SAN CLEMENTE – Drivers in San Clemente may have seen the last of those colorful Liberty Tax Service mascots prancing on the street corner, dressed as the Statue of Liberty, waving at motorists, waving the flag, enticing you where to do your taxes.

City Hall is drafting an addition to the city’s sign code, outlawing “human signs.”

It comes at the request of a City Council member whio said she isn’t targeting any one business – just the notion that as more chain stores find San Clemente, more might bring mascots.

“Could you imagine if you had competing people trying to get your attention?” Councilwoman Kathy Ward said. “Some big-box stores have mascots. We’re trying to get ahead of it.”

Some other nearby cities already have such a ban.

 Huntington Beach prohibits “animals or human beings, live or simulated, utilized as signs.”

 Mission Viejo bans those same things, live or simulated, “designed or used so as to attract attention to the premises.”

 Newport Beach banishes “commercial mascots.”

 Laguna Niguel outlaws “people used for advertising.”

 Rancho Santa Margarita prohibits “sign twisters and other human directional signs.”

 San Juan Capistrano bars “off-site attraction-getting devices (including but not limited to costumed employees, employees with signs, etc.)”

 Dana Point prohibits “flashing, moving, animated and intermittently lighted signs and advertising devices including animals and human beings.”

 Lake Forest bans “human signs.”

Brenda Yecke, co-owner of Liberty Tax Service in San Clemente, said the co-owners chose San Clemente, in part, because it doesn’t ban the mascots, which are important to the business.

“We knew that Lake Forest is very, very restrictive,” she said. “A friend has Liberty Tax Service there. They were instantaneously written up, even when he put someone out in front of his store in a shopping center, set back from the road.”

A year ago, San Clemente informed Liberty that its mascots couldn’t hold a Liberty Tax sign or wear the business name.

“We’ve complied with that,” Yecke said. “We feel like the feedback we get from people in San Clemente is they enjoy it, have fun with it. We get a lot of people smiling and honking their horn as they go by.”

That’s another of Councilwoman Ward’s concerns – driver distraction.

Lake Forest’s ban was in the news in 2010 when a human pickle touting Mr. Pickle’s Sandwich Shop got the boot from the city.

Ward said San Clemente already bans signs in the public right-of-way. Her addition would add humans as a type of sign. The code already bans revolving signs and hand-held signs, which covers people twirling signs.

“The intention is that signs won’t be in the public right-of-way and compete with signs already approved for other businesses,” Ward said. It isn’t fair, she said, for mascots to roam the sidewalk competing with legally permitted signs on buildings.

Ward said the intent of the ban is narrow – not to infringe on free speech such as street-corner candidate signs at election time or public demonstrations.

Liberty Tax’s Yecke said she hopes the city will at least allow the mascots during tax season, like businesses can display banners, with a permit, for a limited period.

“I don’t think it fits every business,” she said. “We participate in city events. We feel it’s kind of fun to participate. Even in cities that allow (mascots), I’m not sure that we see hundreds of them out there. I don’t know how much proliferation they are concerned about.”

Yecke said she expects to be heard when the code comes before City Council. “We might be lobbying to what we call Save the Wave,” she said.

Contact the writer: fswegles@ocregister.com or 949-492-5127