Fluorescent orange stickers reading "CONFISCATION NOTICE" are popping up on newspaper honor boxes throughout Center City. Publishers accuse the Department of Licenses & Inspections (L&I) of initiating an unannounced crackdown on graffitied receptacles.
"There's been times when boxes have disappeared and we've gotten notice, and times where they have disappeared and we've received no notice," says Don Pignolet, office manager at the Philadelphia Gay News. "What you'd expect from L&I? They're impossible to get to. It's even worse than the Parking Authority."
L&I argues that a little blight can prompt a vicious cycle of decline.
"We are citing people, but the idea of a crackdown is overblown," says L&I spokeswoman Maura Kennedy. "While our inspections of honor boxes are not part of a specific targeted effort, honor box owners need to be responsible for maintaining boxes in good working order."
Circulation managers say they try, but it's about as easy to keep an honor box graffiti-free as it is to keep heroin dealers off the corner of Kensington and Somerset. And there is no clear standard of when a box is vandalized enough to warrant removal: Is it one sticker? Two? Ten?
"They give you 30 days to remedy the problem, and I do it right away. But then they go out there in 60 days and it's already tagged up, so they take it," says Mark Burkert, circulation director at City Paper. "I discussed this with our competitor at Philadelphia Weekly. It's a losing battle on our part. It's just them charging us money."
Photo: Brian Howard
