San Jose neighbors hit the streets in search of illegal signs By Tiffany Carney
West San Jose Resident
Posted: 03/03/2009 06:15:34 PM PST
Those "Got Junk?," "Open Homes" and "garage sale" signs posted on telephone poles and light posts seem to becoming more commonplace in San Jose neighborhoods despite a city ordinance banning them.
The problem? Too many signs and not enough resources to take them down, says Jaime Matthews, code enforcement division manager.
"No signs are allowed on the city's property or on telephone poles regardless of the message," Matthews said. After fielding countless complaints about signs in his constituents' neighborhoods, one city councilman recently decided to take matters into his own hands.
Andrew Edwards, Staff Writer Posted: 03/16/2009 06:21:41 PM PDT
SAN BERNARDINO - The City Council voted Monday to move forward with plans to raise several city fees. The potential fee hikes are projected to raise about $770,000. The proposals follow a citywide directive to look for new fees in order to help balance San Bernardino's budget. .........
Another Code Enforcement-related change would create a $100 fee for illegal signs. This penalty is expected to raise $50,000.
Rialto relying on volunteers to back up code enforcement officers 10:00 PM PDT on Tuesday, March 17, 2009
By DARRELL R. SANTSCHI The Press-Enterprise
RIALTO - Rafael Medina lives in San Bernardino and works as a security guard, but his not-so-secret desire is to be a Rialto code enforcement officer.
.....The two men spent much of their five-hour shift plucking signs out of the grassy street frontage between sidewalks and streets and peeling them off of traffic signs and light poles.
"We need to be careful to remove all of the (duct) tape from the poles," Hernandez said. "It's tape holding a sign today, but tomorrow it becomes blight when the signs are removed."
Blight -- a loosely defined term that can mean anything from tape on a pole to overgrown brush and junk in somebody's yard -- is a big part of code enforcement.
With more than 1,000 Rialto homes in foreclosure, keeping them from turning into eyesores was a demanding part of the workload for the city's seven full-time code enforcement officers, Hernandez said.
