- November 18, 2024
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An unexpected debate disrupted the Flagler County Commission’s regular meeting Monday morning when Flagler County Supervisor of Elections Kimberle Weeks showed up with several County Commission candidates and assailed the county’s policy of barring fixed, private signage — including campaign signs — on public property.
Dennis McDonald, a Republican running for Flagler County Commission, District 2, approached the podium as the first to broach the issue during the meeting’s public comment period.
“Where does the county administrator get off deciding how we're going to handle elections?” he said. “I’d like to ask you all to stay out of it and let the elections take place freely.”
At the center of Weeks’ and the candidates’ complaints is signage at the Flagler County Library. It is used as a polling place, but because it is public property, fixed campaign signs, like all other private, fixed signs, are prohibited.
Weeks said the prohibition on fixed signs leads more people to head out to the library to hold up handheld signs.
“You’re just bringing more and more people onto the property and making it more and more difficult for voters to vote,” she said during the public comment period. “I’m not aware of a policy, there may not be a policy in place, maybe it’s in writing, maybe it’s verbal, but I don’t think there should be a policy in place,” she said.
She said the policy has “created a great amount of confusion and resentment” and caused candidates and supporters to start “physically placing persons in those locations to wear shirts, hold signs, hand out materials, etc. … In other words, the people have spoken and said they do not agree with the restrictions.”
The policy Weeks said she was not aware of is spelled out in a form every candidate is required to sign before erecting political signs within the county, viewable at http://www.flaglerclerk.com/pdf/Political_Sign_Reg_Form_2014.pdf.
It consists of six numbered directives. No. 3 is as follows: “No political signs shall be placed on or over any public property or public right of way.”
Weeks continued: “There have been verbal confrontations, people walking back and forth to the parking lot to their vehicles as traffic’s trying to find a place to park in the library, and people are setting up chairs in the parking lot to hold their signs. … Voters are finding it difficult to find parking spots to go into to conveniently early vote, and voters who do find parking spots, they’re faced with having to walk through large crowds of voters and supporters.”
She said she doesn’t want to be blamed for it.
“People don’t know that it’s not me, the supervisor of elections, that’s making this policy that’s outside the law and that it is not their supervisor that’s making it difficult for the voters to vote. As the supervisor, I don’t want to take the blame for what others are creating, and I don’t agree with outside interference when it comes to elections,” she said, “After all, the people spoke and made me their supervisor of elections, and there should be no outside interference that could affect the outcome of an election.”
Weeks said that if five people in each day of early voting — which begins Aug. 11 — don’t vote because they’re intimidated or can’t find a parking spot in a lot taken up by supporters’ cars, that’s a total of 65 votes and potentially enough to swing an election. She said it could “make an election unfair or give certain individuals an advantage.”
Denise Calderwood, a no-party-affiliation candidate running for County Commission District 4, spoke briefly after Weeks concluded her remarks.
“As a candidate, I would request to support what the supervisor of elections said, to make the process fair and open. And as a person who has supported several candidates in the past, it has been contentious at the library. You all had a fair opportunity, so just allow us to have a fair opportunity.”
Another candidate, Republican Mark Richter, also running for County Commission District 4, also spoke briefly in support of Weeks’ opposition to the sign ordinance later in the meeting.
Commissioner Barbara Revels asked Weeks if her office is enforcing the state’s 100-foot no-solicitation policy for polling places. She said it is.
But County Administrator Craig Coffey said Weeks’ request to allow campaign signs on county property is based on a false premise.
“The correlation’s being made that if you allow signage to be attached, affixed or installed on public property, that that somehow will reduce the free speech rights of people to come and protest at election sites. The reality is there is no correlation; people can do both,” he said. “If we could trade off signage and stop people from coming to the site, that might be something to talk about, but that’s a first amendment right, and you can’t stop that.”
The county created its sign ordinance years ago in part because of problems with campaign signs, he said.
“Many years ago and several election ago, staff was faced with ever-increasing disregard of the public’s property and a proliferation of signs everywhere, on all of our public properties. We were accused of not protecting the public’s property, we were accused of favoritism or selective enforcement, and we received complaints about the appearance of our community,” he said, reading from a statement he had prepared for the commission.
Allowing and regulating signs would have raised a number of issues, he said, including the following: “How many signs can someone put up? How big a sign can someone put up? Can they put up new postholes and put those up? Who pays for the damage if it damages a sprinkler system or the grass? Who pays for that damage? The public does.”
The county would then also have to enforce all of those individual signage restrictions — the county has just two code enforcement officers — and deal with candidates blocking or relocating others’ signs, he said. “That’s what was occurring, and it was really getting ugly between candidates,” he said.
Weeks asked to respond.
The format for government meetings, including Flagler County’s, generally doesn’t permit that kind of extended back and forth between a member of the public and the commission or staff members, and Weeks had already long exceeded the three minutes Flagler County allots for public comment.
Commission Chairman George Hanns looked at his fellow commissioners, and said, “Board members, we’re going to have a debate here. Are you willing to allow that?”
Revels said the only reason she could see to discuss it was if the board wanted to change the policy, and that she had no interest in doing so.
Weeks leaped in, “Well, the policy Mr. Coffey’s talking about with code enforcement for two weeks at the library, code enforcement’s apparently asleep at the wheel right now because I’m seeing signs all over this county on county right of way, and code enforcement’s not enforcing that, so why would they be selective of enforcing it the two weeks of the early voting period?”
She said that if the county government puts signs on its own property, anyone else should be allowed to place a sign on county property, too.
“The county chooses to put signs up, even out here by the government services building for different events and different things that take place, so why would there be an exception and why would everybody not be treated fairly and equally?” she said.
She said it was unfair to require candidates to sign a form on signage, and told the commission, “You’re not lawmakers, and you should rely on the laws that are in place.” She suggested the county should go to the state to change signage laws if it wants to do things differently.
There was applause from her group of supporters in the back of the room.
Coffey responded to Weeks, saying that signage restrictions and supporter turnout at polling places aren’t correlated, and asking Weeks to provide evidence that they are.
At Commissioner Nate McLaughlin’s suggestion, County Attorney Al Hadeed spoke on the issue.
“The assumption that’s been made or presented is that by allowing signs to be installed on public property, that act will increase access by the voters, increase participation in the election, increase turnout. That has not been established. It is conjecture. Only conjecture,” he said. “As to the law, there isn’t a state law that regulates signs, except in some regard like signs on the interstate, things of that sort, but local signs are regulated under home rule power of local government.”
The Flagler County community has tended to view signs as “visual pollution,” he said, and that view is reflected in county codes.
“A sign erected in violation of this rule is a trespass,” he said. “It is a trespass to your county rule.”
Coffey pointed out that different jurisdictions within the county can also have different signage codes.
Again, Weeks leaped in: “Well the statement that Mr. Hadeed said that there’s no evidence that this improves voter turnout, well the facts are that voter turnout is declining and it has declined since this policy went into place."
Hanns cut her off, “Ms. Weeks, we’re going to have to — "
“But I can tell you —“ she interrupted.
“ — stop this dialogue,” he continued, “because it’s interfering with the County Commission meeting today, it wasn’t on the agenda and we went way beyond what it should have,” he said, adding that pushiness at polling places seems to turn voters off.
“I think you should hold yourself to the same standard as you hold the voters,” Weeks said, “If signs aren’t permissible on public property, follow your own rules.”
“I’m sorry, let me just respond to that,” Hadeed said. “There is a world of difference between a governmental message and a message from a private person,” he said. “They are two totally different worlds legally. The government is permitted to sponsor a message on its own property.”
Flagler County has authorized all staff members to remove any private signs placed illegally on Flagler County property, Coffey said after the meeting.
