New Haven Independent

Posted by: on whalley | April 4, 2008 8:19 AM

Awww... leave the poor news racks alone. If by some mystical force all the trash were picked up around here I might lose the burning rage for this city and this state that fuels my daily search for housing and employment elsewhere.

I guess even without the trash all over the pages of these publications nobody reads flying through the air afloat on a Summer breeze there are still the the toothless drunks chasing me and shouting at me for money, there are still five $300K bus stops, there are still lunatics, addicts and psychos behind me and self-righteous elitist imbeciles in front of me trying to take my guns away and on and on and on...

I hate CT more this past week than I ever have before. I don't know if it's just the accumulation of B.S. in this state that's finally wearing me down or if it's the fact that until recently I was largely in the dark about how life is in other states.

Either way, I'm dumping my career, dumping my degrees and looking to take any job at all in a more "me friendly" state. Somebody ask Mr. Moore where my my country is, dude.

Let the trash pile up in New Haven. The cause has been lost going on 40 years now.

Posted by: jdavis | April 4, 2008 9:01 AM

people read those things? I thought they were blankets for the homeless.

Posted by: Walt | April 4, 2008 9:07 AM

About time!

Messy newspaper boxes detract from many area locations.

The Register even has one in front of our Church in a residential neighborhood.

Claims of "Free Press" and "unconstitutional"
arise whenever folks complain about their messes.

Sounds phony to me.

Posted by: Stephen H | April 4, 2008 10:05 AM

Lets try cleaning up crime first!!

Posted by: Gary Doyens | April 4, 2008 11:18 AM

With my knuckles dragging on the ground, it's amazing I can still type. But this related story puts this latest city priority in the proper piddling perspective:

An Iraqi friend of mine took an American WMD official to Baghdad several months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The streets were littered with the debris of bombed out buildings; garbage and trash were lying in the street. They stopped in a small shop that still had some ice cream which they ate standing in the doorway looking out on a wounded, rundown, and deeply broken city. When they finished their ice cream, the Iraqi threw his used cup and napkin in the street. The American looked around for a garbage can. My Iraqi friend just laughed and said when you clean up the street and the mess you made - you can worry about a garbage can.

Posted by: dylan | April 4, 2008 11:34 AM

Gary,

I hope that you are not comparing New Haven to Baghdad. I don't know if that would be more insulting to Bagdad (for equating the problems of their bloody war to a small, relatively peaceful American city) or New Haven (for equating our problems to that of a bloody war).

Surely you would suggest (and please, correct me if I am wrong) that cleaning up crime (and the perception of it - which is linked to clean streets, mind you) in our streets should be of greater priority. Of course that's true, but an initiative to improve the quality of the public right of way shouldn't get derailed in the name of that.

Posted by: Bill Saunders | April 4, 2008 12:14 PM

Well, the term Traffic & Parking CZAR does really seem to fit. I guess I was hoping for more of a GURU.

Posted by: Gary Doyens | April 4, 2008 3:21 PM

lol..here's more direct. New Haven has so many more important things to worry about than newspaper stands. I drive all over the city - one barely notices them. I see the city is concerned that they can or may block handicap parking. The real problem with handicap parking is that people who are not handicapped are using them.

If there is a newspaper stand blocking a parking place then why doesn't the city just call up the newspaper and ask them to move it a few feet? Do you want nicer newspaper stands in the downtown district, ask them to replace them.

But to charge a license fee and try to control newspaper stands across the whole city? If you add up all the newspaper boxes in the city - how much money would you collect? A pittance. Do you hire a newspaper box policeman?

We have issues of crime, the economy, anemic job growth, lack of opportunities, drop out rates, growing poverty, declining homeownership, foreclosures, business failures and more.

But we're going to spend valuable resources at staff level, BOA level and enforcement level worrying about newspaper boxes. It's like looking for a garbage can in Baghdad.

Posted by: nutmeg | April 4, 2008 4:35 PM

Gary,

Do you understand how government works? To have someone from the city individually call up newspapers (or advertisers) telling them to remove their box from a particular location (for whatever reason, no matter how worthwhile) would be arbitrary and capricious and could open up the city to a lawsuit (freedom of speech, takings). Putting in place a policy with standards gives the city some feet to stand on. Besides which, the city is giving away long-term leases on public real estate for nothing under the current situation. I thought government needed to be more business-like? Not to mention the litter created by or lack of maintenance of many boxes...

Posted by: Gary Doyens | April 4, 2008 4:59 PM

Nutmeg: No, I don't understand how government works. Please explain to this uninformed, knuckledragging spear chucker how this illustrious government of ours works - how some high priced city worker can't pick up a phone and call the publisher of a newspaper(pssst..you don't call advertisers), follow it with a simple letter or email telling them a location is blocking a handicap parking slot or how the city is trying to improve the area around the $300,000 heated bus shelters. Do tell.

Posted by: dylan | April 4, 2008 5:17 PM

Gary,

Differences of opinion on government accountability, newspaper stands, crime, economy, etc. aside, I don't particularly appreciate the sarcastic strategy of referring to yourself as a "knuckledragging spear chucker, " Nutmeg's condescension notwithstanding. I can only assume you're trying to highlight some sort of a racially motivated elitist conspiracy against you and would love an explanation of the purpose of that seemingly unnecessary of tone. Please, do tell.

Posted by: here we go again | April 5, 2008 12:36 AM

Its not that they block parking spaces its that they block the ramp on the corner of the block so people in wheel chairs cant get past/ up onto the sidewalk. Lets be honest though they look like crap. Ive just started picking them up and moveing them down the block from my building.

Also as I've said before all that matters in New Haven is downtown and just like the bus shelters making this change will help clean downtown up and attract more affluent people.

Posted by: John Tulin | April 5, 2008 1:16 PM

Regardless of tone or insinuations, Gary is right. Who would not agree that the location/type of newspaper boxes should be low on the list of our city's priorities? Let rank them all, where does this fall - not near the top.

With that said, it would be WONDERFUL to have orderly newspaper boxes, kiosks, heated bus stations downtown....it would be even MORE WONDERFUL if we also had low drop out rates, minimal shootings, decreasing poverty, more homeownership, etc. First things first.

Posted by: Walt | April 5, 2008 5:53 PM

Sounds like Central Manhattan,

When Giuliani made then follow up on the smaller problems, instead of using the Dinkins system of ignoring everything, things improved, so they say.

Maybe the same applies to New Haven.

Posted by: jersey mick | April 5, 2008 8:46 PM

Gary is right.

Also, do we really need a kiosk complete with TV screen and paid advertising?

These things will get trashed and look a lot worse than a couple of old free newspaper racks.

Somebody needs to leave us below average consumers alone!

Don't we have bigger issues?

Who's paying for this high tech cr$p?

Posted by: Chris Gray | April 6, 2008 8:01 AM

Yeah, I was going to say, it was a little weird reading the begging for a partner for touch-screen, street corner New Haven Independent access in one of these proposed kiosks. On the other hand, I recall when the Yale Co-op installed the first, in-store prototype for anything like such a kiosk in the area and, I have to say, it held an excitement and fascination that far exceeded how badly it worked.

Someone at Wallace Books, now defunct and discredited, was trying for a vision of the future amid all its corporate graft and corruption. I seem to recall sending Paul Bass an email from that kiosk in answer to a query he made about whether I had any evidence of my claim of being a 16-year old subject in Yale's infamous Milgram experiment. I confessed that I do not. Even my 92-year old mother has no recollection of sending me on that fateful job.

By the way, as a disabled crutch user, those cut-a-ways are useful to more than just the wheel-chair bound and much more important than the parking space. To paraphrase Geoff Fox, there is nothing more slippery than a pile of partly wet newspaper. That isn't limited to autumn, either.

Posted by: here we go again with paul | April 6, 2008 12:18 PM

paul is censoring my posts again. It is amazing. I wrote saying that they could use the coins stolen by all the defective new parking meters to pay the fines they would impose on the news companies for rack violations. No swear words, no personal attacks. I think it is interesting that I can protest censoring, paul gets to post my protest along with his response that my censored post contained things it didn't. Are you a news editor or a news tyrant?

You censured every post of mine critical of Ina Sulverman no matter how tempered the language. Frankly, I am about as sick of you paul as a reader can get. I think you have always fought deep-seeded biases in order to be acceptable as a journalist, I think you know it, and I think you're rude to people - I've seen it. I think you are a bit of a fake at bottom, because you can't be yourself and run a newspaper at the same time.

Posted by: Gary Doyens | April 6, 2008 10:38 PM

Dylan: I was referring to the post on the PILOT story in which some poster allegedly qoutes an alderman who referrs to people like me, who oppose wasteful, irrelevant and uncontrolled spending as cavemen.

Draw your own conclusions.

Posted by: bugupit | April 7, 2008 12:29 AM

What crap! Layoffs looming at City Hall, Mil rate poised like a powder keg to go sky high. And this is how time is being spent. Go pick out an armoir for yourself!

Posted by: not going to fly | April 9, 2008 11:43 AM

This news rack ordinance is NOT going to fly in its present form, if at all. It is rife with First Amendment problems.

IF you allow that the city can regulate the racks at all -- and courts differ on if and how much, but mostly allow some. Fighting that is a worthy cause, but let's say for this argument the city can impose some regulation.

But how?

News regulating ordinances have to be extremely carefully written.

$12 per location? We are talking prohibitive costs to small publishers. What costs does this reflect, because NO court is going to say the city can make a profit on this fee -- it will have to reflect some sort of cost the fee covers that the city is incurring. (It is worth a newspaper fighting it altogether - arguing that a fine for violations is all the city should be able to go for.)

City-designed and owned kiosks? Who decides which newspapers get a slot? What criteria? How many slots? Will the city run the kiosks? Will the city sell advertising on the kiosks and force the paper to accept these advertisers? Good luck getting a judge to agree to ANY of that. It will NEVER fly. City might be able to force design requirements on racks, but good luck going into the rack ownership business. A speck of revenue generating motive will kill any city news ordinances -- we are talking the First Amendment here.

Is the $25, three year fee for the "privilege" of distributing a newspaper in New Haven or for distributing them in racks? They can't legally charge for the "privilege" of simple distribution because it isn't a privilege, it is a right. The $25 for a RACK privilege on top of the $12 per is never going to fly either -- it is dripping with revenue generating motive and again seems to be charging a distribution "privilege" fee on top of maybe some kind of cost-covering fee of $12? Obviously this is a mess. The City can not insert itself there. I am surprised this ordinance was even unveiled and proposed in what reportedly is its current form. I can't understand how people in public employment can be so ignorant of basic civics.