Rudman's city: 'Enemy' scores direct hit in footpath wars

Just when I thought the war against downtown sandwich boards had ended in total victory, the enemy has scored a direct hit on campaign headquarters.

Somehow it has persuaded the Heart of the City organisation to reverse its total opposition to the boards and agree to allow boards in special circumstances.

Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney claims "there's no change in our position" but then admits the downtown business organisation has adopted what he calls "a more flexible position."

Under the new policy, a sandwich board will be permitted where a trader can demonstrate there are no alternatives.

Other "strict" criteria will also be involved. A licence fee will have to be paid and the permit displayed on the board.

Additionally, the trader will have to be on an upper level or not have a street frontage, and the footpath will have to be at least 3.1m wide.

Heart of the City will also ask for a deferment of the ban, which was to come into effect on January 1, until it can present its backslide request to the Hobson Community Board on February 20.

Let's hope the deferment request and the subsequent submissions get the heave-ho they deserve.

Poor old Mr Swney deserves our sympathy really. He's battled for more than 18 months to rid downtown Auckland of this pedestrian-blocking visual pollution.

In late October, he achieved a famous victory when the council declared the total ban from January 1. After a month's grace, it would seize any lingering boards.

No sooner was the decision announced than Queen St manufacturing jeweller Greg Jones was rushing about with petition forms and announcing the end of the world as he knew it.

His first-level Queen St business would collapse without his sandwich board, he told me. And, no, he had nowhere else to place his signage.

This was not actually true. At the entrance to the stairwell up to his premises are two large signs - one facing out into the street, the other along the wall of the stairwell - announcing his business.

Both stretch from the pavement to eye level and are very visible. On the footpath he has a sandwich board with a chalked "special."

Mr Jones and 46 others - mostly his allies - gave Mr Swney a hard time about the ban at a meeting this month. It's from this meeting that Heart of the City's new policy emerged.

Mr Jones is now claiming more than 250 businesses object to the removal of sandwich boards and "were never consulted prior to the ban."

If they weren't consulted it's their fault. I recall complaining at the time about the over-consultation that went on for 18 months - by Heart of the City and by council officials.

Mr Jones' behaviour underlines one of the difficulties associated with sandwich boards.

One of the currently unenforced regulations says there should be only one sandwich board every 10m of street frontage.

Yet both he and another jeweller, who shares his upstairs address, have individual boards out, alongside each other.

Mr Swney, in his old campaigning days, claimed that 61 per cent of the 589 inner-city boards he checked in one survey flouted the bylaws.

Why should we believe a licensing system will be any better? And why should the city be paying to operate such a system anyway?

I'm not sure where the deferment request has got to. Whoever has it, can I suggest you throw it straight into the little round filing cabinet alongside your desk?

That's where it, and every sandwich board, belongs.