REDMOND — A recent push by the city of Redmond to have downtown businesses replace their old pole-mounted signs with smaller, city-approved signage has some business owners crying sign overreach.

“We just spent 800 bucks redoing the sign and getting the electrical back in,” said Jerry Culpepper, a manager at Medical Supply of Central Oregon, where a sign on a pole in the parking lot faces Sixth Street. “There’s nothing offensive about our sign that I can see. And people here in Redmond know we’ve been here forever and the building has been here forever — well over 50 years.”

The program, which the city calls the Pole Sign Removal and Replacement Program, has been on the books since 2011. That’s when grant money — the city offered to pay 50 percent of the replacement costs, up to $5,000 — was set aside to help business owners guilty of signage violations bring their signs up to code with 2008 standards, which banned pole-mounted signs and implemented other sign size restrictions in the downtown area.

But when only one downtown business applied for the grant and had its sign replaced, the Downtown Urban Renewal Advisory Committee voted in November to extend the program and give businesses 180 days from Dec. 1 to get the sign replacement process started.

“The reason people didn’t take advantage of (the grant) was that we had staff turnover, and quite frankly it fell through the cracks,” Community Development Director Heather Richards said at the November meeting. “We got out two mailings, but we haven’t been consistent in getting it out and notifying people of the program. We as a city didn’t get out the info in a consistent manner.”

That lack of contact changed on Dec. 1, when downtown business and property owners received a letter from Chuck Arnold, urban renewal program coordinator, advising them of the deadline and stating that “Property owners that fail to abate the non-compliant sign may be subject to fines.”

“You are receiving this courtesy letter because your property has a sign that is out of compliance with the standards set in 2008 for the Downtown Overlay District,” the letter states. “After the reroute of traffic to the bypass, 6th Street has changed for the better. Traffic speeds are now slower allowing a more suitable environment for walking and commerce. The reduced speeds remove the need for highway-scaled large pole signs.”

Some downtown business owners disagree.

“They want to change the whole facade and look of everything out here, and we just don’t know enough about it,” Carol Williams, co-owner of Cornucopia, a natural food store and deli, said. “Right now, what we’re seeing is having to spend a lot of money on something we already spent a lot of money on. And besides that, we just don’t think it’ll be as good a sign. The size will be a lot smaller and it won’t help business. At this point, we’re not happy it.”

Richards said that there are about 20 downtown businesses with noncompliant signs. Perhaps another 20, she estimated, have had signs violating code replaced since 2008. (The sole business she had mentioned at the November meeting was simply the only business that applied for the sign replacement grant money, she clarified.)

“It’s a city code, and the community developed the code,” Richards said, pointing to more than 12 public meetings with stakeholders and sign companies to review the code before it was adopted in 2008. “It was a two-and-a-half-year community dialogue about what people wanted to see happen in the downtown area, and the final ordinance is the product of that process. And (the city of Redmond Community Development Department’s) role is to ensure that businesses are following it. Our hands are tied, but we’re doing everything we can.”

Still, people like Williams and Culpepper, whose businesses would end up having to pay half the cost of getting a new sign, say the city’s current sign rules will be costly to put in place and aren’t good for business.

“For a small business — 1,000 bucks for a new sign — I’ll have to sell a lot of canes and support hose and wheelchairs to cover that kind of money,” Culpepper said. “We’re not a high-dollar volume store. And we sit back off the street about 50 feet, so the parking is in front of the store. If we don’t have a taller sign, no one’s gonna find us. Even now people are driving around with their cellphones looking for us. Imagine what it’ll be like with a sign not on a pole.”

Virgil Carnahan, a co-owner of Impact Signs, which is one of the sign businesses in Redmond where business owners have been going to see about getting their signs replaced, said he’s talked to a few local business owners who have expressed similar frustrations.

“Small businesses don’t have extra money,” he said. “They still need to come up with $2,500, and a lot of them don’t have that money. They have an existing sign now that’s working for them and looks nice, and getting a new one is going to be a hardship for them.”

In response, Richards said that the city can help business owners find a solution if business owners contact the Community Development Department.

“We’re here to help, so we’d love to hear from (business owners) and get to a win-win solution for everybody,” she said. “That’s our goal.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7829,

awest@bendbulletin.com