Newspaper box regulation stalls

A wide-ranging proposal to regulate newspaper boxes has stalled as officials ponder the First Amendment implications of its provisions.
City attorney Dale Clift said that while it's legal to impose rules on the placement of the boxes, the city has to be able to show it has "a very compelling reason" for each of the rules it imposes.
What that means, officials said, is that they can set standards to make sure boxes don't block sidewalks, block the line of sight for drivers and other steps that clearly protect public safety.
But requiring newspaper box owners to carry high-value insurance, follow municipal dictates about the color or shape of boxes and the like are at the very least problematic, officials said.
City Councilor Craig Minor, who heads the Ordinance Committee, said the entire issue needs further review before his panel can move ahead with a new statute.
Ed Gunderson, the publisher of The Bristol Press, told the committee this week that he understands its concerns about the proliferating number of poorly maintained boxes for free publications that have been popping up in recent years.
But, he said, rules aimed at clamping down on shoddy box owners shouldn't hinder the operations of newspapers such as the Press or The Hartford Courant, which take care in making sure their boxes are in good shape.
"We're maintaining them daily," Gunderson said, because the paper has a direct interest in selling copies from every box.
Minor said that a voluntary system that Stamford has used for years with the agreement of newspapers circulating there might be worth exploring.
Officials initially thought of targeting only the many neglected free newspaper boxes, which typically distribute real estate and dating advertisements.
But in exploring the law, they found they could not comply with constitutional provisions protecting a free press unless any new local ordinance was "content neutral," essentially preventing the city from treating the boxes of a dating monthly any differently than it would those hawking The Wall Street Journal.
Clift said that some of the provisions in the initial draft legislation that governed insurance, "the look and feel" of boxes and other matters are "somewhat suspect" under the law and may well need to be overhauled.
Gunderson said he would work with the city to try to come up with a statute that protected both the public and the press.
Clift said that whenever a new draft ordinance is ready for review, there probably ought to be another public hearing to see what people have to say about its terms.
Minor said that holding another hearing would be "a good idea."
What that means is that it's unlikely a new law could be finished before mid-July and it may well take many more months.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Newspaper boxes may be regulated by city

What started as an effort to remove abandoned, trashy news boxes from downtown streets is on its way to becoming a complex new system of regulation by City Hall.
The Ordinance Committee is reviewing a proposed statute that would establish rules for placing newspaper boxes, establish insurance requirements for anyone putting out a box, require $12-per-box fees and more.
Because of First Amendment concerns, “we had to tread lightly” in drafting the proposed law, said Dale Clift, an assistant city attorney.
Clift said that the suggested change originally focused on the many free newspaper boxes – which typically distribute real estate and dating advertisements – that have been neglected.
But officials found they could not comply with constitutional provisions unless a local ordinance is “content neutral,” which essentially means the city can’t treat the boxes of a dating monthly any different than it would those hawking The Wall Street Journal.
Clift said that the regulations aim to make it easier for pedestrians to use sidewalks and for drivers to park their cars safely.
If the new ordinance is approved, it would be against the law in Bristol to put a newspaper box on public property unless the Public Works Department issues a permit for it.
The permits would give the green light to put a box at a specific spot, assuming that the company seeking to have the box has a mandated $1 million insurance policy in place for its boxes, officials said.
The rules establish standards for the installation and maintenance of newspaper boxes. Clift said some of them today are “kind of shabby.”
After City Planner Alan Weiner raised some doubts about provisions in the draft this month, city councilors opted to postpone action until they could review it further.
Weiner said he wasn’t sure that a section regulating the color scheme of boxes was proper. He said that some papers have specific color combinations that they use regularly to establish their brand identity.
If the city’s rules didn’t allow those colors, Weiner said, there could be a challenge.
In addition, he said that a provision barring boxes near “unmarked crosswalks” doesn’t make sense because he doesn’t know what an unmarked crosswalk is.
The draft ordinance also refers to commercial districts, which don’t even exist in Bristol’s land use regulation scheme.
But aside from some particulars that need revision, Weiner said, “the main concept is certainly a good one.”
The Ordinance Committee plans to take up the issue again at the end of March.
The soonest it could go before the City Council for a vote is in April.
To see the full PDF text of the proposed law, click here.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Read proposed laws for yourself

I'm not sure why the city itself doesn't do this, but I've uploaded the drafts of three of the proposed statutes that the Ordinance Committee recommended the City Council adopt next month.
Here they are, in PDF form:

Combining the blight and code enforcement committees (please note that the final section, 5-57, remains in committee while councilors reconsider its language; the rest of it, however, is headed to the council for final approval)

Barring convicted child sex offenders from parks and schools

Cracking down on wayward shopping carts

And here's the text of a proposed legal change that's still under consideration by the Ordinance Committee, which seeks to regulate newspaper boxes:

Newspaper box regulation

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Ordinance panel decisions

Take a look at "The Stray Shopping Cart Program," which treats escaped shopping carts as art rather than blight, an idea not likely to catch on in Bristol, for understandable reasons.

I'll have more on some of this in the coming days, but here's a quick update on what the city's Ordinance Committee decided at tonight's meeting:
1. To recommend the City Council approve a new law that would bar child sex offenders from city parks and schools.
2. To urge the City Council to set a hearing date next month for a proposal that would combine the Blight and Code Enforcement committees.
3. To support a new law that would make it possible to offer retirees in the city's main retirement fund a one-time cost-of-living adjustment. This still needs City Council approval and the numbers have yet to be chosen.
4. To back Mayor Art Ward's call to shift the starting time for regular City Council sessions to 7 p.m., a half hour earlier than they currently begin.
5. To suggest that city councilors enact a new law that would crack down on shopping carts taken from store property.
6. To delay action on a proposal to regulate newspaper boxes for at least another month to consider possible changes to the statute wording.
I plan to put copies of the relevant proposals online here sometime soon. And I'll explain more about the decisions, too, when there's time to write up what happened.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com