By Madeline Baker, Times Chronicle
The practice of hanging fabric banners across Highway 3 at 85th Street to advertise popular Osoyoos events may be in jeopardy, as a recent report has deemed the current poles and cables used to suspend those banners unfit to meet provincial standards.
As the Town’s Public Works department learned at an educational seminar in July 2021, any fabric banners hung across a provincial highway now require a permit from the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. They halted the use of fabric banners across the highway at that time and had Rider Engineering assess the banner suspension structures.
The bad news arrived in April of this year: several structural improvements will be required to bring the current equipment up to provincial guidelines, and support cables and ropes will have to be replaced.
This news, along with the province’s additional requirements that Osoyoos accept full responsibility for any claim related to the suspended banners and purchase at least $1 million in liability insurance, has led Public Works’ administration to postpone repairs and present other event advertisement possibilities to council.
At the August 23 council meeting, Public Works Superintendent Andrew McKillop presented a summary of Rider Engineering’s report and some of the department’s alternate ideas, including digital signage to replace the old banners and hanging banners from light standard poles in town instead.
Mayor Sue McKortoff was quick to speak against the idea of creating new banners to hang from lamp poles, as she has seen them used around Osoyoos in the past and found that they were quickly bleached by the sun and needed to be replaced on a regular basis. She felt this would put too much of a financial burden on non-profits who use banners for their advertising.
Councillor CJ Rhodes shared his opinion that they shouldn’t be too quick to give up on the traditional spot across the highway: “As long as I can remember, there’s been banners up there,” he said. “It’s a historical thing, for decades, and I always thought that it was a very valuable way to promote events in our community.”
In the past, regular Osoyoos events like Music in the Park, Market on Main and Cherry Fiesta have all used fabric highway banners to draw in summer tourists who may not have heard of the events until that moment.
Although McKillop was able to inform council that the Public Works department would cover the costs of repairing suspension structures on the highway and the Resort Municipality Initiative (RMI) may provide some funding to build brand new banner advertising infrastructure, specific cost estimates had yet to be researched by town staff.
As such, Councillor Jim King moved that the issue be tabled until those estimates could be provided, and McKortoff agreed: “We’d like to look at all options because it’s important to us, as a community and as a resort municipality, to advertise things any way that we can.”
The town’s suspension of highway banner advertising will have to remain in place until a final decision is made.
