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.

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.