Rudman's city: Manukau billboard scheme is a giant step backwards

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Everyone's doing it these days, even those bastions of neutrality, the Holmes Show and TV3 News.

They put their hands out for commercial sponsorship.

Even key institutions of the state have not been immune, as a glance at the advertising on any community police car will confirm.

But with the demise of the giant neon advertising sign atop Auckland's main public hospital, I had hoped the tide was turning - as far as public bodies were concerned anyway. How naive.

Manukau City is planning to outdo all the past excesses put together, by selling off billboard sites and naming rights in and on parks, reserves and public buildings across the whole city.

KFC Manukau City, here we come.

By December next year the council plans to have sold 25 to 30 billboard sites on council parks and properties and signed up to five naming rights contracts and a similar number of facility sponsorship deals. Over the following two years more sites will be released.

The council is hoping for an annual yield of $1.6 million once all the signs are up.

I hasten to add the destination for the loot is a worthy one - Trust Manukau, a "community chest" set up to finance social and community development needs within the city.

But however good the outcome, it's hard to see it being worth the cost.

For those of us trying to rid Auckland City of the blight of outdoor advertising, Manukau City until now has been something of a beacon of hope. It has been a billboard-free zone.

The pending change in direction has come about following a search begun in August 1998 for ways of getting private-sector funding for community development.

In March last year a trust was set up to raise funds from the private sector "to assist the city in meeting its social objectives and enhancing the quality of community life".

Just how you enhance anything by plopping down great billboards in front of it, I don't know.

But city officials have tried to rationalise it.

In a report to the September meeting of the old council, officials unveiled a new advertising and sponsorship policy.

The city, it said, "holds a cautious stance in regard to advertising and sponsorship using council properties and programmes. Council is committed to upholding community values and it is imperative that such activity never compromises the visual amenity of the city nor the moral ground of the community.

"For this reason, a planned and controlled approach to advertising and sponsorship is required."

Now I would have thought one billboard alone in a park would have compromised the visual amenity of that part of the city, let alone 30 of them and rising.

As for morals, these are to be protected by banning pornography, tobacco and alcohol products, the sex industry, gaming and gambling.

I'm not sure what that leaves, but just in case, there's also to be a ban on signs that offend the principles of the Human Rights and Privacy Acts and on "other advertising which, in any way, may be offensive, insensitive or inappropriate to the values of the Manukau community".

You could argue, of course, that it is the signage itself, not the content, which is offensive, insensitive and inappropriate. In response, Manukau officials say they are dealing with such concerns.

In the material now being offered to residents as part of a consultative process, we're told that "realistic and effective criteria were developed to ensure that a balance was achieved between parks and reserves not being polluted by such material, and the considerable financial benefit for various user groups to be gained from such advertising and sponsorship activities".

That justification side-steps the overall detrimental effect on the community. No doubt "various user groups" with their hands out will be delighted with a grant for new uniforms or whatever.

I'm sure as a member of such a group I, too, would rationalise away the billboard in the corner of the park that was put there as pay-off.

But what of the effect on the wider community?

Not even in the bad old days when Auckland City was trying to put a price on everything did it travel down this road. And we're talking here of a council that seriously considered selling off some of the treasures of the city art gallery.

True, Auckland City pondered whether to sell advertising on its parking buildings. But last May, councillors wisely kicked for touch, forgoing the $300,000 income they could have reaped.

They came to the opinion that when it comes to the environment, some things are just not for sale.

Let's hope the new Manukau council will eventually reach the same conclusion.