Article Contributed on: 10/25/2009 12:28:30 PM
Political campaign sign violations
Political signs are as much a part of elections as hot dogs are to baseball, and candidates usually do a pretty good job of following the rules.
We had some violations this weekend, however, so I've asked the city manager to send a notice to all the candidates alerting them to the problems and reminding them of the rules. Although the city code doesn't normally allow people to place political signs in city rights of way along streets, it does allow for temporary weekend permits to do just that so long as they aren't too close to intersections or driveways. What happened? Art Erwin and Mary Weaver (on behalf of herself and Bob Szulczewski) applied for permits to place their campaign signs in city rights-of-way, and those signs went up. The problem: the candidates or their proxies put them up illegally, placing them too close to street corners. And I know of at least one other candidate (and heard about others) with signs up illegally as well.
It might make sense to just keep political signs of the public right-of-way (the medians in between streets or along sidewalks) altogether, but I don't think it's a good idea to change a rule like this right before an election.
Instead, I am going to recommend to the City Council that we hold off on considering this change until after November 3. We had one other problem this weekend as well: staff erred in issuing the weekend of Oct. 17-18: permits in the first place since none of the candidates showed proof of liability insurance, which the code clearly requires.
If you have any thoughts on this issue I'd love to hear them: should political campaign signs be permitted in the public right-of-ways and, if so, with what restrictions?
Jacob Smith, mayor Golden