The Mayor of Kingston, Councillor Desmond McKenzie, has led a vigorous and admirable campaign to rid the capital city of decrepit and illegally mounted outdoor advertising signs. His zeal has prompted mayors in other municipalities to follow suit.
It is understandable that this campaign would not always find favour among persons who have benefited from the previous
laissez-faire approach. But there is also some concern that aspects of the new thrust to clean up the municipalities are being implemented without sufficient public education.
These concerns are valid, in our view. Ignorance of the law may not be an acceptable excuse in court, but in situations where people have been led to believe otherwise, whether through benign neglect or lack of enforcement over the years, the councils should be careful that their zeal does not become corrupted by arrogance.
Many people, as exemplified in correspondence in today's
edition, are mystified that signs erected on properties they own, which do not encroach on public property and in some cases for which they have paid licensing fees are subject to the diktats of the municipal authorities.
Their attempts to get clarification on the laws governing the KSAC's insistence, for example, that notices painted on walls advertising a particular business should be erased, have been futile.
We well understand the need, too, to increase revenue and can even concede that the councils may only be implementing existing laws. That should not however, negate the councils giving property owners and business operators the option of cleaning up their act before they are visited with the spectacle of mayors and their attendants descending upon them in made-for-TV camera ops.
It is quite clear from some of the confrontations and complaints that many people had no intention of flouting the law. They do feel victimised however, when they are made to look like villains or petty crooks.
We suggest that the KSAC and the other councils would suffer no significant loss in their revenue intake if they were to undertake a more sustained public education campaign as to what is permissible and what is not and then proceeding to enforce the laws.
The country needs less of the grandstanding and more of a commitment to the treating of one other with mutual respect.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
