Editorial

MAYOR STREET'S VETO power is all that stands in the way of billboards, full building "wraps," adult cinemas or landfills being added to the landscape even when the citizens don't want them.

That's because nine members of City Council yesterday ignored the wishes of their constituents and passed Bill 629 by the slimmest of margins.

We can't remember a proposed law that inspired such nearly unanimous community opposition. Over 100 neighborhood, environmental and historic preservation groups worked against the bill with letter writing campaigns, community meetings, and neighborhood newspaper articles.

In fact, apart from the bill's chief sponsor, Councilman Frank DiCicco, and a few hired hands, there were no actual supporters, at least none willing to say so in public.

The depth of opposition shouldn't have been surprising, since Bill 629 was aimed directly at the rights of taxpayers.

It originally was written to neutralize a citizen group that several times had successfully challenged in court the placement of billboards that violated the city's strict law. But Bill 629 would apply to any zoning decision in the city, changing the law that now allows "any taxpayer" to appeal. If it becomes law, only immediate neighbors of a proposed development would have a say.

DiCicco blitzed the media, trying to sell the bill as a "neighborhood protection initiative" when, in fact, it was the opposite - and practically everyone knew it.

Yet the will of the people apparently doesn't matter to Joan Krajewski, Jim Kenney, Donna Reed Miller, Thacher Longstreth, Rick Mariano, Marian Tasco, Jannie Blackwell and Brian O'Neill, who joined DiCicco to vote for the bill yesterday.

All along, some people have pointed to well-placed contributions by the billboard industry as an explanation of the Council members' deaf ears. There may be another, even more disheartening reason: Political debts are deemed more important than public ones.

You can return this particular snub on Election Day. But there still is time for Mayor Street to save the day (and the city) by vetoing the bill, which almost certainly would kill it. It's already clear that's what the people want, but it wouldn't hurt to repeat the message in phone calls and letters.