Haverford Township Residents joined together to protect their community from invasive billboards Thursday evening February 2, 2012. The Zoning Department attorney Jim Byrne along with Bill Kerr the attorney for Lower Merion gave excellent closing arguments. Four residents who are leading the opposition on behalf of several thousand prepared a statement for the zoning board, the statement read by Sandy Donato is below.
This website is a resource for any community threatened by the invasion of billboard blight. Please share your stories with us and let us know if you need our assistance. Read the statement below to learn about how to organize your strategy and work as a team like the residents of Haverford Township.
If you are fortunate enough to live, work or play in beautiful Haverford, Township Pennsylvania, thank your zoning board, commisioners and Sandy. They have worked dilligently on your behalf for three years.
Residents' closing statement to the Haverford Township Zoning Board 2/2/2012
presented by Sandy Donato
Firstly, We want to thank the board for their time served during these hearings.
As a “lay person” and a novice when it comes to these procedures, I especially want to thank you for the patience that you have afforded me and the rest of the Haverford and Lower Merion residents.
I have spoken with the other resident parties and hope that I am able to capture all of most, if not all, of our thoughts and concerns so that you don’t have to sit through a series of us raising the same comments.
So, if we are able to streamline our closing arguments and only one or two of us come forward, please do not take it as a lack of interest by the others or the community. These billboards are of great concern to all of us nearby residents. Many of us will be directly, negatively affected and urge you with our strongest passions to deny these applications.
We ask that you render a decision to reject this challenge and these requests for site specific relief. Particularly, in your decision and written decision:
1) We ask that you render a written decision within the time period specified by the MPC so that BIG cannot challenge it by being a day or two late. As I understand it, BIG has agreed that the decision can be issued by a certain date and I would specifically ask that its agreement be acknowledged again and put directly on the record tonight;
2) We ask that your written decision specifically note the substantial interests of Margaret Murr, Frank and Darlene Capriotti and Michelle Collier and Ed Pearson as parties to this matter. When this matter is appealed, BIG will undoubtedly do its best to prevent us from exercising our rights to participate as parties. Please do not let it stifle our voice as members of this great community. We all live in close proximity to these billboards and our home property values will be negatively affected by the presence of these billboards near our homes.
3) We ask that you reject BIG’s purported expert opinions and other testimony as not being credible. Instead, allow your logic and common sense to guide you in the conclusions that these billboards are a public safety hazard, are inappropriate for the sites proposed and should be excluded altogether from the Township.
From my personal perspective and as I have stated before, I live a short distance of all three proposed locations on West Chester Pike – 1330 WCP, 1157 WCP, and 2040 WCP. I have been a homeowner in this Township for 12 years but have lived here all my life, grew up here, as did my husband, my parents and grandparents. Combined, my extended family owns six homes in Haverford Township.
After growing up here, my husband and I could have moved anywhere. However, we chose to buy in Haverford Township, because of it’s wonderful school district, it’s strong sense of community (with 24 Civic Associations), it’s lovely small town feel, low crime rate and the ease in which we can travel to the city and the shore just to name a few things. We all know it wasn’t the low taxes!!!
Billboards, like those proposed, were not part of the town I grew up in and should not be part of the town that I grow old in. If they had been, they would have played a large part in the decision to invest in a home here and billboards will play a large role in many residents’ decisions to stay and will keep new residents from moving in. Signs of this size and height simply do not belong in the locations proposed or anywhere in this township.
I agree with Big o at least one point, West Chester Pike does have many commercial properties along it, but it also has many homes. Being close to a shopping district is a plus when choosing a home, unless it has an intrusive, oversized and out of place billboard sitting on or near it.
The commercial properties on West Chester Pike are nestled within the residential communities affectionately called West Gate Hills, Hill Top and Lynnewood Park. If billboards were to be erected at these sites, my family and neighbors will have to view them every day from our home, from our backyard, and neighborhood. My children will have to view them from their school bus, when they cross WCP to visit their friends or when we shop at Manoa Shopping Center.
I would like this Board to consider how the aesthetics of billboards could depress it’s surroundings with blight and visual clutter. How much does Haverford Township already do on West Chester Pike in the name of aesthetics? More specifically I am referring to the grassy median that runs down the center of West Chester Pike lined with beautiful cherry trees, well manicured shrubs and flower beds.
BIG does not hide the fact that these billboards are meant to be seen by drivers. It is one of their primary purposes. If erected as proposed, BIG’s billboards will impose additional and unnecessary driver distractions on an already driver challenged roadway. Unlike I-95 or the PA turnpike, these challenges include pedestrians, bicycle riders, joggers, people walking their dogs, stop and go traffic, bus stops, many secondary streets for cars to enter and exit West Chester Pike, driveways, parking lots, basically the bustling busy community that we call home. When a driver, young or old, is hurtling down the road at 35, 45, 55 miles per hour, the last thing that any of us should support is a cosmetic use whose main purpose is to draw their eyes from the road.
This issue of distracted driving is exactly why we have the new ban on texting while driving in Pennsylvania. This is why people shouldn’t dial on their cell phones when they are driving. In the time that that driver’s eyes are drawn off of the road for a text message, a phone number or a billboard, a car might have pulled out of the Manoa Shopping Center, a bus might have had to make a sudden stop at Eagle or Lawrence at West Chester Pike, a pedestrian might have started to cross the street or I might have pulled out of my neighborhood onto the Pike.
BIG’s witnesses were not even asked to consider these challenges when evaluating safety and they will not have to deal with these issues when they’ve moved onto the next Township whose ordinances they are challenging in the name of industry standards, when did the industry set standards for Haverford?
I am not willing to say that there is such a thing is an insignificant increase in traffic accidents, as Greg Richardson said when referring to his crash statistic comparisons. I ask this board to consider how many additional accidents it finds insignificant? One, two, ten? Now imagine just one of those accidents involves someone in your family, a neighbor, or a complete stranger passing through.
Additionally, I am also not convinced that a billboard company whose bottom line is profits above all else can be or should be trusted with the upkeep and maintenance of a 50 ton structure 3 stories in the air necessary to ensure it will never fall in high winds. As one of the resident pointed out, even Clear Channel, the largest billboard company in the world, experienced a failure in Delaware just last year.
In closing, I want this Board to do what it is charged to do. In reaching a decision, consider the impact these billboards will have on the public health, safety and welfare when considering the suitability of these sites for proposed uses.
Also, as I noted before:
a) dot your I’s and cross your t’s with respect to the procedural components of your decision;
b) specify the grant of party status to the various parties; and
c) reject BIG’s expert’s testimony and find the testimony of the Township witnesses to be credible.
d) reject the claim that this challenge is NOT site specific for without their site specific leases we would not be here.
As stated in Article 1 section 27 of the PA State Constitution,
“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the
natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
The brilliance of our local Townships and the MPC is that the trustees for these things is you, the Zoning Hearing Board…..the trustees for generations past and those yet to come. Please do the right thing, the only reasonable thing. Deny this challenge.
