After two years in business, Core Wine Company in Old Town Orcutt still has a temporary banner draped across its building to attract customers.
Core’s co-owners, Becky and her husband Dave Corey, would like to get a more permanent sign for their building, but say they can’t afford the nearly $2,000 in fees Santa Barbara County officials want just to permit it.
“It’s not an ideal situation, because it’s prohibitive for a lot of people who want to be able to do business down here,” Becky said. “It just seems very expensive of a price for a sign just to let people know where you are.”
The Coreys’ business isn’t the only one in Old Town using banners in lieu of permanent signs. In fact, a drive down Clark Avenue reveals the downtown area to be saturated with them. The reason? New business owners say the Santa Barbara County Planning and Development division’s charges for sign permits in unincorporated areas are “unaffordable.”
According to County Planner Kim Probert, for businesses in standalone buildings in Old Town and elsewhere, the county requires nearly $2,000 for permits to install any type of sign, including $625 for a “sign certificate of conformance” and $1,204 for design reviews by one of the county’s four Boards of Architectural Review, in addition to other fees.
The boards are spread regionally throughout the county—North, Central, South, and one just for Montecito. The North County Board of Architectural Review (NBAR) is comprised of five members appointed by the county Board of Supervisors, with two alternates. They meet once a month in meetings open to the public and are paid a stipend of $150 per meeting.
The NBAR reads and interprets architectural drawings in three stages—conceptual, preliminary, and final—to come up with its findings. In Old Town, Probert said the NBAR ensures the sign’s design and colors comply with the guidelines of the Orcutt Community Plan, which requires many signs to be hand painted and conform to a Western theme.
“When it comes down to the sign process, even though we tell [business owners] in the beginning the fees and what they need to do, I think they probably do determine it’s expensive,” Probert said. “But again it’s something in theory they should have budgeted for.”
According to Probert, banner signs aren’t permitted anywhere in the county, though the rules aren’t enforced unless the county receives a complaint.
“What happens is you start getting a proliferation of banners,” she said. “When somebody’s gone through the permitting process, they will actually report other people who they don’t think are complying … .”
Several Old Town business owners contacted by the Sun didn’t wish to be identified, but did express outrage at the cost of the permitting process, calling it “crazy” and “excessive.”
One Old Town business owner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he spent a total of about $1,200 on permits for his permanent sign and saw the review process as an income generator for the county.
“It’s pretty outrageous,” he said. “On one hand I totally appreciate the fact that there’s the controls on certain things, but on the other, do you really need to spend $1,100 to have these architects all sit around and jaw over whether they like it or not?”
Compare what Old Town merchants are paying to what sign permits cost within the neighboring city of Santa Maria, which doesn’t have a review board. According to city Planning Division Manager Peggy Woods, there are two sets of costs for permits in the city: The Planning Division charges a flat fee of $94.90 for each application, and the Building Division charges an additional fee based on the value of the sign, typically between $50 and $70.
The county fees were approved by county supervisors and apply to all of the unincorporated areas, including Los Olivos and Los Alamos, which has its own building plan. Shopping centers in unincorporated areas are required to have overall sign plans for tenants, requiring a deposit of $1,500 and a BAR fee of $1,204, Probert said. The one-time fee is charged to the landlords, and each new tenant just needs to pay the $625 “certificate of conformance” fee for as long as the plan is in effect.
North County Board of Architectural Review’s Assistant Supervisor David Villalobos said the review process is necessary to keep up the visual quality of businesses and ensure property values throughout the community stay at a high level.
“It’s really just to maintain a certain aesthetic,” Villalobos said. “I don’t want to weigh too much into it because it’s a philosophical decision of the board.”
Jeff Aron, director of government affairs for the California Sign Association, a statewide trade association for sign contractors, said state law requires permitting fees to not exceed the reasonable value of the services provided. He added the fees charged by Santa Barbara County “seem unreasonable.”
“If you have a $5,000 sign and you’ve got to spend $1,200 in permitting fees, it seems totally disproportionate, and it is disproportionate given the cost of the sign,” Aron said. “There are some communities that have a flat rate for what they’re doing, and the flat rate works to the disadvantage of smaller projects.”
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According to Aron, because there is no uniform fee schedule in California, permitting costs can be all over the map. Those seen as excessive for merchants actually generate more illegal signs and clutter, he said, and new business owners are most affected because their profit margins are slim and their signs are relatively small.
“This is one of the biggest problems in terms of new businesses,” he said. “That’s why they just stick up banners and have a grand opening for a year.”
Core Wine Company’s Corey said the bevy of banners in Old Town Orcutt makes her business and others look unfinished and gimmicky.
Affordable permanent signs, she said, would go far to increase visibility and, in turn, revenue.
“It kind of defeats the purpose of the review board trying to make everything look a certain way,” she said. “You’ve got the temporary banners, and people put up all the other signage on the street … it starts to kind of lose its appeal.
“The process is just too confusing and costly for someone who is just wanting to let customers know where their business is,” she added. “You would want the businesses in your county to survive and to thrive, and [a sign] is just one of the basic things you need.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas can be contacted at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2011.