By Greg Younger-Lewis
A Centretown resident’s one-man crusade is ending after a divided regional council’s recent decision to put money into the beefing up enforcement of the postering bylaw.
David Blackman, a federal civil servant, says he’s happy the region has put $60,000 aside to deal with, among other things, what he calls “Ottawa’s mega-postering problem.”
For the sake of civic pride, Blackman says, something had to be done.
“When you walk down the street and see all your utility poles wrapped up in outdated, filthy garbage, especially when it’s left up for weeks and months on end, it doesn’t exactly contribute to the overall beauty of the city,” he says.
For the past two years, Blackman, 59, has made it his personal mission to counteract the efforts of avid downtown advertisers who use utility poles on streets such as Bank and Elgin as cylindrical billboards. Whenever he saw stapled signage on street poles that didn’t respect city and regional rules, he tore down the poster, hunted down its owner, and asked them why he had to take down their sign.
“Posterers just go through our community and don’t really give a damn what kind of a mess they make,” he says. “A lot of times they never remove the posters, which is a requirement of the bylaw.”
In addition to Blackman’s activities, having one lone regional worker attend to excessive postering on a complaint-by-complaint basis was not enough to deal with the infractions, says Somerset Regional Coun. Diane Holmes.
After being inundated with complaints from business associations and residents after her motion failed last year to funnel $60,000 into a de-postering project, Holmes presented the motion again last month at the end of council’s nine-hour budget meeting. This time, the motion included an attack on graffiti and other eyesores. It squeaked passed council by one vote.
Like Blackman, Holmes isn’t happy the region’s newest beautification project will come out of taxpayers pockets and hopes it will provide some deterrent by increasing the number of fines given to posterers whose flyers remain on poles illegally.
The fines can be levied after posters have been up for longer than 21 days or 48 hours of the advertised event. The bylaw also says no more than one flyer can be posted per block. Breaches can result in fines of between $100 and $5,000. However, no tickets have ever been issued.
Even when the beefed-up bylaw enforcement kicks in this summer, fining violators probably won’t be a priority, says Stuart Marshall, regional bylaws administrator.
Instead, the emphasis will be on poster removal.
Four to six temporary jobs will be created for either students, people on social assistance under the workfare program, or people identified as underprivileged through church groups or drop-in centres. They will check street poles once a week and will be replaced by one or two regional workers in the fall.
Marshall says enforcement of the poster bylaw is next to impossible if the focus is put on fining individuals.
“You would actually have to catch the person putting the poster onto the pole and unless you’re out there 24 hours a day and that’s highly unlikely,” he says. “Even then, posterers aren’t obligated to give their I.D.”
Not surprisingly, Ottawa’s postering enthusiasts think the region’s de-postering efforts are misplaced.
Alex Kovacs, a 23-year-old artist who has advertised local music events and political actions for the past two years, insists the region is serving the interests of wealthy residents by cracking down on poster delinquents.
He says using paper, tape and sometimes glue is the most effective and often only method a lot of community groups and activists have available to broadcast their cause.
“Do you think you would be out there postering if you could afford ads?” he asks. “A lot of people with money can afford to put up big slick billboards . . . Funny, no one ever questions if that is beauty or if they have the right to do it.”
While Kovacs sees both the bylaws and planned de-postering squad as an infringement on his right to free speech, he says they will ultimately help his postering.
“Sure,” laughs Kovacs, whose record postering blitz involved distributing 1000 photocopied signs in one weekend.
“They’ll just end up making more room for me to put my posters up.”