ST. PETERS PLANS TO SELL AD SPACE ON TRASH TRUCKS

If The Experiment Is Successful, The City Will Expand The Ad Program To Its
Refuse Fleet Of More Than 40 Trucks.

St. Peters will soon give advertisers a new place to pitch their products
to the public: on the city's trash collection trucks.

In a month or so, city workers will affix signs proclaiming "This Space
Available for Rent" on the sides or rear of three trucks, to see if any
companies respond.

If the experiment is successful, the city will expand the ad program to its
refuse fleet of more than 40 trucks, officials say.

"We have a tremendous potential," Alderman Jerry Hollingsworth said, in
promoting the idea at a meeting of the Board of Aldermen on Thursday night.
"It would be seen by literally tens of thousands of people a day."

Mayor Tom Brown asked city staffers to launch the ad gambit on a trial basis.

"You could advertise anything from car dealers to (satellite) dish
companies to movies," he said. "One nice thing about it, we could change
that week to week."

While the Bi-State Development Agency and other public bus systems have
sold ads for decades, St. Peters' effort is unusual.

Gary Markenson, executive director of the Missouri Municipal League, said
he believes it's the first of its kind in the state.

There is some precedent elsewhere for city-owned billboards on wheels.

The police department in Springfield, Fla., got national news coverage
recently when it made a deal to sell corporate sponsorship logos to pay for
15 new police cruisers.

Brown, though, wants no part of that. "We have to maintain
professionalism," he said.

He added that it's unlikely his city would sell ads on cars used by other
city departments. "On cars it would be cluttered; on the rear of a big
truck is a totally different thing," he said.

The city also hopes to step up its efforts to get advertisers to buy space
on dasherboards at the ice rink at the city's Rec-Plex, where only five of
26 ad spaces now are filled. The city's residents could be asked to help out.

Brown said that staffers are working on a plan to give any city resident a
free one-year family pass to the Rec-Plex if they are responsible for
landing a confirmed sale of dasherboard advertising.

Also at the board meeting Thursday:

* Aldermen passed a bill to make it difficult to hold more than one garage
sale a month at a particular residence. Under the measure, residents
wanting to hold more must persuade a city commission to give them a
home-occupation license. Officials said the bill was designed to crack down
on people holding regular flea markets at their homes.

* After hearing from retailers and trade groups, city officials agreed to
modify their legislation to require merchants to keep certain cold and
allergy products behind the counter because they can also be used to
produce methamphetamine. The bill's goal is to limit shoplifting of the
products.

Under the revised proposal, only Sudafed-style products containing
pseudoephedrine would have to be kept behind the counter. Police agreed
with retailers and trade groups that those products are the ones most often
used in methamphetamine.

The original bill also had applied to a large number of other products
containing pseudoephedrine or ephedrine.

Officials also agreed to strike a provision that would have limited the
sale of such products to people 18 and older. And they will delete a
provision preventing customers from buying more than three packages of an
ephedrine product in a 48-hour period.

Retailer and trade group representatives had urged the Board of Aldermen to
reject the bill, citing the voluntary efforts already taken by many stores
to limit access and a new state law restricting the purchase of more than
three packages in a single transaction.

Brown then asked the retailers and trade spokesmen to talk over the subject
in a meeting room with the city attorney and a police department
drug-enforcement expert.

After the meeting, both sides said they could accept the revised version.
It is expected to come up for final approval by aldermen in the next month.