If you copy and paste the city of Boulder’s rules on signage in its land-use code into a Google doc 7.5-point Arial font, you’re greeted to 17 pages of rules about what a sign can and can’t look like in front of a Boulder business. At times, the snippet of the code, which is Title 9 of the city’s municipal code, is vague or up to interpretation.

And in the words of Lauren Folkerts, a career architect and Boulder City Council incumbent running for reelection, the section is “just a lot of regulation around something every business needs.”

To Folkerts and many others vying for the four open seats in Tuesday’s election, the signage section is merely a microcosm of a land-use code that has been Frankensteined over decades of reactionary policy and has led to a difficult, if not hostile, envi

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