Friday, September 26, 2008

By JEFF JARDINE
jjardine@modbee.com

last updated: July 08, 2008 04:03:18 AM

Deana Barron believes it's a matter of principle, and that to back down to the city of Modesto would be a huge defeat for anyone like her who owns a small business.

City officials, meanwhile, claim they treat her no differently than they do anyone else who violates city codes.

What we have here, folks, is an old-fashioned citizen-versus- bureaucrats standoff in the making. It began a decade ago when the city fined Barron $200 for displaying clothing -- T-shirts and Hawaiian shirts -- from the porch of her Tangles, Bangles and Chocolates shop at 425 McHenry Ave. When she refused to take down the garments, the city added $500 to the fine.

The council stepped in and resolved the problem, nixing the fine.

Then, two years ago, she was fined $600 for putting up six illegal signs that code enforcement officers ultimately removed. She didn't pay the fines, and the city has placed a lien on her home.

Now, they're at odds again after she received a warning last week for having an illegal A-frame sign near her business and for displaying the clothing without a permit -- the latter of which she has done regularly since the 1998 dust-up. The sign directed customers to the hair salon her husband, Jose Barron, operates in the back of the building.

Code enforcement officers from the city's Neighborhood Preservation Unit, which targets blight, performed a sweep July 1. The officers visited scores of businesses, confiscating roughly 100 illegally placed signs that day. Among the offenders were nonprofit groups selling fireworks to raise funds.

While the illegal sign drew their attention, she said, the warning for displaying the clothing without a permit is more troublesome.

Why, she asks, should small businesses have to pay for a permit -- $35 to display goods for 120 days and no more than 12 consecutively in a calendar year? Meanwhile, big boxes including Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Save Mart, Long's Drugs and the like are free to put merchandise out in front of their stores and even in their parking lots.

"It's blight and an eyesore unless you have a permit?" Barron said.

And why, after being left alone for 10 years after the City Council tried to solve the problem, is the clothing an issue again?

Jim Niskanen, director of Parks and Neighborhoods Department, said the council never waived the code requirements back in 1998.

"It simply reinforced the ability to display merchandise with a permit," Niskanen said. "She's gotten permits over the years. I'm not sure why she didn't (renew) them."

John Michael Flint, who penned a community column that appeared in The Bee the same day as the sweep, believes the city retaliated against Barron because he mentioned her plight in the piece.

No way, according to Barbara Kauss of city's Parks and Neighborhoods Department, which oversees the anti-blight unit. Barron's store was part of the McHenry Avenue sweep planned before Flint's piece published.

"I know it sounds like it (retribution), but our code enforcement officers confiscated over 100 signs from 45 to 50 businesses that day," Kauss said. "I didn't know they (Tangles, Bangles and Chocolates) would be part of the sweep."

Barron said she believes she and other small-business types are being treated unfairly.

"I think it's wrong they have everybody so scared and have everybody under their thumb," she said. "Everybody's hurting right now, with the economy the way it is. Why do they do this?"

She won't cave and get the permit required to show her wares on the porch, nor will she pay the $600 in fines, Barron said.

"I'm going to stand up to them," she said. "It's the principle of the thing."

Jeff Jardine's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at jjardine@modbee.com or 578-2383.

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