportunity for the new bylaw amendments to be fully road-tested and infractions enforced.