ANAHEIM : Council to Air Plan for Bus Bench Bids

Weeks after the city threatened to ban privately owned bus benches, the City Council tonight will consider a plan that will allow one bench company to keep its seats on city sidewalks.

Under the agreement, bench companies would submit bids for the right to keep their advertising-laden seats in place.

The company that agreed to pay the city the most money and keep its benches the cleanest would be allowed to stay put. Companies not chosen would have to remove their benches.

Three bench companies currently operate in Anaheim.

The Public Works Department has complained that many of the benches are unlicensed, broken and covered with graffiti.

Arlan Renfro, president of Coast United Advertising, which owns 92% of the benches in the city, said he is willing to go along with the proposal only because he does not want to see benches banned entirely.

“The city had been saying, ‘Let’s get rid of everything,’ but now they have moved to a more systematic approach,” Renfro said. “As a businessman, I would rather take my chances with the bidding process” than see benches banned entirely.

Currently, the companies pay the city a minimum annual fee of $6 per bench. They charge advertisers $360 to $600 a year per bench.

Public Works officials originally estimated that there were about 2,000 benches on city sidewalks--497 licensed and about 1,500 unlicensed. But an actual count done by the city in recent weeks shows there are 556 benches--497 licensed and 59 unlicensed.

The city says 64 of the benches have been vandalized by graffiti, 18 are at sites where there is no bus stop and about 300 contain no advertising.

Under the city’s original plan, privately owned bus benches would have been banned within a year.

They would have been replaced by 500 advertising-free, city-owned benches that would have been donated by Gannett Co. Inc., which owns the city’s 120 bus shelters.

Gannett sells advertising on the shelters for $3,600 to $6,000 a year. It pays the city a minimum annual fee of $768 per shelter.

Under the plan being considered by the council, Gannett would still have its bus-shelter advertising kiosks but would not provide the advertising-free benches.

The bench companies and some council members said that eliminating the privately owned benches would allow Gannett to monopolize curbside advertising within the city, and the council ordered city officials to re-examine the plan.

Gannett said it was not trying to eliminate its competition but was simply reacting to a request by the city to donate the benches.

Tonight’s meeting will start at 5 at City Hall, 200 S. Anaheim Blvd.