With just more than a week to go before White Rock voters head to the polls to pick their newest council representative, candidates are being reminded to keep election signs within city boundaries.

The reminder comes after several candidate signs were discovered to be outside of White Rock's boundaries, appearing in Surrey instead.

The signs in question belonged to candidates David Chesney, Grant O'Kane, Megan Knight, Bruce McWilliam and Bill Lawrence and were primarily found along 16th Avenue and King George Boulevard.

According to Tracey Arthur, chief elections officer for the City of White Rock, candidates have been reminded to keep signs within municipal boundaries.

"I think they were trying to capture people as they left White Rock into Surrey," said Arthur. "They were notified and the signs have been removed."

Arthur also noted candidates were being asked to keep signs off of private property and to avoid encroaching upon sightlines on corners.

Despite Arthur's claim, Chesney, who said he had one sign in the Surrey boundaries, said there are still signs outside of White Rock.

"The ones that are very obvious along the Johnston corridor, those have all been removed," said Chesney.

"But I was just driving out in Surrey and there were still quite a number of signs by one candidate and there are even some in the Grandview Heights area."

According to Chesney, signs spilling into Surrey haven't been an issue in past elections, but with election time usually taking place the same time as Surrey's, it's only during byelections that these things become an issue.

"When Surrey is littered with Surrey candidate signs, nobody really cares but being it's a byelection, it's only White Rock," said Chesney.

"In the past there hasn't been a problem with the byelection but what happened this year is some rookie mistakes. Some first-time candidates put signs deep into Surrey and we got our knuckles rapped."

Rick Bamford, manager of operations for bylaw and licensing, said the City of Surrey has not received any complaints about signs appearing within their boundaries, but they are aware of the situation.

"We have so many roadways that are common between Surrey and White Rock, like 16th Avenue," he said. "So we're not getting too excited about it and we won't be running around taking them all down. The only instruction I've given bylaw officers to be concerned about is sight-line obstruction or any kind of a safety hazard. Then we'll pull the signs out."

Bamford said if it looked like signs were causing any problems, they would. Other than that, Bamford said the signs aren't the top of the priority list.

"We're looking at it if we'd be allowing Surrey signs in the same location as well, more than likely we would," he said.

All signs must be removed 14 days following White Rock's Nov. 3 byelection.

Twitter @questionchris

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