ANAHEIM : City Delays Decision on Bus Bench Ban

The City Council on Tuesday postponed action on an ordinance to ban privately owned bus benches from the city amid complaints that it would be giving the owner of the city’s bus shelter a monopoly on curbside advertising.

The council had been asked to consider the ban by the city’s Public Works Department, which said it has been concerned about the proliferation of unlicensed, broken and graffiti-covered benches throughout the city.

There are about 2,000 of the advertising-laden benches in the city, but it has issued licenses for only 535, officials said.

But the bench companies and Councilman Fred Hunter said Tuesday that the actual beneficiary of the removal would be the bench companies’ competitor, Gannett Transit, which has an exclusive contract with the city to operate 120 bus shelters. The company has agreed to donate 400 graffiti-resistant, advertising-free, backless benches to the city to replace those that are removed. Gannett Transit is a division of Gannett Co. Inc., one of the nation’s largest media conglomerates.

“It sounds like quite a deal” for Gannett, Hunter said. “We’ll give you 400 benches and you get rid of our competition.”

Gannett has said it is only donating the replacement benches because the city asked it to, and said it had no input into the city’s decision. The company did not send a representative to Tuesday’s meeting.

“I don’t believe Gannett would donate anything out of the goodness of its heart,” said Arlan Renfro, president of Coast United Advertising, which is the largest bench company in the city with licenses for 490 benches.

Depending on the bench locations, their owners have been charging between $360 and $600 annually per seat to their advertisers, which are primarily small, local firms. Gannett charges advertisers--primarily large, national companies--between $2,400 and $7,200 annually.

“If we get rid of the benches, all we’ll see in the city is ads for Marlboro and Dewar’s Scotch,” Hunter said. “They’ll be the only people who could afford to advertise.”

The city receives a minimum permit fee of $6 per bench for the use of its sidewalks, earning about $4,500 annually from the bench companies. Gannett pays the city a licensing fee of more than $92,000 annually.

In other action, the council also unanimously agreed that the city should join Garden Grove, Stanton and Los Alamitos in an alliance of North County cities that want to build a commercial airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station after its scheduled closure in 1999.

By joining the Orange County Regional Airport Authority, Anaheim officials are pushing their view that the county needs a second commercial airport and that El Toro should be the site. A majority of South County cities oppose that proposal, saying an airport would create noise and traffic nightmares in the area.

Anaheim officials say they believe an airport on the site would boost the county’s tourism industry and help businesses that rely on air freight to transport goods. Because of noise restrictions, John Wayne Airport bans cargo flights and has strict limits on the hours it can operate.