A building company that had been displaying signs advertising condo sales says the city’s bylaw officer unfairly removed them from the corner of Hwy 16 and Eby without warning.
“He should have phoned us to let us know he was taking them down,” said Virginia Goddard, who owns Deep Creek Masonry along with her husband Kevin, last week.
The company is building and marketing a condo development between the 4700 Blocks of Davis and Park called Sleeping Beauty Estates.
As part of the marketing, they’ve been placing signs around town but when the signs disappeared recently, the Goddards had to go on a search.
“We were going around to see if our signs were getting destroyed, and then we eventually found out,” said Virginia Goddard.
What they found out was that their signs were all lying in the back of a city pickup truck at the public works yard.
The city then wrote them a letter explaining they had been in violation of the sign bylaw that stipulates temporary signs containing advertisements are only allowed on the property for which they are advertising and not on public or other right-of-ways.
Goddard has taken this opportunity to call for a sign bylaw change.
She points to the clutter of federal elections campaign signs and other advertisements and says that a double standard is at play.
“We should be able to promote new construction, new businesses, and be able to advertise freely and not be one person picked on – that one business can advertise and another can’t,” said Goddard.