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City pauses enforcement of Meadowood neighborhood sign after HOA appeals; workshop set
Summary
Residents and the Meadowood HOA urged the council to halt enforcement of a code violation for a neighborhood sign; city staff said unpermitted improvements altered the sign's legal status but offered relocation onto city property; council directed staff to pause enforcement through a July 21 workshop.
Residents of the Meadowood neighborhood asked the Liberty Lake City Council on July 7 to halt a code-enforcement action that requires removal of a longtime neighborhood sign at North Liberty Lake Road and East Settler Drive.
Meadowood Homeowners Association board president Vicky Markison told the council the association represents “about 4,000 Liberty Lake residents” and that the sign has been “a permanent and welcoming fixture” for more than two decades. Tisha Goodman, a Meadowood resident and the general manager of Rockwood Property Management, said the HOA received a violation notice on June 16 and requested more time to address it after meeting with city staff.
The HOA argued the sign is a legacy or legal nonconforming sign under city code and that recent enforcement appears inconsistent with past practice. “When I asked why the garden sign didn't meet code, his answer was because it doesn't,” Goodman said of a staff response she described as unhelpful. Contractor Jim Frank, who said his company installed the sign in 2007, told the council the sign sits about 29 feet from the road, that there is no practical private location for it, and asked the mayor to direct staff to discontinue enforcement and allow the sign to remain.
A city administrative official explained staff’s position: the sign had been legal nonconforming but modifications made without permits constituted more than 50% of the sign area, which changed its status and triggered code review. Staff said they proposed relocating the sign onto adjacent city-owned property and entering an easement agreement as a remedy and apologized if earlier comments came across as hostile. “That offer still stands,” the administrator said.
Council members said they wanted a full discussion of the sign code and enforcement options rather than an immediate penalty. The council moved to add a workshop on sign-code implementation to the next meeting agenda and directed staff to press pause on enforcement through that workshop so the HOA and staff could pursue a resolution.
The council did not take final action on the code or the violation at the meeting; any formal change to enforcement policy or a penalty would require a later agenda item and vote. The sign-code workshop is scheduled for the council’s next meeting on July 21.
