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News Hole
City of
North Miami subverts its own code by removing SunPost
newspaper boxes without notification
By Angie Hargot
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Seized paper boxes were impounded at the North Miami
motor pool. Photo by Jorge Canale |
At
the corner of
135th Street and Biscayne Boulevard on Tuesday, there
was nothing but a vacant square where the little orange
box once stood, illustrating a SunPost-shaped
hole courtesy of the city of North Miami.
Last Wednesday, as SunPost reporters suffering
from deadline-driven psychosis bustled about the office
and prepared to bid farewell to departing 12-year
veteran Executive Editor Erik Bojnansky, Managing Editor
Rachael Lee Coleman received a disturbing call.
It was Miami Herald reporter Carli Teproff,
seeking comment. Teproff informed Coleman that the city
of North Miami (oddly, blocks from the house where
Bojnansky grew up) had removed the SunPost and
New Times’ news racks while enforcing a right-of-way
ordinance passed last year. By that time, 10 of the
SunPost’s 15
North Miami
boxes had been seized.
A shocked Coleman gathered the paper’s distribution team
to get to the bottom of the matter and then relayed her
surprise to Teproff. Less than an hour later, when staff
found no evidence of notification that the boxes would
be removed, Coleman called Teproff.
“We received no notification from the city of
North Miami,” Coleman told her by phone, adding that the
SunPost had received an e-mail from the city
confirming that fact. The Herald did not report
that information.
According to city documents, the City Commission
unanimously passed an ordinance on second reading Sept.
11 amending the city’s code to regulate news racks. The
new code regulates the position, appearance and
uniformity of the boxes in the city, and includes
enforcement procedures for nonconforming racks.
“What inspired the ordinance is the aesthetic of our
streets, especially the downtown area,” city spokeswoman
Pam Soloman said. “A lot of them were rusted; they ended
up being garbage cans.” Soloman said much of the impetus
for the ordinance came from vocal business owners on the
commercial thoroughfares of
125th Street, Northwest
Seventh Avenue,
Biscayne Boulevard and West Dixie Highway. She said the
city also received feedback from its Business
Development Board and various neighborhood associations.
Since Teproff attended a city meeting last week, in
which commissioners discussed the ordinance, she was
able to alert her distribution department that their
boxes were to be removed the next morning. The
department called the city, Soloman said, so even though
the Herald’s yellow boxes also were noncompliant,
they were allowed to stay.
“They were in compliance,” Soloman said. “Not full
compliance. As long as they were in communication that
they were intending to comply,” the boxes could remain,
she said, adding that the intention in removing the
boxes was only to achieve visual uniformity and
cleanliness.
Still more irony: No. 9 in a list of 10 purposes and
criteria for the new code that ostensibly authorized the
removal of the boxes reads “maintain and preserve
freedom of the press.”
Although, the city removed the boxes because of the new
code,
City Attorney Lynn Whitfield said Tuesday that the
ordinance requiring written notification to publishers
did not yet take effect and so did not apply to existing
news racks since they had 30 days after the public
notice of the September meeting to comply.
“In the event that the City Manager or his/her designee
determines that a publishing entity is not in compliance
with this chapter,” the new code reads, “a letter or
written statement shall promptly be provided to the
publishing entity specifying the reasons for
noncompliance.” The offending publishers would then have
30 days to comply or it would result in the revocation
of the permit issued.
Whitfield told the Herald she sent two letters to
newspaper vendors. The SunPost received no
warning, however.
A public records request sent to the City Clerk’s office
Wednesday requesting the notification that the boxes
would be removed yielded only a scanned copy of the
public meeting notice that ran in the Sept. 9 issue of
the Herald.
Telephone communications resulted in some confusion, the
assertions that a contract needed to be renegotiated,
that letters were in fact sent to the affected
publishers and that the boxes were to be destroyed
within a matter of days. Then an e-mail sent to
SunPost Assistant to the Publisher
John Fennessey from Public Works Director Mark Collins
confirmed that the paper was never notified.
“The City Attorney’s office sent out notices as a
courtesy to as many vendors as we could identify at the
time,” Collins wrote in the e-mail. “Unfortunately the
Miami SunPost was not identified as a vendor and you
were never sent a courtesy notice.” The e-mail went on
to inform the SunPost that the news racks were
being held at the city’s motor pool at
1855 N.E. 143rd St.
and were ready for pickup.
Boxes have to be repainted with an unremarkable
Sherwin-Williams color called “Kilim Beige” at a cost of
about $25 per box. According to Soloman, the color was
chosen to match the color of the city’s bus benches. The
individual media entities will then have to reinstall
them.
The New Times also had its boxes removed and
impounded. In the Herald story,
Miami New Times
editor Chuck Strouse likened the razing of boxes to “an
abridgement of freedom of press.”
While one online comment to that story from an anonymous
citizen opposed Strouse’s assertion and praised the
effort to beautify the city, another may have hit the
electronic bull’s-eye.
“Where are these public notices posted online?” it
reads. “Things are changing in this electronic world.
Microsoft and Google understand this. Get with the times
... the ‘clouds’ are now the limit!” Although they’re
not the easiest features to find on the Web site, the
city does post its commission meeting agendas online.
However, the comment does illustrate another point: A
simple e-mail would have sufficed, according to
Fennessey.
“All of our [contact] information is in the masthead of
the paper, including e-mail addresses and fax numbers,”
Fennessey said. “We’re not hard to find; if they found
the paper [boxes], they could find the rest of us.”
Soloman said she has not heard any outrage about the
missing boxes. She has heard some positive feedback from
business owners, however, admitting that any resulting
indignation would be hard to detect — many of the boxes,
and readers, were found at bus stops, she said.
Indeed, while crafting this very story, it’s hard not to
be struck by the most paradoxical element to the tale:
The very citizens that this information would most
benefit will now have a significantly reduced chance of
ever seeing it.
Comments? E-mail
angie@miamisunpost.com |
