By Stan Matthews
County Website and Communications Director
San Juan County’s Code enforcement office reports that, now that tourist season is in full swing, it is receiving several complaints each week from business owners and organizations about illegally placed sandwich-board and other types of advertising signs.
County Code prohibits off-premises outdoor commercial signs county-wide. This prohibition covers displays such as signs placed on street corners or on the side of public right of way. County enforcement personnel ask that owners of illegally placed signs remove them as soon as possible.
Signs that are not removed may be collected by County staff. Repeat violators may be subject to code enforcement action.
The entire San Juan County Code is available online at https://www.codepublishing.com/
I find it ironic that so much emphasis is placed on enforcing “illegal” sandwich board removals, while land use abuses go on unabated and unenforced. How in the world did the newest building by Washington Federal get away with pull-in and back-out parking on a major road, Horseshoe Highway, our main road into town? Surely that can’t be legal?! It seems to me that the county has its priorities skewed. With only one code enforcement officer for all of SJC you’d think the priority would be to protect our critical aquifers or Fishing Bay or something besides harass “peddlers” and confiscate sandwich boards.
Lets see now, removal of signs is much more critical than illegal vacation rentals which pay no taxes, land use abuses, illegal cutting of shoreline trees, illegal parking etc etc. We really need a code enforcer…NOT
Ah yes, another example of how the magicians sleight of hand will distract us from the issues in real life.