Some Petoskey officials view pedicab ads as unacceptable

By Ryan Bentley News-Review Staff Writer

A downtown Petoskey pedicab service’s sales of advertising space on its vehicles is a topic that’s stirred numerous questions among city officials.

When fitted with advertisements for outside businesses, city planning officials have concluded that the pedicabs — large tricycles with carriage-like rear seats — function like trailered signs, which Petoskey’s sign ordinance prohibits. Signs identifying the pedicab business itself don’t pose an issue.

Members of the downtown management board, however, wonder if the sign rules might indeed provide room for ad sales, and would like city legal counsel to weigh in on the matter. Acting city manager Al Terry said he’ll soon have attorney Jim Murray consider this.

On Tuesday, the downtown board voted 6-0 in favor of a resolution indicating that the pedicab service is consistent with the board’s marketing plan and mission. It requests that the city attorney review the sign ordinance and give an opinion as to whether the pedicab ads are allowable. Three downtown board members — James Reid III, Jennifer Shorter and Bill Takalo — were absent and did not vote.

“The board felt there was ambiguity in the sign ordinance,” said mayor and downtown board member Ted Pall. “Certainly, the word pedicab doesn’t exist in there.”

Petoskey Pedicab LLC owners Josh Lycka and Calvin Schemanski began offering rides in and near the business district last month.

“(Income from ads is) the main thing that’s keeping us downtown,” Lycka said. “It provides us a fixed revenue (source).”

In reviewing a proposal for the pedicab advertising, a city sign committee concluded that the vehicles would fall within the prohibited category of trailered signs. Schemanksi and Lycka then appealed this decision to the Petoskey Planning Commission in March, where a proposal to reverse the sign committee’s decision died by a 3-5 vote.

“We’d like to see them succeed, but we felt with the way the ordinance is written at this time, it wasn’t allowed,” planning commission chairman Gary Greenwell said.

Updates to the sign ordinance to address such situations might be a possibility, Greenwell said, but “it should be researched and something put together that covered a broader spectrum rather than just be specific to a pedicab.”

Greenwell noted that the planning commission had suggested some acceptable options for Lycka and Schemanski to generate advertising revenue — like selling ads on T-shirts, an idea which the pedicab operators did decide to use along with the rear-mounted signs.

“We were trying to give them some ideas and be flexible,” Greenwell said.

City planner Amy Tweeten is aware that the pedicabs have been displaying outside advertisements.

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re in violation,” she said. “I will be citing them.”

Sign-ordinance violations are treated as a civil infraction punishable with a fine.

Asked why the pedicab operators decided to go forward with the advertisements after they were ruled unacceptable, Lycka said: “We were putting up the sign in order to get permission for it through some sort of an appeal. We put up a sign not out of spite, but out of a positive effort to appeal the decision.”

At this point, Lycka said he and Schemanski are unsure as to whether they’d contest a ticket. Noting that the pedicab operators dont have hard feelings toward the city, he added that they might try to resolve the situation through negotiation or look for a way to operate under existing rules.