Prompted by the Chamber, the City agrees to revisit a local signage issue
Prompted by the Chamber of Commerce, City Council has promised to revisit an irritating signage issue.
A sign designed in October 11 for Karen Schneider’s Bodylogic Therapeutic Massag, located on the ground floor of the Arlington Building at 103 – 103 First Street East was ordered removed in April because:
- sign contained the company’s phone number;
- the City believed her company’s logo should be similar in proportion to the HUB insurance logo, even though that is only three letters and trying to make Schneider’s logo proportionally similar would end up squishing it; and
- the sign included two lines of information even though other signs, such as the BDO Dunwoody sign, also contained two lines of information.
Mayor David Raven said Council has agreed to send the entire issue back to staff.
This all sounds quite picayune but while the City does need intelligent sign guidelines, this level of pettiness is a sometimes major irritant for local businesses that are forced to design, then redesign signs at a not insubstantial cost.
So how did that turn out?
Goodman said Monday that the Planning Department has sent a letter to Schneider and the Chamber. It said Schneider would have to reapply.
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City plans anti-graffiti push
The City is planning a major push on graffiti bylaw enforcement.
A report to Council last Tuesday said City staff would conduct a “business and public outreach” program from August 15-31, followed by business notifications and information September 3-17 and actual enforcement of the bylaw on October 1.
The bylaw is actually called the Unsightly Premises Bylaw, a catch-all bylaw that allows the City to go after property owners who do not maintain clean premises. With regards to graffiti, building owners have 14 days after receiving an official notice from the City to remove the offending scrawls.
This can cost businesses a lot of coin. If they do not comply, the Public Works Department may arrange for an outside contractor to perform the work “once the work is completed an invoice… is then issued by the City to the owner for payment. If payment is not received by December 31, the balance is applied to taxes.
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Local Kia fan wins trip to Korea
Local resident — and obviously a Kia fan — Elaine Baird has won a trip to Korea.
TCH condition gets national exposure
Here’s a brief excerpt from the magazine:
Mayor David Raven says the traffic safety issues of the two-lane Trans-Canada in his town are starting to become personal. On average, seven people are killed every year on this section of the highway up to the summit of the Pass, and it’s due to excess speed, driver fatigue, and the design of the road.
“Living on the highway, we service it but we also have to pick up the carnage,” he says. Last fall, when Raven realized that four people had been killed on the road so far that year, he says he braced for the news of the next three to die and sure enough, a mother and her two children were killed when their car was flattened by a semi-trailer. The road becomes narrow and slippery when there’s snow built up on its sides, and the drivers just run out of room to avoid accidents.
“I made a presentation to the premier just this morning about it,” he told me over coffee. “I asked her for a commitment to the highway. It’s not for us or the city, but for the skiers who come to visit.” There are 2,000 to 3,000 skiers driving the road every day in the winter, sometimes up to 10,000 in a day. On average, 12,000 vehicles drive the road every day throughout the year, with more than half of them being commercial traffic. Those are far more than the highway was designed to carry.
Ideally, the road will be twinned to four lanes all the way through, as it is on the prairie and through Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but the cost is excessive in this mountainous region: roughly a billion dollars, and that’s just the section from Revelstoke to the summit.
So what did Premier Christy Clark say to the mayor’s request? “She said, ‘Thanks Dave,’” he sighed. “It’ll be costly to build it, but it has to be rebuilt and maintained anyway. The money should be spent now to get it right.”
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Little-known trivia…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State_BuildingVery few people know this.
Museum updates its website
The Revelstoke Railway Museum has finally updated its website. The new one is not only rationally organized it is sleek and attractive.
It’s worth a visit and, if you’re a railway buff, definitely worth bookmarking or adding to your favourites.
