Letter to The Editor: Election Sign Pollution
On the 20th of September 2026, I wrote and sent this letter to the local Editor of our only print newspaper, the Caledon Citizen. I sent it in response to neighbours complaining about the walls of election signs that were beginning to dominate the Bolton landscape and every highway and byway through town and country in Caledon. Three in particular stood out. An interesting trio of signs from candidates: Mario Russo for Mayor of Caledon, Tony Caputo for Councillor, Ward 5, and most unusual was Cosimo Napoli for Ward 6,
People were asking, “Why is a Ward 6 candidate filling up the landscape with election signs in Ward 5? And why are the very large Russo, Caputo and Napoli signs always grouped together?” Note that signs for Tony Rosa would have joined that trio had he not been acclaimed, The answers are simple. First, to paraphrase the satirical “Eat shit, ten million flies can’t be wrong” poster: “Vote for ME! Ten million election signs can’t be wrong.”
That Letter didn’t get published in the Thursday’s edition. Here’s why it is important in the net municipal election
Rosa, Russo, and Napoli were part of the infamous “Gang of Five” along with Doug Maskell, who voted with our Strong Mayor as a pro-developer hive mind on almost every issue of land use, housing, greenspace protection (or abandonment of it) for our Caledon rurban community. The “Swan Lake” debacle became their first defeat and led to a lot of reverse engineering in their Council motions and electoral campaign literature.
Secondly, they all share the same campaign manager, Mr. Terry Groves. Now, there is no denying Mr. Groves’s energy and commitment in signage and leaflet delivery for his candidates, Unfortunately he appears not to have read the new By-laws that explains clealry where election signs can be placed legally. But that won’t matter on election day. A tuned out public will always go with the message most frequently broadcast. Like flies. Name recognition braqinwasing is just business. But it often doesn’t lead to ethical governance.
Mr. Groves, the ex-husband of the retiring Mayor, now handles the private $1.5 million raised by her “community galas” not sanctioned by the Town and not open for public audit. Caledon Community Inc. is the newly established non-profit charity that stores the monies raised by Ms. Groves “community galas”, and is continuing to solicit donations under a private email address. Although she promised full public accounting of the funds and who received them, she recently told The Enterprise, “I said I would. But you know what, thinking about it, I really don’t need to.”
Terry has left his job as a school caretaker and is now the manager for a brand new business, the Renewed Hope Cafe in Bolton. You’ll never guess which political candidates regularly meet there with their campaign manager. But I digress. Here is the letter that did not get published. Ms. Groves, you really, really need to disclose your fundraising totals and community distribution before we…
Letter to The Editor: Election Sign Pollution