September 12th Letters to the Editor

Dear Edi­tor,

We are writ­ing to com­pli­ment and thank every­one that made the Mor­row County Fair such a suc­cess this year. The fair is, by our accounts, one of the five best in the state. The peo­ple that con­tribute and ded­i­cate so much of their time over the year to cre­ate such a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence and event need to be recognized.

The Senior and Junior Fair Board make the week of the fair run smoothly and pro­vide for a great fam­ily expe­ri­ence that costs less than the admis­sion to a movie. The Com­mis­sion­ers are proud of what the fair pro­vides and rep­re­sents for our county. We hope every­one was able to enjoy the many dif­fer­ent events, exhibits, and some of the great food.

We tip our hat to Dan Rogers and the fair board for mak­ing this year’s ‘Har­vest­ing Mem­o­ries’ one that we can be proud of and look for­ward to next year. Mor­row County is a spe­cial place and the Mor­row County Fair is one of our crown jew­els. Our heart­felt thanks to every­one that helped or con­tributed from the setup on Sun­day to the final SOLD at the Live­stock auc­tion on Mon­day. Mor­row County is a great place to “Love life, Live Rural.”

Mor­row County Com­mis­sion­ers Tom Harden, Olen Jack­son, and Tom Whiston

Dear Mor­row County Sentinel,

The bill­board con­tro­versy on US 42 in Card­ing­ton Town­ship is the result of a small, well orga­nized group of indi­vid­u­als that based their posi­tion on an unfounded high­way safety argu­ment. Despite their claims that the bill­board is a safety threat, I am not aware that the group has pro­vided any proof what­so­ever that show a link between bill­boards and road­way safety. Iron­i­cally, this same group did not appear to be con­cerned with dis­tract­ing dri­vers when they posed for a group photo adja­cent to our bill­board in early August.

Lind Media Com­pany was granted bill­board per­mit #398 from Card­ing­ton Town­ship in March of 2012. We then applied for and were granted ODOT and ODC per­mits required to erect and install out­door adver­tis­ing sig­nage. With all required per­mit­ting, we pur­chased par­cel #C07-001–00-197–00 and erected the bill­boards after receiv­ing Card­ing­ton Town­ship, ODOT and Ohio Build­ing Depart­ment approval. Our actions were in good faith, com­pli­ant with all state and local reg­u­la­tions and reliant on the writ­ten approval and site inspec­tions that we received from each gov­ern­ing body. We believe each per­mit, includ­ing the town­ship per­mit was legally and prop­erly issued.

The sig­nage set­back and 150’ side clear­ance require­ments along US 42 are met and exceeded. A rea­son­able per­son would assume that these spac­ing require­ments are per­for­mance stan­dards to insure that vis­i­bil­ity is not impaired by the struc­ture on the road­way it is meant to serve which is US 42. Fur­ther, the cut-off road/alley they point to as inter­sect­ing with CR 43 is not shown or named on the Mor­row County Engi­neer map. As such, it could be con­sid­ered inac­tive, vacated or qual­ify as an alley, which does not con­sti­tute an inter­sec­tion per Town­ship code. The 150’ inter­sec­tion spac­ing require­ment for bill­boards is to assure dis­tance to rel­a­tive inter­sec­tions along the road­way. The require­ment is not intended to apply to areas where the sign is not vis­i­ble or targeted.

Road­way safety is deter­mined by dri­ver behav­ior and road­way con­di­tions. Mul­ti­ple stud­ies and research have deter­mined that Bill­boards do not have an effect on dri­ver safety. Sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise would place any other nor­mal road­side scenery, vis­tas or activ­ity in the dan­ger category.

The items below offer a glimpse of our posi­tion on dri­ver safety and point to sev­eral inde­pen­dent stud­ies that rein­force our posi­tion that bill­boards do not con­tribute to a decrease in road­way safety.

· Bill­boards – even the most attention-getting bill­boards – do not affect dri­ver behav­ior (Dr. Suzanne Lee, Vir­ginia Tech Trans­porta­tion Insti­tute, 2004)

· Com­pre­hen­sive stud­ies of acci­dent data show that bill­boards have no sta­tis­ti­cal rela­tion­ship with the occur­rence of acci­dents (Tan­tala Asso­ciates, 2007, 2009, and 2010)

· Bill­boards are safety-neutral from the dri­ver stand­point (Vir­ginia Tech Trans­porta­tion Insti­tute, 2007)

· The fed­eral gov­ern­ment says tri-action bill­boards do not pose safety prob­lems (FHWA, re amended Ore­gon state-federal agree­ment, Fed­eral Reg­is­ter, April 2, 2002).

Despite our belief and the over­whelm­ing evi­dence that bill­boards are safety neu­tral, we offered to work with the com­mu­nity group to advo­cate legit­i­mate road­way upgrades includ­ing guardrails, traf­fic sig­nals, pave­ment strips, road­way vaca­tion, improved approach sig­nage and veg­e­ta­tion man­age­ment. We have not been taken up on this offer.

Bill­boards are impor­tant to the com­mu­ni­ties that we serve. As media own­er­ship con­sol­i­dates and local con­tent is de-emphasized, an ade­quate net­work of out­door bill­boards is crit­i­cal to a community’s abil­ity to share infor­ma­tion, engage com­merce and enhance pub­lic aware­ness. Lind Media pro­vides an afford­able, acces­si­ble and effec­tive plat­form for local busi­ness and com­mu­nity groups. Our pres­ence pro­vides an afford­able option to nation­ally owned print and broad­cast media that dom­i­nate the Mor­row County market.

The bill­boards at US 42 are a com­mu­nity asset and a key eco­nomic dri­ver for the busi­ness com­mu­nity. They were installed in good faith and with proper authority.

Sin­cerely,

John L. Siegen­thaler Pres­i­dent, Lind Media Company

Mans­field, Ohio

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Sep 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.