The City of Toronto is developing a new bylaw to regulate billboards and is seeking input from the public. Should Toronto have fewer billboards? What types of signs should be prohibited? What areas should be designated billboard-free? What powers should the City have to enforce the law? What tools should the public have to comment on billboard applications or inquire about signs that have already been erected? How should the City maintain safety and environmental standards?
These are questions that have rarely, if ever, been asked to Toronto residents. We know Spacing readers have strong opinions on the way outdoor advertising operates in this city, so this event is a great way to have your voice(s) heard.
There are two public sessions this week:
WHEN: Wednesday, September 24, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
WHERE: Scarborough Civic Centre (just south of Scarborough Centre station)WHEN: Thursday, September 25, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
WHERE: Toronto City Hall (Queen and Bay Streets)
photo by Miles Storey
14 comments
Speaking signs, has anyone noticed the plethora of illegally placed election signs.
If you see, them call or email:
http://wx.toronto.ca/inter/it/newsrel.nsf/7017df2f20edbe2885256619004e428e/7e89b5b3e7aacbda852574c1006a0b5e?OpenDocument
Here’s how this will go. A series of public consultations will take place, a new by-law will be hammered out, and no change in signage will occur because the city is unable/unwilling to put or hire enforcement officers on it. Illegal signs will continue to proliferate, and the city will continue to get uglier.
Please check back here in one year and prove me wrong. I hope somebody can.
Just to clarify, the questions  as written above  were my own phrasing, based on our own broad outlines of some of the things we think the bylaw should address. Though some are similar to questions that staff have asked.
Officially, the City is leaving possibilities for input open-ended but using
these five questions to provoke discussion when the attendees prove reticent. (Participants at City consultations aren’t accustomed to having their opinions valued and as such are a little stunned to be approached by City staff who are genuinely looking for guidance from the public.)
i: That is a real possibility. The Sign By-law Project Team is quite clear that they are not tasked with coming up with funding for any proposals they may bring forward. A separate report on taxing billboards, however, is set to go before the Executive Committee “some time in early 2009,” and that should in theory address this issue, at least in part. The idea is that the tax should be adequate to cover the cost of enforcement and regulation.
So, all the reporting is going to be left to the hardworking illegalsigns guy, as usual. I don’t get this city: use the laws you have to fine the hell out of people for signs, and for parking. It makes money, duh. I am so bored with Toronto half-assedness.
jamesmallon: Well, the idea is to create a new system (permit plates connected to an online database, for example) that will easily allow both residents and City inspectors to check to see if a billboard is permitted to be erected the way it is.
The fines issue has unfortunately been a tougher sell, largely because the Sign By-law Project Team is not as well acquainted with the City of Toronto Act as they should be.
RE: jamesmallon
“I don’t get this city: use the laws you have to fine the hell out of people for signs, and for parking.”
I have received two parking tickets time stamped at 12:02am when the sign said no parking without a permit after 12:01am… not sure parking enforcement is a problem for the city… unless you’re like me and don’t understand what is accomplished by using 12:01am as the limit unless maybe there’s a big rush of neighborhood residents who suddenly want to park at 12:02am.
Boo hoo ‘MER1978’. You admit that you overstayed. It sucks to be the guy caught, but that’s how the system works. You knew the rules. You don’t like it, show up before your ticket runs out, or stop driving a polluting vehicle. Cry me a river.
However, that’s not the parking that is under-enforced and a safety issue; it’s illegal parking which in incredibly under-enforced and a safety issue. I have seen a cop give a ticket to someone parked in a bike lane exactly once, though I am unsure that the officer did not just pull the driver over into a bike lane…
Great we can all go to a meeting, divide into little breakout groups that all come to the same conclusion, then come back together and write them on a board, go home and find that the City did not listen and had already made up its mind. Oh and we will call the meeting something like “Public Consultation on Street Furniture”.
Thank God for Rami.
Scott: I attended the Scarborough and North York consultations on the new billboard bylaw, and they were very different from what people are accustomed to with regards to City consultations. Perhaps it’s because the people running the meetings aren’t typical City employees but rather experts hired for the specific purpose of crafting this bylaw, but I really believe them when they say that they are coming into these consultations with virtually no preconceived notions of what a new billboard bylaw for Toronto should look like. They are honest-to-goodness looking for direction and guidance from the public. Which is not at all typical and has in both cases caught the attendees by surprise… a lot of people have gone to ask questions of staff, only for staff to say that they have no ideas and would you like to reframe your question as a suggestion?
Jonathon> that is very heartening to hear.
(I should clarify that by “Scarborough,” I meant to say “Etobicoke.” How downtown of me.)
The go after parking pretty effectively, but there’s a goldmine in graffiti and sign enforcement 😛
GIS / viewshed analysis of billboard free areas. make sure that wherever you are in this area, you cannot see a billboard. overlay with known billboards, and remove the ones that you can see.
Advertising is a work of art. Toronto should not subject billboard advertising. Deal with it!!