Politics & Government

Chamber of Commerce Runs Into Difficulty with City Over Sign Laws

The Bonney Lake Chamber wants to advertise for this weekend's Get Fit Bonney Lake Business Expo, but the city says the signs don't meet protocol.

To reach the more than 50,000 cars that drive through Bonney Lake every day, the hoped to advertise this weekend’s Get Fit Bonney Lake Business Expo by placing signs all the way down state Route 410.

, the executive director of the Bonney Lake Chamber of Commerce, filled out a sign permit application with the City of Bonney Lake and sent a $50 check for the permit. Because the chamber is a nonprofit organization, a planning official told Butterfield the chamber wouldn’t have to apply for a permit application and offered to shred her check. Nonprofits, the official said, do not have to pay a permit fee.

That was a "misunderstanding," said Community Development Director .

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“About a year ago a determination was made by the mayor and city council that civic groups and groups doing fundraisers for children do not need permits,” said Vodopich. “This does not apply for every nonprofit.”

At the July 5 city council workshop, Mayor Neil Johnson asserted that consistency in the rules is important.

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"The chamber isn’t too happy but a code is a code—if you make a change it will benefit [one group], but where does it end? We need a consistent code that we can follow."

The chamber received a green light from the city on July 1, before the holiday weekend, and paid a person $250 to set up 70 signs in the city. On July 5, the city removed the signs because they were not in compliance with city standards, and in the right-of-way. Chamber members had to collect the signs at city offices, fill out a permit application and pay a $50 fee to try again.

“The thing that upsets us is, we were trying to be in compliance and wanted to go through the permit process and do it the right way,” said Butterfield. “We paid someone $250 to go out and put up the signs after we thought it was OK, and then we didn’t even get a phone call saying ‘[the signs] were out of compliance, could you please move them?’”

On Saturday, The Get Fit Expo Charity Fun Walk/Run will extend from Prime Fitness on SR 410 through Sky Island, with proceeds going to Lions-4-Kids and the Bonney Lake Food Bank. To help promote the event, local homeowners offered to put Get Fit signs in their front lawns. Those were removed too, said Butterfield.

“I wasn’t aware of that,” said Vodopich. “We did not do a ‘sign sweep’ in Sky Island.”

After the signs were taken down, the chamber met with the city at the Annex on the same day and went through a 22-page book of official right-of-way information. Brent Mounts, general manager of and the Get Fit event organizer, and a city official went to make sure that the signs were not in the right of way.  After the meeting, Mounts and Prime Fitness employees reinstated the signs.

On July 11, the city did another "sign sweep" through town and still found 15 Get Fit signs to be out of compliance.

“This is the challenge we are receiving: they are telling us we have problems with communication and procedure, but they are interpreting the rules halfway through and it’s costing us money,” said Mounts. “And here is a cause that’s feeding local families with our charity run. We’re trying to do good things in the community and I just don’t feel like we’re getting that support.”


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