The City of Lloydminster is reviewing its advertising policy, with updated rules regarding facility banners among the proposed changes.
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First adopted by city council on Dec. 17, 2018, the policy was last amended in 2022.
“Administration has completed a review of the policy to ensure it continues to provide clear direction, reflects current operational practices and aligns with related city policies and approval processes,” said Joel Turcotte, director of recreation and cultural services.
“As part of this review, administration prepared an updated draft that clarifies roles and responsibilities, strengthens banner standards and updates provisions related to revenue allocation, gifts in kind and existing agreements.”
Administration clarified that guidelines for banners were added to address growing operational demands.
“We’ve received some questions about banners — who can hang them and for what purpose,” Turcotte explained. “Some individuals don’t like how untidy they look, so we were trying to gather some guidelines for it.”
“We’re getting a lot of questions from many different sporting organizations. Every organization is starting to ask for banners. We have banners from 15 or 20 years ago that are hung up, and we’re running out of room.”
Coun. Jim Taylor recounted his own experience seeing banners at various venues.
“When I travel to other arenas and facilities, it’s something to look at when you’re in there and it’s neat to see the history, but I also agree with it — after a while, there’s more than needs to be there,” he said.
One major revision is the removal of a restriction on political advertising, a move that raised concerns among several council members.
“I don’t know how we protect ourselves on that one,” said Coun. David Lopez.
Turcotte noted the restriction was removed following legal advice, a point expanded on by Executive Manager of Community Development Services Nicole Simpson.
“We were challenged on the idea that we weren’t allowing political advertising in our buildings,” Simpson said. “We received a legal opinion that said we have no legal grounds to limit political advertising in our public spaces, so we’ve removed it based on that legal opinion.”
Coun. Michael Diachuk expressed concern over how political advertising might reflect on the municipality.
“We’ve opted to not get involved in the ‘stay in Canada’ and ‘get out of Alberta’ piece to stay neutral, recognizing we have people in the community with both of those opinions,” he said.
“But here we are saying it’s OK for someone to advertise on our buildings, and then we could be construed as saying we support that because we let them rent that space and say exactly what we don’t believe in. I find that a bit of a contradiction in terms of the legal advice that we’re getting.”
Simpson said administration would bring back additional information when the policy returns to a regular council meeting, adding that the city retains final approval over all advertising inside its facilities.
The item will return to a future council meeting for a decision.
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