New law OK’d on dispensers for publications

Updated rules should make it easier for the city to maintain and regulate Wai­kiki publication dispensing racks and their enclosures.

Bill 67 (2013) was approved 9-0 by the Hono­lulu City Council on Wednesday and signed into law Thursday by Mayor Kirk Caldwell.

Customer Services Director Sheri Kaji­wara said that no changes had been made to the law regulating the racks in more than a decade.

The new law will:

» Give the customer services director the ability to adjust the location of the racks and enclosures, and the number of spaces, based on demand as needed. A publication dispensing rack enclosure could be removed or replaced with a smaller enclosure if more than half of the spaces in an enclosure remain unallocated after two successive bidding periods. Likewise, the director could add racks or increase the spaces in racks as demand warrants.

» Increase the fee publishers pay for each rack to $444 for each three-year permit, which comes out to $148 a year, up from the current $108 for three years, or $36 a year. To help ease the impact of the increase, publishers would be able to pay in three installments, once each year, rather than all at once.

As is the case in other heavily trafficked tourist destinations, Kala­kaua and Kuhio avenues are dotted with racks featuring visitor-oriented magazines and brochures as well as daily newspapers and other more general interest publications. There are about 90 locations in Wai­kiki.

The city began regulating publication racks in the Wai­kiki Special District more than a decade ago to curb street hawking of fliers and pamphlets, and to establish the areas where publications could be placed, city officials said. The city also has the responsibility of creating a uniform series of racks and enclosures, largely for aesthetic reasons, and to distribute the spaces by lottery.

Councilman Stanley Chang, who represents Wai­kiki and East Hono­lulu, introduced the bill on behalf of the Department of Customer Services to give the agency more flexibility and additional funding to regulate and maintain the racks.

The publication racks "provide a key service to our visitor industry," Chang said. "It promotes business, it creates jobs and provides an important service to our visitors."

Kajiwara said the increased fee allows the city to recoup more of the cost of cleaning, maintaining, servicing and, when necessary, replacing the racks. The $444-per-triennium amount was calculated based on city figures showing it spent $677,296 every three years to administer and maintain the program’s 1,534 spaces, which comes out to $441.52 for each space.

The new law allows the city to adjust the fees as necessary to make the program self-sufficient.

Rick Egged, president of the Wai­kiki Improvement Association, testified at Wednesday’s Council meeting in favor of the bill, including the fee increase.

"This way, the program will have the funds to not only administer the paperwork side of things, but also to handle the maintenance, repair and replacement of old publication racks," he said.

Publishers are mixed on the changes.

David Williams, vice president of circulation for the Hono­lulu Star-Advertiser, said the newspaper overall supports the ordinance.

"It gives the city the resources to improve the condition and maintenance of the publication dispensing racks while sustaining the opportunity for publishers to provide valuable information for visitors and residents," he said.

Oahu Publications, parent company of the Star-Advertiser, also enters the lottery for several visitor-oriented publications it produces.

Kuakini Hind, publisher of the visitor magazine Wai­kiki Menus, said the fee increase is too high to absorb at once. The new ordinance also does not address a loophole that allows a publisher to circumvent the one-rack, one-publication limit by simply stapling a different cover onto a periodical that otherwise contains the same material, he said.

Kajiwara said she will work with publishers during rule-making to address the duplicate-publication loophole raised by Hind.

Caldwell signed the bill promptly to allow Kaji­wara’s department time to prepare for a new lottery for three-year permits in May since the current permits are slated to expire soon, city spokes­man Jesse Broder Van Dyke said.