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City aims to update bus bench ordinance
By Bobby Hart
Published:
Monday, February 3, 2003
Last Monday, during the St. Cloud City Council meeting, Council Vice President Mike Landy put his foot down on a long drawn out topic concerning the 2003 permits for city bus stop benches and shelters in St. Cloud.
A business in Duluth currently owns the benches and rents the advertisements to the community. In return, the city receives only 70 cents a month from the ads. A revenue that isn't fair to the community, according to Landy.
"I don't think that's appropriate," Landy said. "We will have an ordinance concerning that issue because that area near the street isn't owned by people, it's owned by the city. It's part of the road system even though it's not exactly a road but it's adjacent to it."
Landy has been bringing up the issue once a year for the last three years, and now with the help of the Metropolitan Transit Commission (the public entity that runs the buses), the City Council is looking for an ordinance that will allow the MTC to collect funds from the advertisements.
"This time I drew a line in the sand and said, 'Let's just get this done now,'" Landy said. "It's a small thing, but some of those small things add up to be big things and I also thought that (the city was) entitled to more rent really for the advertising."
MTC's Director of Travel, Tom Cruikshank worked with Landy to come up with a successful Transit Amenity Program to study cost and proper advertisements to come up with a conclusion that will give more back to the community. As of now it looks as if the MTC will be the future recipient of higher revenue.
"Even if the revenue doesn't go to the city itself and goes to the MTC, the community would be satisfied that it was getting something," Landy said.
City Council member Woody Bissett also had a great deal of interest in the subject, but said that the main objective should be pleasing the citizens of St. Cloud.
"We want to make the shelters and benches as comfortable as possible and place those items in a strategic location, but on the other side of the coin, if we could gain some revenue by some advertising, it is both pleasing to the MTC and the public," Bissett said.
Last May, MTC first presented the idea of placing advertisements on the benches and bus shelters to produce revenue. Cruikshank and Landy are trying to take the idea to the next level by amending an effective ordinance.
"The program that currently exists in the city, permitting them the benches within St. Cloud by ordinance, would require us to amend that ordinance and effectively try to turn the program over to the MTC," Cruikshank said. "The ordinance can provide us guidance for the advertising placed on those items and allow for us control of that advertising."
The MTC will have until June 1 to come up with a proper Transit Amenity Program, and at that point the City Council and MTC will discuss the proper ordinance.
