"Most people think the word 'blight' belongs to Mayor Street," Councilman David Cohen intoned. "It belongs to SCRUB."
SCRUB is The Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight, and its targets are the illegal billboards that dot many Philadelphia neighborhoods.
Cohen was speaking at a Tuesday press conference organized by the group to announce the findings of its new study cataloging every billboard in two sections of Philadelphia. To conduct the study, SCRUB members walked every block of Bridesburg and Tacony, overwhelmingly white, middle-class neighborhoods in the Northeast, and Belmont and Mantua, low-income, African-American neighborhoods in West Philadelphia. While the two areas have little in common demographically, they face a similar problem: unlicensed billboards. In the Northeast neighborhood, where 59 percent of the billboards were unlicensed, residents are up in arms about the massive billboards that flank I-95. In the section of West Philly studied, nearly 90 percent of the billboards had no permit. Most were small signs, often on vacant buildings, advertising fast food, cigarettes and booze. Denyse Hicks, a psychologist who co-wrote a national report for the U.S. Surgeon General on mental health problems facing minority communities, called the billboards that inundate inner-city neighborhoods "toxic images."
While SCRUB leaders are frustrated that the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections often issues exemptions for individual billboards, the group's executive director, Mary Tracy, says the main problem is that many billboard companies avoid filing a permit application with L&I altogether. She says that the companies know that many of their billboards are in illegal locations and don't want to risk being denied an exemption.
While SCRUB has successfully removed numerous billboards through legal action, Tracy says that the cases often take more than two years to complete. Until the court fight is over, the billboards are generally left in place.
Looking beyond the courts, SCRUB is on the offensive politically. Having successfully blocked a pro-billboard industry measure last fall, the group now wants the city to step up enforcement of billboard regulations.