COUNTYWIDE : Supervisors OK Ads on County Property
The Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a program that will sell advertising space on benches, garbage cans and other county-owned property to private businesses as a new means of generating revenue.
County officials had no estimates of money that the county could make from the experiment, borrowed from a Los Angeles County program that nets more than $1 million a year.
The Ventura County Parks and Harbor Commission will administer the program in its first six months and report back to the board, said General Services Agency Director Peter S. Pedroff.
The ads will be limited to the advertisers’ name and product identification, Pedroff said. The county will not accept ads for tobacco products or alcohol.
In the next six months, beach-goers could find plugs for soft drinks, swimsuits or restaurants on lifeguard stands or beach trash cans, Pedroff said. Other likely spots for ads to pop up are campsites, picnic tables and special use vehicles on the beaches, he said.
Supervisor Maria VanderKolk called the program a “real creative new revenue source. We are all very excited about this,” she said.
Although the supervisors voted unanimously for the advertising program, several expressed reservations about cluttering the county’s parks and beaches with ads.
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