Rudman's city: Sign language designed to survive being knocked around by users

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Frangible. Now there's a word I suspect has never graced these pages before. So roll it around on the tip of the tongue and try it out loud. Because, unless you plan to erect a sign alongside a state highway, the chances are you will never see it again.

It means brittle or easily broken, according to my trusty internet dictionary. How Transit New Zealand stumbled across it I have no idea. Perhaps it subscribes to that learn-an-obscure-new-word-a-day website I mentioned a week or so back.

Anyway, there it was in Transit's on-line leaflet outlining the technical requirements for a motorway sign: "The sign shall be frangible (meaning it will give way on significant impact by a vehicle) when located within the state highway reserve".

Just how frangible the sign should be is not stated. Presumably more frangible than an out-of-control car, but sturdy enough not to topple over at the mere susurration of a passing pantechnicon.

By now you will be asking, among other things, why I might be thinking of erecting a sign alongside a motorway. Rest assured, despite the challenge of a recent letter writer, I have no intention of standing in the regional council byelection. It's just that I was following up an earlier story on Manukau City's new and controversial Advertising and Sponsorship Policy, and found the city referring potential sign erectors to Transit's document.

In so doing, Manukau City was warning that "along certain major arterial roads in Manukau City" Transit's signage regulations held sway. The regulations about frangibility and the like. So I thought I'd better check it out.

You might recall how last September, Manukau City councillors backed Mayor Sir Barry Curtis' controversial scheme to turn the city into a giant sandwich board to raise $1.6 million a year income for his pet project, Trust Manukau.

Trust Manukau is to be a community chest type charity, set up to finance social and community development needs in the city.

The proposal was to sell off 25 to 30 billboard sites on council parks and properties and to sign up to five naming rights contracts and a similar number of facility sponsorship deals. Over the following two years, more sites would be released.

Until then, billboard-free Manukau City had been a beacon of hope in a region increasingly blighted by this sort of visual pollution. I hoped the newly elected would decide that when it came to the environment, some things were not for sale, and kill Sir Barry's proposal. No such luck.

There were some changes, though, when the policy was finalised just before Christmas. The biggest backdown was over the proposal to put advertising billboards on public parks and reserves. As much as I would have liked to have reported that they had seen the light, environmentally speaking, I cannot.

Sir Barry says the council heard "the clear message ... about visual pollution" expressed in the public submissions and changed accordingly.

However, the main reason they dropped the plans for commercial signage in parks was that protesters - and then officials - agreed that to have erected such would have been to break the law protecting open spaces.

This was a considerable blow to the fund-raising dreams. In the September 2001 draft policy it was recorded that "considerable financial benefit for various user groups" would be gained by advertising and sponsorship activities in public parks and reserves.

The proposals were further watered down with the decision not to sell naming rights to memorial, heritage or historical sites or to buildings already named after prominent citizens.

However, that still leaves a lot of council buildings and roadside sites to choose from.

The opponents are now lining up to battle Trust Manukau's quest for hoarding sites. Recently the trust submitted applications for eight sites.

Naturally enough, it would prefer the applications to be heard on a non-notified basis to avoid a drawn-out public hearing scrap. However, opponents such as councillor Ken Yee, and Michael Wood, founder of the recently formed Manukau Is Not For Sale Association, disagree.

Normally, officials have the delegated authority to decide without reference to the relevant committee on such an application. But because of the sensitivity of this issue, it has been decided that city services officials will report back each application separately to the hearings committee on March 5.

They will recommend whether the applications be on a notified basis - which allows public submissions - and whether the applications be dealt with by independent commissioners, the officials or the politicians.

It will be up to the committee to accept or reject these recommendations.

To me, a drawn-out public scrap is the only hope. But then I'm soft in the head enough to dream that in the midst of it all, Sir Barry and his supporters will look about their city and ask, "Do we really want to be responsible for adding to the visual blight?"

I was going to compare the proposals to placing commercial hoardings on the side of the Auckland Town Hall or the Civic Theatre. Then I thought better of it. The present cost-cutters in power could well see that as a good idea.