Firms Will Fight Anaheim Plan to Remove Bus Benches

Bus bench owners tonight are expected to battle a city proposal to remove all benches from the city and replace them with graffiti- and advertising-free models.

The problem, city officials say, is that while the city has issued permits to three companies for a total of 535 benches, some 2,000 have sprung up on the city’s sidewalks, many broken and covered with graffiti.

The ordinance being considered tonight by the City Council would require bus bench companies to remove their property from the city beginning April 1. The benches would be replaced by 400 graffiti-resistant backless benches donated to the city by Gannett Transit, which also has an exclusive contract with the city to operate 120 bus shelters. Gannett is currently negotiating with the city to add an unspecified number of bus shelters.

But bus bench owners say that arrangement will drive them, Gannett’s competitors, out of the city. They are particularly upset that the city did not notify them of the proposed ordinance and that they are not being allowed to bid for the new bus shelter contract.

“I’m sure (city officials) already have this deal put together and they don’t want the council to hear the opposing point of view,” said Arlan Renfro, president of Coast United Advertising, which has 450 to 500 licensed benches in the city.

“What they are trying to do is exclude (Gannett’s) competition,” he said.

William Ripp, a Gannett vice president, said the city contacted his company and asked it to provide the benches.

“We were contacted by the city about its concern over the proliferation of unlicensed bus benches,” Ripp said. He said that Gannett doesn’t care whether the benches are eliminated but that “if the city has that concern, we would like to help it solve the problem.”

While the benches and shelters provide seating and cover for those awaiting buses, they are really a medium for selling advertising. Depending on the location, a bench costs an advertiser $360 to $600 per year, while Gannett’s shelters cost an advertiser $2,400 to $7,200 per year, according to Gannett and the bench companies.

Because of the difference, benches attract small local advertisers, while shelter ads are usually taken out by large national firms, and the bench and shelter owners rarely compete for the same accounts. Where they do compete, both sides admit, is for the attention of passing drivers.

“If the benches are eliminated, Gannett’s advertisers won’t have to compete for attention with our advertisers,” Renfro said. “Gannett will be able to charge more.”

Ripp said that is not the case.

John Lower, Anaheim’s traffic and transportation manager, said the city wants to replace the existing benches because many of them “are unlicensed and in a state of disrepair.”

The bench owners pay the city a minimum of $6 annually per bench, while Gannett pays a minimum of $768 annually per shelter. The city receives about $92,000 annually from Gannett and about $4,500 a year from the bench firms.

But William Sell, the city’s treasury manager, said that Coast United has not paid the city its $3,000-per-year licensing fee in the last two years.

“That’s one of our biggest problems--getting these people to pay their fees,” Sell said. “We would just go and confiscate their benches, but it would cost us more than what we are owed.”

Renfro said the city has not sent him a bill since 1991.

“Part of the responsibility for that is on us--we should have caught that,” Renfro said. “But we would have paid the bills if we had received them.”

He said that if there are 1,500 unlicensed benches in Anaheim, as officials report, “then obviously (the city) has not done a good job of policing its own house.”