Chicago Businesses Looted by Bureaucrats for Having Signs in Their Windows

Chicago Businesses Looted by Bureaucrats for Having Signs in Their Windows

When leftists aren’t demanding that you put something you don’t want in your own window, they demand that you don’t put anything at all — unless of course you pay them for the privilege. From the single-party city Chicago:

A number of neighborhood small business owners are complaining that the city is overzealously policing sign permits, saying they’ve had to pay thousands of dollars in fines for words painted on their shop windows.

“It just seems unfair to make you get a permit for every window panel,” said Scott Toth, owner of Craft Pizza at 1252 N. Damen Ave.

Toth has been ticketed four times for crimes like putting his restaurant’s logo in the window of his restaurant. After hiring a lawyer, he ended up taking down the signs and paying a fine.

Other small businesses have been getting the same treatment for similar infractions.

A long-standing city law enforced by the Department of Buildings states that permits are required for non-illuminated painted or vinyl advertising signs or lettering that take up more than 25 percent of any single window.

The cost for each on-premise window sign is $200 per sign, plus a Department of Buildings zoning review fee that can vary from $50 to $1000 depending on the size of the sign. …

The city requires that a professional contractor apply the lettering or images. Violators face fines of $350 to $15,000 per day until the signs are removed, according to the city’s “Sign Regulations and Permits.”

It’s a good thing the British were never outrageous enough to impose this level of greedy tyranny on the American colonists. The Revolutionary War really would have gotten ugly.

Chicago’s liberal rulers will rake in money any way they can.

On a tip from Christopher T. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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