Council keeps ban on utility pole flyers

Chapel Hill Herald
Friday November 15, 2002
BY RAY GRONBERG
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CHAPEL HILL - Despite the pleas of a Rosemary Street record store owner, the Town Council has decided to retain Chapel Hill's longtime ban on posting advertising flyers on utility poles.

A divided council voted 6-3 earlier this week to retain the ban. Members who favored retaining the ban said it's consistent with the town's desire to maintain a clean downtown.

"I'm looking for consistency," said Councilwoman Flicka Bateman, who noted that the next edition of Chapel Hill's land-use law might limit Duke Power's ability to install overhead utility wires.

Concern about aesthetics is driving that decision, so it makes no sense to "allow the cluttering of utility poles at eye level" at the same time, she said.

The three dissenters - Councilmen Ed Harrison, Mark Kleinschmidt and Bill Strom - wanted to repeal or significantly modify the ordinance.

Kleinschmidt and Strom argued that the presence of flyers on utility poles is a common feature of life in a college town.

"It boils down to a subjective aesthetic," Strom said. "A creosote-coated, pressure-treated piece of lumber with 9 million staples in it is aesthetically unappealing [too]."

The council opened debate on the flyer ban this spring, at the request of Erik Ose, the owner of Lost City Music & Video on West Rosemary Street.

Ose asked the council to consider repealing the ban after he received a ticket for attaching a flyer advertising a "banquet for global peace and justice" to a pole.

A police officer who saw Ose put up the flyer issued the ticket after the record store owner refused an order to take it down. The ticket eventually cost Ose $115.

Ose criticized the council's decision to retain the ban on flyers.

"Most people are flabbergasted to learn that this law exists to begin with," he said. "All we're asking is that they let people's posters stay up for a week at a time, which would save the town money, encourage low-cost marketing by locally owned businesses and grass-roots political expression, and preserve the sense of community that flyers and posters give our town. Would that be so terrible?"

Roughly 1,200 people signed a petition organized by Ose that favored repeal. But a key player - Duke Power - weighed in strongly against the proposal.

Duke officials argued that the heavy staples used to attach flyers cause wood to erode over time, and create safety hazards for workers who have to climb poles to maintain utility lines.

Duke, BellSouth and Time Warner Cable own most of the poles in town. The poles are private property, and some critics of the repeal proposal argued that it amounted to the legalization of trespassing.

Ose saw it differently. "I'd like to think that the voices and wishes of the community speak louder than a big corporation when it comes to deciding town issues," he said.

Meanwhile, Mayor Kevin Foy noted that the town is in the process of rendering the debate moot. It's already asked Duke to replace the wooden poles now in place along North Columbia Street and the 100 block of East Franklin Street with metal fixtures that jibe with the requirements of Chapel Hill's Streetscape program.

Monday's vote also ordered Town Manager Cal Horton and his staff to look for additional places to install the four-sided flier kiosks that are part of the Streetscape program.

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.