Spokane Valley wants end to ‘perpetual garage sales’

Jack Brede’s yard looks like a Value Village without walls.

Wooden shelves lean on one another. A mirror, a highchair, a Christmas tree stand and dozens of other items are strewn about. Amid it all is a sign that reads “Buy and sell here.”

The Spokane Valley resident has been running a garage sale at his house on Valleyway for at least nine months. After closing a new-and-used furniture store he operated in a commercial building, Brede moved the items to his home.

“This is the residue from that,” he said. “We’re trying to get rid of it through a garage sale.”

Brede, 80, said it’s a temporary situation as he transitions from the second-hand business to his next venture, manufacturing wooden floors. But some of his neighbors have complained to the city about the perpetual sale.

Now, Spokane Valley’s city staff is suggesting ways to restrict garage sales, such as prohibiting them from lasting longer than seven consecutive days, from being held on more than two consecutive weekends and from occurring more than three times a year at the same residence. The changes would be written into the existing nuisance ordinance, and violators could face fines of $250 to $500 or more.

Code Enforcement Officer Chris Berg knows of at least five garage sales that last all year, and “Come garage-sale season, you will see quite a few that are in a perpetual state all summer long,” he said.

The city already has rules against junky and unsafe yards. If a property owner’s yard is kept in such a state, citizens can file a complaint with the city and code officers will then open an investigation into whether the nuisance ordinance – as it stands now – is being violated. But on at least one occasion, a homeowner argued that he was running a garage sale and therefore didn’t have to clean up, Berg said.

The proposed garage-sale amendment would put an end to that excuse.

Selena Winston, 26, thinks the city’s proposal is reasonable. The Sharp Avenue resident sells items at a garage sale about once a year and doesn’t understand why some people never take the for-sale signs down.

“If you don’t sell everything, you just bring it to Goodwill,” she said.

Winston doesn’t worry much about the man a few houses down, though, who sells bicycle parts from his front yard at Sharp and Park Road.

Pointing to a house across the street, she said, “If it was right there it would bother me because I’d be looking at it all the time.”

If Spokane Valley adds perpetual garage sales to the list of outlawed nuisances, it will join Spokane in having a tool to combat the issue. Spokane prohibits more than two garage sales a year, and each sale can last no longer than three days. But Spokane city spokeswoman Marlene Feist said the city’s code enforcement department could only recall one incident in which a citizen complained about an ongoing garage sale.

“Complaints apparently are very rare,” she said. “… I think the idea here is to avoid people setting up stores in their garage.”

Coeur d’Alene residents can apply for special certificates to conduct business from their homes, but those businesses can’t display goods, Deputy City Clerk Kathy Lewis said. Instead, the business owners must either take orders or sell on the Internet. Citizens with concerns about an ongoing garage sale can call their code enforcement department to complain, she said.

In unincorporated Spokane County, there are no restrictions on garage sales, but citizens are prohibited from storing junk in their yards for long periods of time.

Brede, who runs the sale on Valleyway, said he can understand why the city of Spokane Valley would want to put some restrictions on sales. But the staff’s proposal is too stringent and could put a damper on garage sales, one of this region’s most popular pastimes, he said.

“Older people, particularly, depend on that for interest, activity and a little income,” Brede said. “(Shopping and dickering over prices) is a challenge, rather than sitting on a rocking chair.”

Next door to Brede, a thick row of shrubs separates Helen Dahl from her neighbor’s ongoing sale. She said her only concern is when the merchandise creeps into the street, making it tough to see oncoming traffic.

“As I drive out, I have to go out real easy,” she said.

Besides that, she has no complaints about Brede’s business.

“At 85 going on 86, there are other things that bother me,” she said.