Corporations have marketed themselves through sports for decades. Harrison is hoping they’ll have the same interest in marketing through town government.
The town board is considering soliciting advertising to curb property tax increases.
In sports, stadium naming rights are sold to the highest bidder, advertisements serve as wallpaper at athletic fields and on uniforms, and there are corporate sponsors for everything from halftime to the call to the bullpen.
Harrison officials are debating whether to try to sell the naming rights of the town’s corporate corridor, post advertisements on its website and even on town hall, and solicit sponsors for its ambulance corps.
Councilwoman Marlane Amelio said finding alternative revenues was a priority, especially since the start in 2011 of the state’s property tax cap, which limits to 2 percent the amount governments can increase the property tax levy each year. “The era for private and corporate and municipal cooperation is upon us,” she said.
Digital billboards on Martine Avenue in White Plains. Harrison is considering installing similar signs and seeking other forms of advertising revenue.
Richard Yaffa, a Harrison resident and CEO of Ray Media II, Inc., contacted the mayor earlier this year and suggested looking at marketing opportunities. “I thought it would help the town, all of these municipalities need revenue,” he said.
In May, the town agreed to pay Ray Media nearly $20,000 to look into the logistics – and potential income – from different forms of corporate sponsorship in Harrison, West Harrison and Purchase. Yaffa estimated the town could pull in as much as $150,000 in annual revenue through different forms of sponsorship. Some town officials were hoping to rake in closer to half a million dollars per year, but even the lesser figure is a bit more than a drop in the bucket for a town where $300,000 means an entire point on its $55 million budget.
Yaffa said that municipalities elsewhere in the country have already turned to advertising and sponsorship as a way to plug holes in their budgets. KFC placed temporary hot wings ads on fire hydrants in Kentucky. Baltimore and Colorado Springs placed billboards on their school buses and Philadelphia sold naming rights to a train stop.
Harrison, Yaffa said, has diverse and affluent demographics that would appeal to advertisers. Although his company hasn’t worked with a municipality on a project like this, he said it had the experience in other marketing ventures to get the job done.
“We believe there’s an appetite for this advertising,” he said. “This isn’t pie in the sky, we’ve done this, we understand it.”
Yaffa said he wasn’t suggesting anything as gaudy as fire hydrant ads in the town, but he did believe there were other opportunities, such as selling naming rights to the so-called Platinum Mile, the stretch of the Interstate 287 corridor straddling White Plains and Harrison that is home to many large companies and sprawling corporate campuses.
Harrison Emergency Medical Services, hungry for funding and equipment upgrades, offered its support for potential sponsorships. The town police department, though, was opposed to turning its vehicles into mobile billboards.
Getting the most attention of any of the proposals was the idea of installing solar-powered digital billboards at the gateways to the town. The billboards would have a scroll, mixing static public service announcements and town communications with paid-for messages from advertisers.
The city of White Plains reached an agreement with Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. in 2009 and has since installed 15 digital billboards or banners ranging in size from 6 feet-by-3.3 feet to 6 feet-by-10.8 feet.
Those billboards, which were installed without cost to the city, have been used to broadcast amber alerts and weather warnings though some residents have complained about their aesthetics and a number of bulbs on certain signs that have gone out. White Plains officials did not respond to several requests seeking comment for this article.
Some Harrison residents have criticized the idea of digital signs, saying although they might make sense in the more urban downtown White Plains, they would be out of place in the more suburban town it shares a border with.
Resident Lucille Held lamented that since she moved to town 50 years ago, Harrison has grown louder and become less of a “country” setting. “I think you all have forgotten and you all may have never known that New York City was once a farmland like Harrison,” she told elected officials at an October town board meeting.
Mayor Ron Belmont said the town board will discuss the 2014 budget and decide whether or not to move forward on the agreement with Ray Media in the next two weeks. He said some residents had said they were concerned that an agreement would mean neon signs up and down Halstead Avenue. “That’s not the case at all,” he said, noting that digital signs would be limited and placed only at town gateways.
Harrison government would also set guidelines for advertisements. For example, the town would likely opt to prohibit campaign advertisements or reject ads from companies such as strip clubs that they would not want to be affiliated with town property.
The issue of opening up government to corporate sponsorship isn’t just about aesthetics to residents like Frank Gordon. “There is a value to the residents of not being bombarded by commercialized messages,” he told town board members. “I think that’s something you hold in trust to the citizens of Harrison.”
Even without the agreement, commercialization may have begun in town.
The Harrison Public Library struggled for years to find a way to pay for a planned $3.6 million renovation to its downtown building. The clock ticked closer to a self-imposed deadline at the end of 2013.
Fundraising didn’t come easily, even with $1.1 million chipped in by town government and $1.2 million pledged from the local library nonprofit. The number and amount of donations were underwhelming. It was reason to be excited when Rye-based Jarden Corp. said it would donate up to $100,000 in a matching challenge to other local companies.
Library officials were so excited, in fact, that they promptly agreed to dedicate a portion of the new library as “The Marmot Teen Center,” named after a Jarden-owned clothing line.
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