Billboard Baggin's

Getting the relevant City documents for even a single sign is often a tedious and frustrating process (even for city councillors), and so it is somewhat of a comfort to learn that City Hall is taking notice of Tabello's spectacular work and that his persistence is leading to some immediate, tangible change: "Over the past two months, the City of Toronto ordered the removal of about 200 illegal billboards pursuant to our research and complaints." But, he adds, "Very few have come down."

When the City orders the removal of an illegal sign, an advertising company has fourteen days to do so. As Tabello has put it, this "allows advertising companies to operate illegal signs for 14 days at any location whatsoever, then re-erect the signs after they have been removed to comply with a 14 day order." The relevant by-law used to include a provision that allowed the City to remove illegal signs immediately, but this was changed to the current system upon the recommendation of then-Commissioner of Planning and Development Bob Millward, who is now both an independent "consultant" for advertising companies seeking variances at City Council and the project director of the City's advertiser-driven "Coordinated Street Furniture Program."

IllegalSigns.ca is only half the fight, however, as preventing inappropriate new billboards from going up is just as important as taking down illegal ones that have already been erected. Possibly the most consistently successful advocacy campaign of the Toronto Public Space Committee, the Billboard Battalion is a small army of volunteers who, through simply submitting written deputations and emails to councillors, have managed to turn around the unfortunate situation in which Community Councils simply rubber-stamped advertisers' requests for variances. A variance is an exemption from a by-law which is supposed to be used to obtain special permission for something which adheres to the intent, if not the letter, of the law; they are too often, however, used as loopholes to disregard a law entirely despite the fact that it may fully apply. Staff frequently recommends refusals of variance requests for billboards, but before the Billboard Battalion came along, Community Councils (made up of the councillors who represent a particular quadrant of the city) would oddly ignore staff's recommendations three quarters of the time. (This is a good time to direct you to the ever-valuable resource that is VoteToronto's archive of campaign donation records.) Since the inception of the Billboard Battalion in July of 2005, the Toronto and East York Community Council has agreed with staff recommendations for refusal 81% of the time, and dozens of billboards, many of which had been illegally erected prior to a request for a variance, have been defeated. Anyone can sign up for the Battalion's monthly calls to action.

Obviously, the fact that it is falling to the citizens of Toronto to confront individual manifestations of what is clearly an institutional issue is something that must be rectified. In July of last year, City Council requested that

the City Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, in consultation with the Executive Director, Municipal Licensing and Standards and the Chief Building Official, report to the Planning and Transportation Committee on the establishment of a Task Force to deal with the issue of third party signs, with representation from these three divisions, and interested City Councillors, with a view to establishing a system that would provide:

(a) for a renewal process;

(b) a more efficient application process;

(c) better controls on new technology, sign placement, and size;

(d) a better mechanism for compliance and enforcement measures;

(e) a new revenue stream for the City through application and renewal processes; and

(f) a legal process needed to allow the City to impose heavy fines on the companies whose products or services are advertised on illegal signs.

Now that the City of Toronto’s "Tri-Departmental Task Force on Illegal Signs" is up and running (Tabello claims that the illegality of most of the signs on his map have been verified by them), both IllegalSigns.ca and the Toronto Public Space Committee are going to cling on to them and not let got until advertisers are held to the same law-abiding standards as everyone else in Toronto, even if they just want to tell the nice people about yogourt.

Illegal Signs Map and photo of Titan Outdoor's six illegal signs at 1 Bloor Street West from IllegalSigns.ca. Graphic of the defeated billboard at 1 Richmond Street West from the Toronto Public Space Committee's Billboard Battalion.