Posts on poles may be allowed

The Chapel Hill News
June 26, 2002
News in Review
Page A2

By the end of the year, utility poles around Chapel Hill may be sporting legal flyers and posters.

On Monday, the Chapel Hill Town Council backed a request by Erik Ose, a local activist and businessman, to allow signs on utility poles, a practice that is now banned.

Duke Power opposed the change in policy, citing nails and staples for causing "a degradation of the integrity of the wood" and making it less safe for crews to climb the poles and repair lines.

Council member Pat Evans opposed the signs for safety reasons, as well as aesthetics.

"There will be signs that spring up addressing every major issue and commercial venture," Evans said. "Allowing all kinds of signs to be posted in all corners of the community is the wrong direction to take."

But the majority of the council disagreed.

"I don't think there is going to be a crisis of posting around town," council member Mark Kleinschmidt responded.

The council voted 6-3, with Evans, Jim Ward and Flicka Bateman dissenting, to ask the town attorney to bring back ideas on how to change the ordinance in the fall.

If the ordinance changes, Public Works staff members would take the signs down at regular intervals in much the way they clean up the town-owned kiosks.

1000 signatures from residents of Chapel Hill on petition to repeal poster ban

Statement to Chapel Hill Town Council, 6/24/02

Good evening, Mayor Foy and members of the Council.

My name is Erik Ose, and I first came before you a couple of months ago with a petition to allow the posting of notices on utility poles in Chapel Hill.

I see the Council is scheduled to discuss this issue tonight, so I wanted to come back before you and present another 100 signatures on this petition, in addition to the 900 I delivered to you last month. This makes a total of 1,000 Chapel Hill residents who have signed this petition, which hopefully demonstrates that however minor this issue might seem in the global scheme of things, it's still a local issue that a great number of town citizens care deeply about. It speaks directly to what kind of town we all want Chapel Hill to be.

In the couple of months since you first received this petition, the town has constructed three new kiosks on Franklin Street where postings are allowed. Numerous people have commented to me that they guess the construction of these kiosks represents the town's response to our petition. I've responded that I'm sure the kiosks were already scheduled to be built as part of the town's Streetscape improvements, and are unrelated to the timing of this petition. I certainly hope that the Council will not turn to these new kiosks as the only solution.

More kiosks are welcome, but they cost money that the town can ill afford at a time of widespread budget cuts. In contrast, telephone poles already exist, they're all over town, not just in the downtown area, and it would actually cost the town less instead of more to allow citizens to post notices on them, because now the Public Works Department spends tax dollars clearing the poles more often than they clear the kiosks. Clearing the poles once a week makes much more sense, would cost the town less, and give people's messages a chance to be seen and heard.

Bottom line, the town shouldn't be spending its limited resources criminalizing the simple act of its residents putting posters on telephone poles. Thank you.

PRESERVING COLLEGE TOWN FLAVOR: Handbills don't do anyone harm

Chapel Hill Herald
Saturday June 22, 2002
EDITORIAL
Page 4

"I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically."

So wrote Henry David Thoreau in his essay "Civil Disobedience," a manifesto exemplified by Chapel Hill music store owner Erik Ose.

Ose's act of defiance of a town ordinance, tacking up a handbill on a utility pole on Franklin Street, cost him a $115 fine, but it bought him a hearing:

The Chapel Hill Town Council is scheduled to revisit its prohibition of fliers on utility poles Monday.

In April, Ose posted a flier in front of his business, Lost City Music & Video on West Rosemary Street, advertising a "banquet for global peace and justice."

Perhaps because of Ose's willingness to bear the brunt of fiat upon his pocketbook rather than carp from the sidelines, Councilman Bill Strom put Ose's request to repeal the relevant section of the Town Code on the meeting agenda.

"I thought [Ose] made a good point," Strom said. "There are some unspoken things that make for community character."

Exactly.

Also, the good council members should consider how their longstanding neglect of enforcing the ordinance only underscores how superfluous it is to that character.

Much of what passes for community-building these days seems aimed at recovering what communities have in their folly done their best to obliterate, in this case, the sans souci charm of a college village.

One needs only visit The Streets at Southpoint mall in Durham to see how its designers have tried to reclaim the town's formerly similar ambience - with its faux streetscapes - that the last generation of city planners discarded.

To which the Chapel Hill Town Council can take the reasonable step of preserving the authentic item.

Handbills are simple and practical communication that harm no one and help cement the social contract.

To paraphrase a neo-Waldenite, Joni Mitchell, Chapel Hill should recognize what it's got before it's gone.

Council to debate lifting flyer ban: Music and video store owner was fined $115 for putting poster on utility pole

Chapel Hill Herald
Tuesday June 18, 2002
Page 1
By RAY GRONBERG

CHAPEL HILL - The fight's left him $115 poorer, but Erik Ose will at least have the satisfaction of seeing the Town Council debate the petition he filed seeking the repeal of a ban on stapling flyers to phone poles.

Council members are set to debate Ose's petition Monday, more than two weeks after Town Manager Cal Horton advised them to preserve the flyer ban.

Councilman Bill Strom stepped in last week to make sure the repeal request wasn't tabled without discussion.

"I thought [Ose] made a good point," Strom explained afterward. "There are some unspoken things that make for community character. It seems to me as if this is an area the town can come up with a way to compromise."

Ose - the owner of Lost City Music & Video - asked the town to repeal the ordinance after a police sergeant ticketed him April 4 for stapling a flyer to a pole.

The flyer advertised a "banquet for global peace and justice" that eventually raised about $2,500 for a variety of causes.

Chapel Hill has banned the posting of signs or leaflets on telephone and light poles for decades.

A Chapel Hill police officers saw Ose put up the flyer and called in his sergeant, Anthony Brooks, when the record-store owner refused an order to take it down. Brooks repeated the order and wrote the ticket when Ose again refused.

Ose branded the ordinance a violation of free speech and vowed to fight the ticket. But he made no headway with a judge when his case came up May 20. The judge found him guilty and fined him $25, plus $90 in court costs.

"The court felt that the way the ordinance was written, it was pretty clear I'd violated it," Ose said. "The police officer caught me in the act, and it was a pretty cut-and-dried case. But they didn't go into the free-speech implications."

Meanwhile, Horton and Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos were advising the council that the ordinance is on firm ground, legally speaking.

In the eyes of the court system, "Aesthetic values and other legitimate concerns related to public safety and littering are sufficient to support the town's current regulation," they said.

Horton added that those reasons were also good enough from a policy standpoint.

"We think that community appearance is important and that having these kinds of materials on utility poles throughout the downtown detracts from the appearance of downtown," he said.

Ose has countered by arguing that the flyer ban keeps small businesses and nonprofit groups without big advertising budgets from spreading their messages. Roughly 1,000 people have signed petitions supporting his request.

Opposition is coming from Duke Power, which owns most of the poles.

Strom said he'd prefer allowing postings, so long as the Public Works Department removes them at regular intervals.

A Public Works employee already strips flyers from poles and kiosks each week.

Horton said the kiosks already offer would-be posters a place to display their materials. The town is putting up new ones as part of its Streetscape program.

So far, the new kiosks have been well received. "They certainly are used, and I think their appearance is an improvement over the old wooden ones," Horton said.