After realizing that the town had used an outdated policy to review town bus ads for more than a year, the Chapel Hill Town Council suspended its bus advertising policy Wednesday until further notice.
The town used a draft policy since June 2011 that allowed religious, political and social issue advertising — a fundamental deviation from the approved policy that the town should have been enforcing.
Chapel Hill Transit Director Steve Spade noticed the error when he was preparing information for an upcoming council meeting. He notified the council on Wednesday.
After an unexpected proposal from Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt at Wednesday night’s meeting, the council unanimously agreed that freezing the current ad approval process was the best solution until there could be a larger community discussion.
Current bus ad will continue to run until their contracts expire, but no new ads will be accepted until the council creates a new policy — which Kleinschmidt hopes will be soon.
“We had to implement the new policy immediately, so I suggested we eliminate ads entirely until we get a better policy in place,” Kleinschmidt said.
“We will be implementing policy soon so we can get back to business, and once we start again, we will have a good business.”
If the council had not suspended advertising, the town would have to enforce the approved bus ad policy, which would have disallowed a controversial ad currently running on Chapel Hill Transit buses.
The ad, paid for by the Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill, sparked heated debate in the community about the ethics of political advertising on public transportation.
