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Council may allow banners to remain up across PCH
by Robb Fulcher
A plan to drape advertising banners across Pacific Coast Highway to raise funds for local non-profit organizations is to be studied by the Hermosa Beach City Council. The banners would be more-or-less permanent fixtures across the highway.
The council previously has rejected requests for long-term advertising banners across PCH to raise money for a proposed surf museum and for beautification efforts along PCH and Aviation Boulevard. The council has allowed only short-term banners, promoting specific events such as Fiesta Hermosa.
The matter resurfaced when the Hermosa Beach Education Foundation asked for a banner that would advertise Peyton Cramer Ford and other companies, who would in turn pay the foundation a total of about $30,000 a year for the privilege.
Councilwoman Kathy Dunbabin complained that the program could open the door to extensive use of public property for advertising by non-profits, and wondered what the council would say to other organizations asking for road banners.
"I don't see how we are going to say yes to one good cause and no to another," she said.
City Attorney Michael Jenkins said the council would tread on infirm legal ground unless its policy was fair to a variety of organizations.
"We can't narrow it down to one organization," Jenkins said.
In the end the council agreed to consider a policy that would allow non-profits to place banners across the highway.
"When the banners are up I can't see the peninsula when I drive down PCH," complained Mayor JR Reviczky, who voted along with the rest of a unanimous council to consider the matter. "I don't want to live there, but I want to be able to see it."
In other matters: Representatives of a communications company told the council of their plans to expand into the South Bay next year, hoping to woo residents away from their current cable TV providers.
"For the first time in two decades local cable companies will have competition, and I believe they have never had it in Hermosa Beach," said David Hankin, a vice president of RCN Corporation. "We're going to compete with them directly."
The three-year-old corporation also intends to offer local and long distance telephone service as well as high-speed Internet service, using fiber-optic lines. RCN, a public corporation on the NASDAQ exchange, currently serves areas of New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Chicago and Northern California.
Local competition between cable companies has been allowed for the past four years under the Federal Telecommunications Act.
In Southern California, RCN plans to offer service in densely populated areas of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, Hankin said.
RCN has signed agreements allowing the company to use utility conduits belonging to Southern California Edison, Pacific Bell Telephone and the Los Angeles County Department of Water and Power, and is "working with" GTE California for the same permission, he said.
Hankin, whose corporation plans to come before the Hermosa council for a franchise agreement, said RCN offers Northern California cable subscribers 85 to 90 "basic" TV channels for $31.95 a month without requiring a converter box. He cautioned, however, that RCN has not established prices in Southern California. ER