1200 signatures total from residents of Chapel Hill on petition to repeal poster ban

Statement to Chapel Hill Town Council, 10/16/02

Good evening, Mayor Foy and members of the Council.

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

I see this issue is one of the items before the Council at tonight's public hearing, so I wanted to come back before you and present another 200 signatures on this petition. This makes a total of 1,200 Chapel Hill residents who have signed, 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.

The ordinance that first prohibited signs or notices for advertising purposes from being placed on utility poles dates from April 7, 1925.

Maybe this ordinance made sense for Chapel Hill when it was still a small village back in 1925. It probably seemed like a progressive law, a way to keep local businesses from littering the town’s landscape with excessive commercial appeals. But there are important differences between the Chapel Hill of 1925 and today. In 2002, if you’re putting a flyer up on a telephone pole, more than likely, it’s advertising a concert, or it’s about a political issue, or you’re a small business, a locally owned business without a huge advertising budget. Local businesses like C.O. Copies, Back Door CD’s, Carolina Car Wash, Internationalist Books, and the Burrito Bunker use flyers all the time to attract customers.

These stores are trying every day to compete with faceless chain stores in our town owned by national corporations, the kind of economic competition that didn’t exist in Chapel Hill 77 years ago. I think the town needs to do all it can to encourage, not discourage locally owned businesses to stay open in Chapel Hill.

Obviously, even more disturbing is that you're subject to arrest if a police officer catches you in the act of posting a flyer. I don't think our town should be spending its limited resources criminalizing the simple act of its residents putting posters on telephone poles.

I know Duke Power would like to keep this ordinance as its now written, because the town is spending our tax dollars to keep their poles clean. I would think a utility like Duke Power would want to give something back to the community in which they operate by letting the citizens of Chapel Hill use the utility poles to post notices. They say the poles don't last as long if people put posters on them. What, are they going to fall over once they accumulate a critical mass of staples?

And the argument about how staples jeopardize the safety of linemen seems to be a red herring, because most linemen these days don't climb poles, they go up in cherrypickers, and if Duke Power is truly concerned about their workers' safety, they should be willing to spend the extra money to let them go up in cherrypickers if there's a problem with the poles.

I’d also briefly like to address the aesthetic argument against posters. If this ordinance is designed to improve the town’s appearance by keeping utility poles bare, then it’s accomplishing exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do.

Take a look at any one of the utility poles downtown located at major intersections. What looks better, a cold, barren pole littered with jagged, torn scraps of paper, or one covered with colorful, exciting posters representing the free exchange of ideas that’s so central to the very idea of what Chapel Hill is about? That’s obviously an aesthetic judgement call. But the reality is that when the town spends taxpayer money to tear down people’s posters every single day, the posters are going to look like eyesores. Look at the poles. They’re covered with staples and remnants of posters. Citizens put posters up on utility poles every day, and they’re going to keep doing it, unless there’s a cop on every corner ready to arrest them. So the poles are going to look like eyesores unless the Council revises this ordinance.

Right now the public works department spends taxpayer dollars to tear peoples’ posters down daily. Wouldn’t it make more sense and save some money by having them do it just a little less often, maybe once a week, like they clear the town-owned kiosks on Sunday mornings. That way, people’s posters would have a chance to be seen without being immediately torn down, and the poles would look more aesthetically pleasing all week long. But again, that’s just my aesthetic judgement call. The most important thing is for the town to start placing value on its citizens being able to freely express ourselves.

Some people might say that by virtue of the town maintaining several kiosks in the downtown area where flyers can legally be posted, the town has every right to declare utility poles off limits to public posting. Over the summer, more kiosks have been constructed as part of the town's Streetscepe improvement program. That’s great, more kiosks are certainly welcome. But the utility poles exist, they’re not being used for anything else, they’re a natural venue for free speech. More kiosks cost more money, but it would actually cost the town less money to clear the utility poles weekly instead of daily if this ordinance is revised.

Besides, I think the Council needs to take a hard look at whether speech in town is truly free if it’s restricted to only certain little areas. On any given day in Chapel Hill, people are on the move, going about their daily lives, and not necessarily stopping by the town-owned poster kiosks for their daily appointment with free speech. Bottom line, that’s why people put flyers on utility poles, because it’s where their messages have a realistic chance of being seen and heard.

I know this Council has the town's best interests at heart, and when deciding this issue, I know the Council will consider what is the right thing to do, the progressive thing to do, the Chapel Hill thing to do. Thank you.