Sauk County, WI Sign Regulations: Garage Sale Signs (2026)

Section 7.120(9) lists rummage sale signs among the signs exempt from Chapter 7's sign permit requirement, so a homeowner holding a garage or rummage sale does not need to apply to the Zoning Administrator before putting one up. That exemption does not waive the size and placement standards applied to every temporary sign: Section 7.131's table for temporary on-premises and off-premises signs limits a rummage sale sign to 6 square feet of maximum copy area and 6 feet of maximum height, the same footprint the county allows for a farm crop identification sign and half the 12-foot height ceiling it allows for a real estate sign.

Section 7.135 layers the county's general placement rules on top: no sign, including a rummage sale sign, may block a driver's or pedestrian's view of a road, intersection, or vision clearance triangle, and it must sit back at least five feet from the right-of-way line of any road or highway and at least five feet from any side or rear yard. Because a rummage sale sign is temporary rather than permanent, it also falls under Section 7.121's ban on abandoned signs: once it is left up well past the sale with no purpose, the county can treat it as an abandoned sign and require the owner to remove it. Chapter 7's sign enforcement runs through Section 7.136, which applies the same penalty and notice provisions as every other sign in the subchapter.