UPPER SOUTHAMPTON
Upper Southampton residents form a new organization to fund legal appeals over billboards and advance a state ban.
With the end goal of outlawing billboards across the state, a small group of Upper Southampton residents has formed a new organization to advance their cause.
Keep the Vision will become the Bucks County leader in fighting billboards and pushing for scenic highways, group organizers say. They intend to work with regional anti-billboard groups like the Philadelphia-based Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight and the Pennsylvania Resources Council, which has a local chapter in Newtown Square.
The group was founded after two advertising companies sought permits to construct 10 double-sided illuminated billboards on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, between the County Line Road and Second Street Pike overpasses.
With those cases tied up in appeal, Keep the Vision members said the group's first step must be raising funds to cover expected legal cases. The first fund-raising event will be a June 8 picnic.
"To fight these battles we need to have money," said Kathy Mendla of Upper Southampton. "One person can't do it alone and it's better to have people helping you."
Next week, a county judge will decide whether one of the advertising companies, Eller Media Sign Co., can erect six billboards along the turnpike in Upper Southampton. The case reached the county court after a local business owner appealed the township's zoning hearing board approval of Eller.
The outcome of that case will likely have an impact on how the township's zoning hearing board rules on another billboard application for four billboards in the same stretch.
Keep the Vision, which is applying for nonprofit status, vows to appeal any court decision that favors billboards. The advertising companies said they're ready to fight, too.
Billboard companies are a legitimate business, and they have a right to come into the township, said Dave McCarron, the public affairs manager for the Philadelphia branch of Clear Channel Outdoor, the owner of Eller.
"Folks have a perfect right to oppose anything they like," he said. "I don't understand why anyone would want to ban a viable business."
McCarron added that the best place for billboards is on the turnpike - and the advertising industry is clean. "This is not a product that's giving off toxic fumes and it's not polluting the ground," he said.
Keep the Vision members said billboards are visually offensive and should be banned. They said they intend to petition local legislators to pass a law banning billboards.
Alison Hawkes can be reached at 215-322-9715 or ahawkes@phillyBurbs.com.