The City of Los Banos has an ordinance regulating the occurrence of garage/yard sales.

The goal of the ordinance is nothing more than the City’s effort to establish a process for this temporary activity while protecting the rights of adjacent residences, according to a recent Facebook post.

Here’s the City’s rules.

 

 

 

Garage and yard sales are limited to 4 occurrences per 12-month period, not exceeding 2 consecutive days each occurrence. Sales must be registered in advance by submitting a registration form to the Community & Economic Development Department at City Hall or online at www.losbanos.org. The registration process is designed to be completed quickly and is FREE for all residents.

The City is not making money off the registration process because it is FREE! But we are trying to reduce the impact of these sales on your neighbors by preserving the integrity of the residential zoning districts. Common complaints include parking and traffic related issues and people attempting to run businesses from their homes through frequent sales.

Equally important in our regulation of garage/yard sales is the placement of signs all over the neighborhood surrounding a sale. It is a violation of our ordinance to place a garage sale or other advertisement on neighborhood light poles, street signs, fire hydrants or other City/public property and in the public right-of-way.

Fines for violations relating to our garage/yard sale ordinance are as follows: $100 for the first violation, $200 for the second violation, and $500 for the third violation within a 12-month period.

The Los Banos Police Department Code Enforcement Division is committed to the beautification of our neighborhoods by providing responsive services to our residents. Our goal with these social media posts is to help educate you on our most common violations and to provide simple solutions or alternatives that you can take to address concerns of unsafe, unhealthy, and/or unsightly conditions within our community and more importantly, reduce the likelihood of being contacted and potentially issued a citation by our Code Enforcement staff.

Our goal is to educate our residents first by identifying the violation, educating the resident about the violation and providing a reasonable amount of time to correct the violation. However, just like you, our time is valuable and we will issue citations for nuisances that are not abated in a reasonable amount of time… and that will cost you hard-earned money!

There are a number of ways to contact LBPD staff to address your Code Enforcement related concerns – start by visiting our LBPD webpage here:

http://www.losbanos.org/city-government/departments/police/

Here, you can report abandoned vehicles, graffiti, and other crimes and as well as access our Code Enforcement page where you can file an anonymous Code Enforcement complaint.

Our staff can also be reached by telephone at (209) 827-7070 ext. 2546, or you can email a Code Enforcement concern to; [email protected].