It’s probably not where you’re thinking
BLYTHEWOOD – It has been the tradition in the Town of Blythewood, that 30 days before a town council/mayoral election, candidates’ campaign signs pop up all over the downtown area. They line the inside of sidewalks down Blythewood Road, Boney Road, McNulty Road, Main Street, and other areas. Multiple signs are clustered at street corners and rarely is there a business in town that doesn’t have one or more campaign signs staked in its yard.
For 30 days, the signs do their work, waving their messages that Blythewood is a patriotic town.
There is little correlation between who the business owner votes for and whose signs show up in front of the business.
The signs usually go up at night so permission of property/business owners is rarely, if ever, sought. And business owners have never made an issue of signs in their yards, according to Town Administrator Carroll Williamson.
That is, until last November, when a video appeared on several news stations featuring the Fairfield County Council Chairman Douglas Pauley removing a political campaign sign from in downtown Blythewood. The video showed him depositing the sign into the back of his pickup truck and snapping the tonneau cover down over it.
The incident occurred a week or so before the Nov. 7 Blythewood town council/mayoral election. The campaign sign in question belonged to Town Councilman Donald Brock who was in the last days of a tight race to retain his council seat for four more years.
The issue of the sign became heated.
As everyone who weighed in on the issue, including The Voice, about whether Mr. Brock’s campaign sign was (or was not) legally staked out in the first place – was most likely wrong.
Reading Blythewood’s sign ordinance’s archaic campaign sign exemption doesn’t do much to clarify the question.
The Town of Blythewood’s sign ordinance 155.430 Exempt Signs (G) lists five rules for the posting of campaign and election signs inside the town limits. The first three provide: 1) that each sign shall not exceed 20 square feet in area; 2) that all signs may be erected no sooner than 30 days in advance of the election for which they were made; and 3) that all signs shall be removed within seven days after the election for which they were made.
That’s where the ordinance starts to get sticky.
The fourth rule states that, “The property owner upon whose land the sign is placed shall give written permission for the placement of the signs and will be held responsible for violations.”
That could be a near impossible task since many of the owners of business properties live elsewhere. It could take considerable time and effort to make contact with them.
The fifth rule states that, “No sign shall be placed in any right-of-way, on any telephone pole, street sign and/or street sign pole or on any public property.”
Trying to decipher exactly where the rights-of-way are (and aren’t) in the town, is also a near impossible task.
(The reference to roads here pertains only to the section of the road that is inside the town limits.)
In Blythewood, some downtown streets have been widened over the years to the extent that the right-of-way could cover the entire front yard of a property. Does the property owner’s right to give permission for a sign in their yard trump the right-of-way campaign sign rule?
Chatting with an SC Department of Transportation right-of-way specialist, I also learned that some streets in town have a proscriptive easement, meaning that the rights-of-way on those streets don’t have the same protection of law that ordinary rights-of-way have against the posting of campaign signs and other things.
The specialist said that Main Street (Highway 21) has a proscriptive easement between Blythewood Road and McLean Road.
Creech Road also has a proscriptive easement.
McNulty Road, from Main Street to Boney Road has a 25-foot right of way from the center line of the roadway. From Boney Road north past McDonalds to Blythewood Road, McNulty Road has a proscriptive easement.
Blythewood Road has a 37.5-foot right-of-way from the center line.
Langford Road has a 33-foot right of way from center line.
McLean Road has a 25-foot right of way from center line.
That information fosters many questions.
If a candidate placed campaign signs close to the road where there is a proscriptive easement, and the property line comes right up to the edge of the road, would the candidate still need to obtain the written consent of the property owner?
Could the property owner give written consent if the entire front yard of a business is in the right-of-way?
Are property owners going to be willing to bear responsibility for any “violations” caused by the placing of a sign they’ve permitted in writing? And what could possibly be a “violation” caused by the sign placement?
These might be a question for council to answer, with the advice of the town attorney and administrator, before the town’s special election in February.
The next campaign signs are set to go up Jan. 27, 2024.
