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Sign Regulations (No General Sign Permit; Historic District/Landmark Signs Require Commission and Board Approval) in Saguache, Colorado

The Town of Saguache has no standalone, general-purpose sign permit application, fee, or approval process — nothing in the Town's entire codified Municipal Code establishes a sign-permit process, and the Town's own 'Application for Building Site Permit' has ten project-type checkboxes that do not include a 'Sign' option. Two narrow, real regulations exist instead: (1) Sec. 15-2-80 (Sidewalk Displays), Chapter 15 Land Use Regulations, sets townwide size/placement rules for sandwich-board signs and banners/pennants used in sidewalk commercial displays, with no associated permit or fee; and (2) within a Town-designated historic landmark, contributing structure, or historic district, Section VII (Signage) of the Town's currently-effective Historic Preservation ordinance (Ord. 2025-1, adopted 2025-05-12) requires any exterior sign (or exterior-visible interior sign, plus exterior lighting) to be reviewed by the Historic Preservation Commission and approved by the Town Board of Trustees — folded into the same historic-district process documented in the historic-district-landmark-alteration-certificate entry.

Verified 2026-08-14 · Source

When you need this permit

  • No general townwide sign permit application, fee schedule, or approval process exists in Saguache — confirmed via a full-code Municode search for 'sign permit' (10 results, none a distinct permit product with an application/fee) and 'change of use', plus a direct read of Chapter 15 in full, and confirmed against the Town's Application for Building Site Permit, whose 10 project-type checkboxes (New Construction, Addition, Bridges/Walkways/Driveways, Roof Replacement, Fence or Deck, Demolition, Mobile Home, Single/Multi Unit Residence, Lot Level Change, Commercial) do not include 'Sign'
  • Sec. 15-2-80 (Sidewalk Displays), Chapter 15 Land Use Regulations, Article 2: any commercial retail display on a sidewalk must permit adequate pedestrian use and must be taken in at the conclusion of business hours; the Board of Trustees may permit temporary seasonal displays to be kept on the sidewalk 24 hours a day for a specified time period; commercial displays are not permitted on the Town streets
  • Sandwich board signs (defined as any sign of A-frame design, posted periodically to reflect commercial 'specials') are limited to no larger than three feet by four feet, per Sec. 15-2-80(1)
  • Special pennants and banners (cloth or paper, announcing specials, products, special events, or 'Open' status) must be located so pedestrian/vehicular traffic is not impaired and vehicular vision is not compromised; banners for specific civic events (e.g. posted over a roadway) may be erected up to two weeks prior to the event and must be removed at its conclusion, per Sec. 15-2-80(2)
  • Within a Town-designated historic landmark, contributing structure, or historic district, any and all exterior signs (and interior signage visible from the exterior, plus any exterior lighting) must be reviewed by the Historic Preservation Commission for a recommendation, with final approval by the Town Board of Trustees, considering permits, colors, textures/finish, materials, design, location, and size, per Ordinance 2025-1, Section VII (Signage)
  • Repainting existing historic-district signage with the same color and lettering is exempted as normal maintenance and does not require Commission/Board review, per Ordinance 2025-1, Section VI
  • GENUINE UNRESOLVED GAP (shared with the historic-district-landmark-alteration-certificate entry): no primary source confirms whether the Town Board has locally designated the full Downtown Historic District under the ordinance's own Section III designation procedure, as distinct from its separate 2014 federal/state National Register of Historic Places listing — confirm with the Town Clerk (719-655-2232) whether a specific property is currently subject to this sign-review requirement

Required documents

Check off what you have — your progress is saved on this device.

Fee schedule

Sign Review Fee
No fee is published for sign review under either regime. Show full citationNo fee is published for sign review under either regime. Sec. 15-2-80 (Sidewalk Displays) states no fee for the general sandwich-board-sign/banner rules. The Historic Preservation ordinance's Signage section (Section VII) does not itself state a fee separate from the ordinance's general designation-nomination fee ($25.00, per the historic-district-landmark-alteration-certificate entry); no distinct Alteration-Certificate-application or sign-specific fee is published. Confirm with the Town Clerk (719-655-2232) or the Historic Preservation Commission.
Not published — contact the department

Review timeline

Plan review
Not published — contact the department

How long did your Sign Regulations (No General Sign Permit; Historic District/Landmark Signs Require Commission and Board Approval) permit actually take in Saguache?

Anonymous — one question, no email. Answers are combined and only shown once at least 5 people have reported.

Inspection process

    See the full Saguache inspection guide — scheduling & re-inspection fees →

    Tips

    • No general sign permit exists in Saguache — outside a designated historic district or landmark, only the narrow Sec. 15-2-80 size/placement rules apply (sandwich-board signs capped at 3' x 4'; banner/pennant placement and civic-event-banner timing rules), with no application or fee of any kind.
    • Inside a designated historic landmark, contributing structure, or historic district (which includes the Town's historic commercial core), any sign requires Historic Preservation Commission review and Board of Trustees approval under Section VII of the historic preservation ordinance — this is layered on top of, not separate from, the Alteration Certificate process documented elsewhere for this jurisdiction.
    • Confirm with the Town Clerk (719-655-2232) whether a specific property currently sits within a Town-designated historic district before assuming either regime applies — the Downtown Historic District's local designation status, as distinct from its 2014 federal/state National Register listing, is unconfirmed.

    Frequently asked questions

    Saguache requires a sign regulations (no general sign permit; historic district/landmark signs require commission and board approval) for: No general townwide sign permit application, fee schedule, or approval process exists in Saguache — confirmed via a full-code Municode search for 'sign permit' (10 results, none a distinct permit product with an application/fee) and 'change of use', plus a direct read of Chapter 15 in full, and confirmed against the Town's Application for Building Site Permit, whose 10 project-type checkboxes (New Construction, Addition, Bridges/Walkways/Driveways, Roof Replacement, Fence or Deck, Demolition, Mobile Home, Single/Multi Unit Residence, Lot Level Change, Commercial) do not include 'Sign'; Sec. 15-2-80 (Sidewalk Displays), Chapter 15 Land Use Regulations, Article 2: any commercial retail display on a sidewalk must permit adequate pedestrian use and must be taken in at the conclusion of business hours; the Board of Trustees may permit temporary seasonal displays to be kept on the sidewalk 24 hours a day for a specified time period; commercial displays are not permitted on the Town streets; Sandwich board signs (defined as any sign of A-frame design, posted periodically to reflect commercial 'specials') are limited to no larger than three feet by four feet, per Sec. 15-2-80(1); Special pennants and banners (cloth or paper, announcing specials, products, special events, or 'Open' status) must be located so pedestrian/vehicular traffic is not impaired and vehicular vision is not compromised; banners for specific civic events (e.g. posted over a roadway) may be erected up to two weeks prior to the event and must be removed at its conclusion, per Sec. 15-2-80(2); Within a Town-designated historic landmark, contributing structure, or historic district, any and all exterior signs (and interior signage visible from the exterior, plus any exterior lighting) must be reviewed by the Historic Preservation Commission for a recommendation, with final approval by the Town Board of Trustees, considering permits, colors, textures/finish, materials, design, location, and size, per Ordinance 2025-1, Section VII (Signage); Repainting existing historic-district signage with the same color and lettering is exempted as normal maintenance and does not require Commission/Board review, per Ordinance 2025-1, Section VI; GENUINE UNRESOLVED GAP (shared with the historic-district-landmark-alteration-certificate entry): no primary source confirms whether the Town Board has locally designated the full Downtown Historic District under the ordinance's own Section III designation procedure, as distinct from its separate 2014 federal/state National Register of Historic Places listing — confirm with the Town Clerk (719-655-2232) whether a specific property is currently subject to this sign-review requirement. If your project isn't listed, confirm with Town of Saguache Town Hall (Town Clerk / Deputy Clerk administer Building Permit applications; no dedicated Building Department) at 719-655-2232 before starting work.

    Saguache does not publish a plan-review timeline for this permit. Contact Town of Saguache Town Hall (Town Clerk / Deputy Clerk administer Building Permit applications; no dedicated Building Department) at 719-655-2232 for current turnaround.

    Depending on your project, Saguache may also ask for: None (Sec. 15-2-80 sidewalk-display sign rules); Alteration Certificate application (historic landmark/district signs only). See the required-documents checklist on this page for details on each.

    Apply through Town of Saguache Town Hall (Town Clerk / Deputy Clerk administer Building Permit applications; no dedicated Building Department) at 504 San Juan Avenue, P.O. Box 417, Saguache, CO 81149. Phone: 719-655-2232, email: townclerk@townofsaguache.org. Office hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., per the Town Hall page as preserved by the Wayback Machine (townofsaguache.org/town-hall-546.htm, captured 2025-12-10). NOTE: the Town's website has been migrated/rebuilt on Netlify and no longer publishes this page or most of its prior content (see sources note below); hours/contact are carried forward from the last-known-good archived capture, cross-verified independently against ColoradoEnergy.org's own listed Town Clerk contact (matches exactly: 504 San Juan Ave, Saguache, CO 81149, 719-655-2232).. Official information: https://www.townofsaguache.org/.

    Saguache, Colorado has adopted: NONE — ColoradoEnergy.org, a statewide Colorado building/energy code-adoption tracking directory maintained independently of any single jurisdiction, lists the Town of Saguache's Building Code status explicitly as 'No Building Codes' (coloradoenergy.org/codes/codes.aspx?City=Saguache), with a Town Clerk contact (504 San Juan Ave, Saguache, CO 81149, 719-655-2232) matching the Town Hall contact exactly — confirming this listing is genuinely about the Town, not Saguache County. NOTE: coloradoenergy.org's HTTPS endpoint has been intermittently unresponsive, and its own Wayback captures for this exact page stop at 2010; the 'No Building Codes' finding rests on the independent Town Clerk contact match above, not the ColoradoEnergy.org citation alone — and it is corroborated by the Town's own Municipal Code (see the next note).; The Town's Municode Chapter 18 (library.municode.com/co/saguache/codes/municipal_code?nodeId=CD_ORD_CH18BURE), 'CHAPTER 18 - Building Regulations,' is codified through Ordinance No. 2023-2 (enacted March 13, 2023) and contains exactly three articles, none of which adopt a model construction code: Article 1 (Sec. 18-1-10 through 18-1-90), Dangerous Buildings — an unsafe-structure abatement/demolition procedure whose text references 'the adopted building code' only as hypothetical boilerplate (comparing a damaged structure's remaining strength to what a new building would need), never naming or adopting the IBC/IRC/any specific code; Article 2 (Sec. 18-2-10 through 18-2-80), Flood Damage Prevention — a FEMA/NFIP floodplain-management ordinance adopted under Title 29 C.R.S. authority, unrelated to general construction permitting; Article 3 (Sec. 18-3-10 through 18-3-50), Manufactured Homes, Mobile Homes, Mobile Home Parks and RV Parks — zoning/prohibition rules, not a construction code adoption. This confirms, from the Town's own primary source rather than the third-party ColoradoEnergy.org directory alone, that the Town has NOT adopted the IBC/IRC or any other model building code.; Chapter 18's verbatim text is published only through Municode's client-rendered viewer (library.municode.com/co/saguache); the chapter contains no fee schedule, permit-issuance procedure, or code-edition citation beyond the three articles described above.; No adopted electrical code (NEC) or plumbing code (IPC) edition is attributable to the Town specifically; per Colorado's standard structure for small statutory towns without their own trade-permitting programs, electrical and plumbing work is presumed to fall to Colorado DORA state board licensing/permitting rather than a Town-run trade-permit program, but no Town electrical or plumbing permit process is asserted here given the complete absence of any Town-published fee, form, or procedure for either trade (see localAmendments).. Local amendments apply — see the Saguache overview page for the full list.

    No general sign permit exists. Outside a designated historic district or landmark, only narrow size and placement rules apply to sandwich-board signs and banners (Municipal Code Sec. 15-2-80), with no application or fee. Inside a Town-designated historic landmark, contributing structure, or historic district, signs require Historic Preservation Commission review and Board of Trustees approval under the historic preservation ordinance.

    No larger than three feet by four feet, per Municipal Code Sec. 15-2-80(1).

    Sources & verification

    Verified against official sources. Last reviewed 2026-08-14.

    Fees, timelines, and adopted codes are researched from each jurisdiction's published records — see how we verify. Requirements change and vary by project, so always confirm the current details with the Saguache building department before you submit. PermitBase is an independent reference and is not affiliated with any government agency.

    Property Access

    Saguache's permit history is searchable by address

    46 permits in our copy of Saguache's register — searchable by street address, with permit type, status, issued date and valuation where the city publishes them. This is what we hold, not a statement of everything Saguache has issued.

    All 46 are dated 2025, from 19 February to 20 October — this is that year to date, not Saguache's full permit history.

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