Parking meters may soon don ads

Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2002 | 10:54 a.m.

Parking meters in Las Vegas could advertise something more than how much time you have left before being subject to a ticket.

Under a proposal set to go before the Las Vegas City Council, city parking meters could become mini-billboards.

The council will vote Wednesday whether to approve a contract with a Las Vegas ad company owner which is willing to pay the city $6 per parking meter per month to post small, three-sided advertising placards on the pole directly under the coin-swallowing devices.

The proposed contract with Embeck Media, owned by Las Vegan Scott Allan, initially would allow the boards on the 1,200 meters on the streets but not in metered lots or garages.

City officials said they carefully weighed the arguments of using taxpayer-funded property for a private venture and, in the end, decided that the potential $40,000 to $100,000 a year in extra revenues for city coffers is worth what they are calling a 16-month "trial period" project.

"It is always a delicate balancing act being the good stewards of the public trust but also making sure we are financially prudent," Las Vegas Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell said. "What it boils down to is that such off-premise advertising is allowed and we are doing something new and different."

If approved, Allan says he hopes to have the ad modules up and running by February or early March.

Councilman Gary Reese said this morning he likes the idea of the city generating revenue from billboards -- Clark County makes good money from billboard rents near McCarran International Airport, he notes -- but he isn't sure signs on meters is the way to do it.

"I hate clutter, and my concern is you have parking meters every few feet," he said. "What will that look like?"

A second concern is whether the company will keep the signs looking nice.

"Will they do that? What type of provision do we have to make sure they are taken care of?" he said.

The contract is part of the consent agenda -- items considered routine and thus voted on as a group without discussion by the council members.

"We were given direction by the City Council to follow through on this potential partnership and we have informed the council of our progress throughout," Fretwell said. "It is a simple, routine contract."

Allan said he got the idea for the modules from similar ad boards he saw while visiting New York. Along with his wife, Karen Ross Allan, they developed a plan to offer the city.

"We eventually will want to put the ads on the meters in the parking garage, but for now we would be happy with just the meters on the streets," Allan said. "They will attract both passing drivers and pedestrians.

"There will be no adult industry advertising. We will try to get ads from attorneys, restaurants, hotels, cell phone companies, businesses at Neonopolis. Our goal is to help companies downtown bring their messages to the streets of Las Vegas."

If the city decides to put signs on parking meters, it won't be able to decide which types of businesses can advertise on them, Allen Lichtenstein, an attorney for the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said.

The courts have held that advertising on public property cannot discriminate against certain types of businesses if a government takes business ads.

The city could decline to take political advertising, but Lichtenstein said the city could not pick and choose among a certain type of advertisements, such as ads from business.

"Practically speaking, that means gentlemen's clubs and outcall services ... cannot be discriminated against," Lichtenstein said. "The adult industry has as much right as any other business to advertise."

The ACLU will have someone at the council meeting to raise that issue, Lichtenstein said.

Sun assistant Metro editor Jean Reid Norman contributed to this story.