EVERETT – Two months ago, Donna Kerns had never heard of Title 19, Section 36.030, Paragraph J of Everett’s municipal code.
Now, the north Everett bar owner can recite the paragraph from the city’s 7,000-word city ordinance almost verbatim.
The city law prohibits portable signs like the one that sat undisturbed in a flowerbed outside her White Elephant Bar &Grill on Broadway for a decade.
A tip alerted authorities to the sign late last year.
It is Everett’s policy not to disclose the source of code violation complaints.
“I’ll tell you what I think about it. It’s harassment,” said John Troia, Kerns’ husband, whose family opened the bar in 1958.
A code compliance officer sent a letter in October warning the bar to remove the rogue sign or risk fines of up to $250 a day.
The White Elephant’s portable sign – one of those lighted boards with interchangeable block letters and a flashing arrow on top – violated the sign ordinance because it was larger than eight square feet in size and it was illuminated.
To get a permit to allow the sign, Kerns would first have to move another nonconforming sign, built long before current sign rules were enacted.
That’s too costly and requires going through too much red tape, Kerns and Troia say.
Their banned sign was a cheap way to advertise $3.99 hamburgers, karaoke nights, funerals and wedding announcements. It was also used last year to express the couple’s frustration with Washington’s indoor smoking ban, which they say hurt business.
Yes, it was an unlawful sign, Kerns said.
But so are scores of other signs advertising businesses in Everett, especially along Broadway and Evergreen Way.
Kerns said she thinks the bar is under greater scrutiny, in part because its owners were vocally opposed to the smoking ban.
“It’s like the city is zeroing-in on my bar,” she said.
With that theory in mind, the crusading bar owner set out on a mission with a digital camera.
It took little effort to spot other businesses with illegal portable signs, including two bars on N. Broadway and a tavern on Holly Drive.
By turning a blind eye to other violations, the city was giving an advantage to her competition, Kerns argued.
She photographed 39 businesses with similar signs, and submitted a meticulous report to the City Council.
A number of the signs violated city rules, and owners were ordered to take them down.
“If one person can’t have it, then nobody should be able to,” Kerns said sitting on a barstool facing sunlight pouring through the White Elephant’s front window earlier this week.
“I think it’s pretty pathetic, as a business owner, that I had to go out and do their job,” she said.
Enforcement of the 1995 sign ordinance is primarily complaint driven, said Allan Giffen, director of Everett’s planning department.
The city’s three code compliance officers are too busy for a more pro-active approach, he said. The officers enforce all of the city’s health and safety codes, including rules related to dangerous buildings, junk vehicles on private property and environmental violations.
Jim Minar navigates the often-complex permitting process for businesses around the Puget Sound area.
The permit technician with Kikland’s Sign Factory said several cities ban electric portable signs for aesthetic and safety reasons.
The problem with laissez faire signage happens when the placement of signs interferes with traffic and shoddy electrical hookups create a fire hazard.
“I don’t side with the city necessarily, but I do see their point,” he said.
Still, cities can go too far drafting sign rules that discriminate based on content, courts have ruled.
In September, Dennis Ballen, a Redmond bagel shop owner, won a free speech victory when the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that he could keep portable outdoor signs advertising his business.
The city cited Blazing Bagels for having an employee wear a sandwich-board sign advertising “Fresh Bagels.” Redmond officials said the sign was ugly and hazardous.
However, the court found the city’s ordinance, which banned certain kinds of portable signs but allowed real estate signs, was unconstitutional.
William Maurer, executive director of the Institute for Justice Washington Chapter, the libertarian law firm that represented Ballen, said there shouldn’t be a problem with Everett’s ban, as long as the government isn’t found to be picking out which messages are permitted and which ones are not.
“You can have reasonable time, place and manner restrictions,” he said.
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