It’s been a few weeks since the City of London bylaw enforcement people cited twenty-odd London businesses for ‘illegal’ signs in the downtown. The supposed culprits were ordered to take their signs down, but to date that does not appear to have happened to any great extent.

Instead, some of the ‘offenders’ went on the offensive, believing their signs were serving a useful purpose and noting there were far more ‘offenders’ than the couple of dozen singled out.

London landlord Shmuel Farhi was one of the most outspoken (no surprise there). In an interview with the Voice he defended his signs and called on the city to show some common sense in the situation.

“I have almost 500,000 square feet of empty office space downtown. That costs me a lot of money for maintenance and taxes, and I would prefer to have tenants. My signs are intended to let people know Farhi Holdings has space available. I think they are very tasteful and I spent a significant amount of money to have them designed so they would attract attention but still look professional and not gaudy.

“I’m not the only one who would benefit from filling these buildings. If all of mine that are now empty were full the city would get more than $2,000,000 in added taxes every year. How is that bad for the city?

“There are many other signs like mine in the downtown but nobody said anything until now.

“If they (the city) want me to take my signs down then all the other signs will have to come down, too. It is unfair to target a handful of people apparently at random, especially because there has been no outcry from the public. I have hired a lawyer to defend my rights and we are hoping to have other people who have been targeted join us.”

Whether or not Farhi is successful in building a coalition, the sign issue has pointed out a problem in bylaw enforcement. If it is only reactive, i.e.: it takes action only in response to complaints, then the door is open for people to unwittingly break the rules because they see other people doing so without any interference from the city.

And such random enforcement is plainly unfair because it treats those ‘offenders’ who have been charged differently from ‘offenders’ who have not. And that’s not right, no matter how you slice it.

To make matters worse, when asked about the many other supposedly illegal signs throughout the city, the bylaw people said they had only so many resources and for now they were concentrating on the downtown because that’s the area that has drawn the complaints.

Again, not fair, on a couple of counts. Obviously, the law needs to be applied universally and without prejudice, that is a basic tenet of our society. But if the powers that be refuse to fund the enforcement staff adequately, they do not have the resources to do the job they are mandated to do.

That leaves them in a very uncomfortable position and leaves those people they do target with a genuine human rights complaint.

And there have now been complaints about the signage in other parts of the city, so what are the overworked and understaffed bylaw enforcement people supposed to do? The law cannot and must not be selective, at any level. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as my grandmother used to say.

This can of worms was allegedly opened by a city councillor who complained not to bylaw enforcement but to the London Free Press, encouraging them to do a story to draw attention to one particular ‘offender’. As is often the case, things snowballed from there.

One cannot help but wonder why the councillor did not simply call bylaw enforcement if there was genuine concern about the proliferation of signage downtown. Why go to the media, and why focus on only one business?

There is an election coming in October and it’s not hard to reach the conclusion that this whole thing grew out of a personality clash. And it is worth noting that one of the councillor’s key election team members is a business rival of the target of the councillor’s concern.

We don’t need this kind of personal vendetta in our city, especially since it has now blossomed into major issue, with serious repercussions. There are large signs and murals across the city that do not conform to city regulations, including some that have become part of the urban landscape.

If the city cannot find some face-saving way out of this mess, it will have to insist that every ‘illegal’ sign in the city come down. Or face a costly lawsuit, defending itself against hard-to-disprove charges of selective enforcement of the law. Like we need another way to waste taxpayer dollars.