Looking like 'Vegas is what Lower Pottsgrove hopes to avoid.
SANATOGA PA – Negotiating a compromise in a pending legal battle over the local use of computer-driven electronic signage may be preferable to paying a bundle of money for a 50-50 chance at winning the litigation, Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township Board of Commissioners indicated Thursday (Jan. 20, 2011).
“If we get all of the right benefits, we might be willing to go with it,” commissioners’ President Jonathan Spadt said of proposed settlement talks between township Solicitor R. Kurtz Holloway and an attorney for Lamar Advertising of Penn LLC. Lamar has threatened a court fight to determine if Lower Pottsgrove can legally limit the size of its signs or the frequency with which they change their messages.
Holloway and commissioners said the matter was discussed during an executive session held before Thursday’s board meeting. They were coy about what they might ask from Lamar in exchange for changing their minds on the township’s current signage law or endorsing Lamar’s request for relief from its enforcement.
Lamar's exsting signs on Porter Road, as seen from the westbound land of U.S. Route 422.
Lamar, a Reading PA-based owner of outdoor signage, last November (2010) announced its intent to challenge the municipality’s three-year-old law that restricts its ability to erect and operate billboards on Porter Road that look and work much like flat-screen televisions. A different type of billboard, two of which can be seen by drivers on U.S. Route 422 and also are owned by Lamar, sit there now and were installed several years ago with township approval.
Lower Pottsgrove doesn’t ban electronic signs. Its law does, however, state where such signs can and can’t be placed, how they are constructed, and how often they can change. The commissioners’ intent, said board Vice President Bruce Foltz, is to keep the township “from looking like Las Vegas.”
Lamar must first make its case to the township Zoning Board of Appeals, which next meets on Feb. 15. That board deliberates much like any court: it takes stenographer-recorded testimony under oath, reviews documents and other materials labeled and submitted as evidence, and renders decisions that can then be appealed in other courts higher up the judicial chain.
Lamar’s request for a zoning hearing “attempts to invalidate completely” revisions to the signage law adopted in 2007, Holloway told commissioners in November. “They’re trying to hit us over the head with a bat,” Commissioner Michael McGroarty observed Thursday, joining board members in the confidence the township has what Holloway characterized as “very good legal footing” to fight Lamar and win.
They worry, though, about what that fight may cost. “The legal fees in this could be huge,” Spadt, who also is an attorney, said. “I believe we’re right, but I warn my own clients it can be expensive to be right,” he added. “And any time you get into litigation, there’s the risk you could lose,” Holloway cautioned.
Commissioners acknowledge, too, that an increasing number of businesses and organizations have told the township they want electronic signage. Coventry Christian Schools, Sunnybrook Ballroom, and most recently National Penn Bank on East High Street all have made, or are scheduled to make, their way to the zoning board to ask for permission to erect internally lighted, flashing message signs.
The board directed Holloway to continue talking with Lamar’s counsel on its behalf.
It also told the solicitor to enter the commissioners’ opposition to National Penn’s zoning request to erect a double-faced message center outside its branch office at East High and South Sunnybrook Road.
Related:
Related (to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners’ meeting of Jan. 20):
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