Monterey County, CA Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

060, part of the Title 20 Coastal Zoning Ordinance governing signs in the unincorporated Coastal Zone, regulates off-site advertising signs there. Subsection (D)(1) creates a narrow category for 'community information and directional signs' that may be erected only on property adjacent to freeways approaching, passing through, or going near cities or communities. No single sign in this category may exceed 400 square feet, and the sign cannot identify any specific business, person, entity or organization; only a nonprofit organization qualifies for message content. 70, the county's most rigorous, hearing-based sign review track, rather than the lighter Coastal Administrative Permit used for smaller signs elsewhere in the chapter.

060(D)(3) requires that outdoor advertising and other off-site advertising signs generally be located in an industrial or commercial zoning district; freeway-facing community/directional signs are the narrow carve-out that can sit on property zoned for other uses as long as it fronts a freeway corridor. Because Title 20 applies only within the Coastal Zone, a freeway-facing sign proposed outside that zone, for example along Highway 101 in the Salinas Valley, falls instead under the parallel Title 21 Inland Zoning Ordinance sign chapter, not this section.