A two-year long highway signage enforcement project has wrapped up in Mountain View County, with a total of 163 signs removed during the process.
Margaretha Bloem, director of planning and development, gave a report on the project during the recent policies and priorities committee meeting.
The project saw county staff work in cooperation with Alberta Transportation in identifying roadside signs that were in violation of current rules.
Enforcement took place on Highway 2, Highway 2A, Highway 27 and Highway 584 west of Sundre.
Division 1 councillor Dwayne Fulton asked for an overview of the project, which Bloem provided as part of her regular department update. "We worked together with Alberta Transportation, as well as our adjoining municipalities, through this enforcement process," said Bloem. "We worked with those signage owners that didn't, for example, have the appropriate permits in place, which would be a sign permit from Alberta Transportation as well as a development permit for the signage."
Councillor Al Kemmere asked Bloem "have we got an indication of signs for businesses that were not compliant, now applying for development permits to become compliant? Have we had many of those?"
She replied, "We've had a few instances, yes."
Kemmere asked Bloem to provide an estimate of how much staff time went into the project.
She said she would bring that estimate back to the next policies and priorities committee meeting.
The enforcement project was initiated by a council motion in June 2015, which called for enforcement officers to contact the owners of signs that were in violation of the land use bylaw and have those signs removed.
"The county's bylaw enforcement officer commenced a campaign to deal with the proliferation of signs on Highway 27 east of Sundre and west of Highway 22," administration said in a briefing note accompanying the original motion.
"An inventory of the signs was identified and then letters regarding the signs were sent out to the landowners. Through this detailed campaign it was determined that many of the signs would not be able to comply with any requirements of the land use bylaw as they were deemed to be third party commercial and would not be able to apply for a required sign permit from Alberta Transportation."
Illegal sign enforcement will be continuing in the county under the land use bylaw.
The committee, made up of county councillors, accepted Bloem's report as information.
Deputy reeve Angela Aalbers and councillor Greg Harris did not attend the Nov. 1 committee meeting.
