How big can a political sign be?
That question was the first levy launched in Lake Country's battle for seats around the council table come the Nov. 15 municipal election.
How big is your sign and how big can mine be?
That was the first issue brought to my attention last week by a candidate for Lake Country council, the first full week of a municipal campaign in Lake Country.
It wasn't a question about what issues Lake Country's next municipal council should tackle, nor questions about the status of the municipality as it continues as one of the fastest growing communities in Canada with one of the smallest commercial tax rolls around.
It wasn't about how the City of Kelowna actually gets all the property taxes from an industrial area smack dab in the middle of Winfield but yet somehow included within Kelowna's boundary. Or about model airplanes, restructuring, access for the disabled or about about safety in and about Lake Country, a land seemingly without sidewalks.
It was about a sign.
And the question sent municipal staffers scrambling for more than a day last week, trying to figure out Lake Country's sign bylaw, apparently written in some form of hieroglyphics back when Pelmewash was just a descriptive word, not a road that's supposed to be handed over to the community but remains in the hands of the province, who still owns the road and is making decisions that Lake Country disagrees with.
But that is another issue. For now I'm all aglow over this sign scrap.
It was the sign the mayor purchased in 2005 when he first ran for mayor and it was candidate Randy Rose who pointed out it was like, way too big, according to Lake Country bylaws.
In a 24 hour span of emails back and forth between district staffers, Baker, Rose, mayoralty candidate Jayson McCarthy and myself (lucky me I was cc'd) it was all ironed out and went something like this:
That sign is too big. We're going to look into it. I will take the signs down. You can keep them up. No I'm taking them down. Doesn't matter to me. Everyone can have big signs. I'm still taking mine down. We're not enforcing the sign bylaw. I would never make this an issue. Dead air.
So as we sit in week two of the civic election in Lake Country and candidates roll out their campaigns—we've introduced you to the candidates on page A3—let's all sleep easy knowing that in Lake Country, size does not matter.
Now about those other issues...